Reading a Queensland title search: owners, mortgages, easements, covenants

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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Every home sale in Queensland rests on a page or two of plain text that most buyers never read. The title search is the official statement of who owns a piece of land and what other people or organisations have a registered claim over it. It is the document that tells a buyer whether the person selling is the person entitled to sell, whether a bank must be paid out first, and whether a strip of the backyard is reserved for someone else's pipes or driveway.

Since August 2025 a title search has been part of the paperwork a Queensland seller must give a buyer before the contract is signed, so buyers now see one earlier than they used to. Seeing it and understanding it are different things. The search is written in the shorthand of the land registry: dealing numbers, form types, lot and plan descriptions. This guide goes through a search from top to bottom, explains each kind of entry and what normally happens to it at settlement, and then turns to the long list of things a title search was never meant to show.

Titles Queensland search products and prices as published on its website. Fees are updated each year on 1 July; distributors may add their own charges.

The register is the title

Queensland's land register is kept by Titles Queensland. For freehold land, which is what almost every house and unit is, the register holds one record for each lot. That record is the title. There is no separate deed that proves ownership, and nothing kept in a drawer at home or in a bank vault has any standing against it.

The principle behind the system is that a buyer should be able to rely on the register without investigating the history of the land. If the register says a person is the owner, a buyer who deals honestly with that person and becomes registered in turn takes the land subject to what is recorded on the title and, with limited exceptions set by law, free of what is not. Lawyers call this indefeasibility. In everyday terms it means the register is designed to be the single place to look.

That design explains both the strength and the limit of a title search. It is authoritative about interests that can be registered. It is silent about everything that is not an interest in land, and about the handful of rights the law allows to exist off the register.

Registration itself is now electronic. Titles Queensland's material on eConveyancing records that since 20 February 2023 the common instruments, including transfers, mortgages, releases of mortgage and caveats, must be lodged electronically where a solicitor or financial institution acts, through one of two approved networks, PEXA and Sympli. For a buyer this happens out of sight: at settlement the transfer is lodged online and the register is updated shortly afterwards, without paper changing hands.

The searches you can order, and what they cost

Anyone can search a title. The register is public, and no permission from the owner is needed. Titles Queensland sells searches through its own online service and through approved distributors, among them InfoTrack, Dye & Durham and Equifax, which is how most conveyancers obtain them. Titles Queensland notes that searches and document images may take several days to be delivered, though routine current searches are usually quick.

A buyer of an ordinary home normally needs two of these: the current title search and the survey plan. The first says what is registered. The second shows where the lot is and how big it is.

The dealing image becomes necessary when the search mentions an easement or covenant. The search records only that the interest exists and gives its dealing number. The terms, what the other party may actually do on the land and what the owner must not do, are in the registered document, and that has to be ordered separately.

The historical search answers different questions. It lists every owner and every registered interest since 1994, with dates. It is useful when a buyer wants to know how long the seller has owned the property, how often it has changed hands, or whether a caveat or writ has come and gone. For anything earlier, the image of the old paper certificate of title carries the record back before the computerised register.

Owners: who is selling, and how they hold

A current title search opens with the identifiers. The title reference is the register's own number for the record. The description of the land follows, written as a lot number on a plan, for example a lot on a registered plan or survey plan. That lot-on-plan description, not the street address, is what legally identifies the land, and it is what appears in the contract. The first check is the simplest: the lot and plan on the search should match the lot and plan in the contract and in the seller's disclosure statement.

The registered owners come next, with the dealing number and date of the transfer that made them owners. Two things matter here.

The names should be the names of the people or company selling. If the contract names one seller and the title shows two owners, both must sign. If an owner has died, the survivor or the estate has to be recorded on the title before the sale can complete; the registry has its own forms for recording a death. If the owner is a company or a trustee, the person signing needs authority to do so. These are matters for the buyer's conveyancer, but they begin with reading the names.

The search also states how co-owners hold. Joint tenants own the whole together, and when one dies the other automatically becomes the sole owner. Tenants in common each hold a defined share, shown on the title as a fraction, and each share passes under that owner's will. The distinction matters less to a buyer looking at the seller's title than to a buyer deciding how to hold the new home, because the same choice will be recorded on the transfer.

Mortgages: the bank's place on the title

Below the owners, the search lists what it calls easements, encumbrances and interests. For most homes the first entry is a mortgage, shown with a dealing number and the name of the lender.

A registered mortgage means the owner cannot give a buyer clear title until the lender releases it. In an ordinary sale this is routine. The seller's lender is paid from the sale proceeds at settlement and a release of mortgage is lodged at the same moment as the transfer to the buyer and, if the buyer is borrowing, the buyer's own new mortgage. All three are among the instruments that Titles Queensland requires to be lodged electronically.

A buyer does not need the seller's permission or balance to be satisfied that this will happen. The contract obliges the seller to deliver the title free of the mortgage, and the electronic settlement will not complete unless the release is ready. What a buyer can usefully notice is anything out of the ordinary: two mortgages, a mortgage to a private individual, or a lender that is not a bank. None of these prevents a sale, but each is worth mentioning to the conveyancer early, because more parties have to agree before settlement can occur.

The title shows that a mortgage exists. It does not show how much is owed.

Easements: someone else's right over the land

An easement is a right for one party to use part of another's land for a stated purpose. It attaches to the land, not to the people, so it passes to each new owner. The title search lists each registered easement with its dealing number and states whether the lot carries the burden of it or enjoys the benefit.

The most common easements on residential lots serve practical ends: a shared driveway giving a rear lot access to the street, a drainage or sewerage line crossing the yard, or an electricity corridor. Some benefit a neighbouring lot. Others are "in gross", meaning they benefit an authority such as a council or an energy network without being tied to any nearby land.

For a buyer, three questions follow from an easement entry.

Where is it? The search does not say. The survey plan shows the easement as a labelled strip with its width and position, which is the reason to order the plan with the search.

What does it allow? The registered easement document sets out the rights: who may enter, for what, and what the owner may not do. A typical drainage easement prevents building over the strip. An access easement may require the owner to share the cost of maintaining a driveway.

Does it interfere with what the buyer intends? A sewer easement along the back boundary may make no difference to daily life and still rule out the pool or the shed the buyer had in mind.

An easement that benefits the lot deserves equal attention. If the only way to reach the home is across a neighbour's land, the buyer wants to see that right recorded on the title and to read its terms.

Covenants: promises attached to the land

A covenant is a registered promise that binds whoever owns the land, restricting how it is used or requiring something to be done. In Queensland the covenants that appear on a title are generally ones made in favour of the State or a local government. They are typically used to tie two lots together so that they cannot be sold separately, to protect vegetation or a natural feature, or to control the use of the land or of a building on it. Where a covenant is registered, it is listed on the title search with a dealing number, and its terms are in the registered document.

This is narrower than many buyers expect, especially those who have bought in a new housing estate. The rules a developer sets for an estate, about roof colours, fencing, front landscaping, the minimum size of the house or the time allowed to build, are usually called building covenants. In Queensland they are ordinarily contractual. They are written into the contract of sale from the developer and, commonly, into a deed that each later buyer is asked to sign. They do not normally appear on a title search.

The practical result is that a clean title search does not mean there are no design rules. A buyer in an estate that is still being developed should look for building covenants in the contract and its annexures, and ask whether the seller signed a deed that requires the next buyer to do the same.

Caveats, leases and other entries

A few other entries turn up less often and deserve more care when they do.

A caveat is a formal warning lodged by someone who claims an interest in the land: a person who says they have a contract to buy it, a former partner, a lender under an unregistered agreement. While a caveat is in place, the registry will generally not register a transfer without the caveator's agreement. A caveat on the seller's title is not proof of anything except that there is a dispute or an unfinished arrangement, but it must be dealt with before settlement, and that is the seller's task.

A registered lease is unusual on a house and more common where part of a property is commercial. Ordinary residential tenancies are not registered and will not appear; whether the home is tenanted is disclosed in the contract.

A priority notice is a short entry showing that a dealing is on its way, typically the transfer and mortgage for a sale that is about to settle. It reserves priority for that dealing for a limited time. Seeing one lodged for the buyer's own purchase is normal. Seeing one for an unknown party on a property about to be bought is a reason to ask questions.

Finally, a search may list administrative advices and unregistered dealings. Administrative advices are notes placed on the title by government bodies to flag that some statutory matter affects the land. Unregistered dealings are documents that have been lodged but not yet processed. Both are prompts for the conveyancer to find out more, and the low-cost administrative advice statement exists for that purpose.

The plan: the other half of the picture

The title search describes rights. The survey plan describes ground. Titles Queensland summarises it as showing the location, dimensions and area of a parcel of land.

On the plan a buyer can see the shape of the lot, the length of each boundary, the total area, the position of any easement and the neighbouring lots and roads. Comparing it with what is physically there is a worthwhile exercise. A fence that cuts a corner, a driveway that seems to wander onto the neighbour's side, or a shed sitting where the plan shows an easement are all things better noticed before the contract than after.

The plan has limits of its own. It records the boundaries as surveyed when the plan was registered, which may be many decades ago. It does not show buildings, and it does not confirm that today's fences follow the surveyed lines. Only a surveyor engaged to mark the boundaries on site can do that.

For a unit or townhouse, the plan is a different kind of document. It shows the lot within the building or complex, the areas that belong exclusively to it and the common property shared with the other owners. The rules of the scheme and the financial position of the body corporate are held in other records altogether.

When the search is done during a purchase

A title is not searched once. It is checked at three points, each for a different reason.

The first of these is new. Under the seller disclosure scheme that began on 1 August 2025, title information and encumbrances are among the matters a seller must give the buyer before the contract is signed. The Queensland Government's summary of the scheme says a buyer may be able to end the contract if the statement is not given, or is inaccurate or incomplete on a material matter the buyer was unaware of when signing.

The final check matters because a title can change between contract and settlement. A search dated three weeks ago does not show a caveat lodged yesterday.

What a title search does not show

The register answers a narrow question well. It is easy to assume it answers more.

The gaps fall into a few groups.

Physical matters are absent. The title does not describe the house, its condition, whether the extension was approved or whether the pool has a safety certificate. It does not record flooding, bushfire exposure or contamination, although an administrative advice may occasionally point to a statutory register that does.

Planning matters are absent. Zoning, overlays, heritage listing and what the council would allow to be built are found in the planning scheme, not on the title.

Money owed to authorities is absent. Unpaid council rates, water charges and land tax can follow the land to the new owner, and they are checked through separate searches that a conveyancer orders after the contract.

Services that run without an easement are absent. Public sewer and stormwater lines often cross private lots under statutory powers and are shown on council or utility plans, not on the title.

Private arrangements are absent. Estate building covenants, as explained above, are usually contractual. So are ordinary residential tenancies and any informal understanding with a neighbour about a fence or a shared path.

For units, the body corporate is absent. The title shows the lot. Levies, by-laws, the sinking fund and disputes are in the records of the body corporate and the community management statement.

Read for what it is, the title search is the firmest document in the whole transaction: an official record, publicly available for the price of a lunch, that settles who can sell and what comes with the land. Read as a full account of the property, it will mislead. The buyer who orders the plan with it, asks for the document behind every easement and covenant, and treats everything outside the register as a separate inquiry has used it as intended.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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