The routine: three minutes at Companies House collecting identifiers → three minutes searching the ownership data by number then name → four minutes reconciling on number, address, category and date. Ten minutes gets you from a company name to a defensible list of titles.
Why the order matters
The two registers answer different questions and are not linked to each other. Companies House tells you who a company is; HM Land Registry tells you what it owns. The bridge between them is the company registration number, and you get that from Companies House.
Which is why the sequence runs company-first. Going straight to a property search with only a name means searching without the identifiers that make a match verifiable — and a name match you cannot verify is not much use.
Minutes 0–3: collect the identifiers
Open the Companies House record and write down five things. All five earn their keep later.
- Full registration number, eight characters, leading zeros intact. If you copy it into a spreadsheet, force the cell to text — otherwise
00456789becomes456789and your search will return nothing. - Incorporation date. This is your impossibility filter: no genuine holding predates it.
- Former names with change dates. Titles registered under an old name keep that old name.
- Registered office, and its history. Used to corroborate the proprietor address on a title.
- Group relationships. The parent's accounts usually list subsidiary undertakings with their numbers. If the entity you were given is a holding company, the assets are probably below it.
If the company is dissolved or in liquidation, note that too — it changes how you read a current-looking proprietor entry.
Minutes 3–6: search the ownership data
Two passes, in this order:
- By registration number. Precise, unambiguous, no false positives. This is your high-confidence set.
- By name — current name first, then each former name. Tolerant matching, so it returns candidates as well as hits. This is your recall set, and it needs filtering.
If you identified subsidiaries, run each of their numbers too. This is the step that most often changes the answer: a parent-only search on a group with SPV-per-asset structure returns nothing at all.
Minutes 6–10: the four reconciliation checks
Every row from the name pass gets these four checks. Rows from the number pass are already high-confidence, but the address and category checks are still worth a glance for anomalies.
| Check | What you compare | What a mismatch means |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Registration number | Number on the title row against the Companies House record | Same name, different number is a different company. Discard |
| 2. Proprietor address | Address on the title against registered office history | Often benign — could be a solicitor's or agent's address — but a complete mismatch needs explaining before you keep the row |
| 3. Proprietorship category | Category against the entity type | A local-authority category for a limited company means you have the wrong entity |
| 4. Date proprietor added | Date against incorporation date | A title registered before incorporation is impossible. Definite name collision |
Check 4 is the cheapest and most decisive, and it is the one people skip. It resolves a surprising share of ambiguous name matches in a single glance.
Next step
Run both sides in one search
Resolve a company or director at Companies House and match against HM Land Registry ownership data together.
What you have at the end of ten minutes
- A verified list of titles, each with a stated basis for inclusion.
- A rejected list with reasons — which matters as much, because it shows the work was done.
- An entity map: which company in the group holds which assets.
- A view of portfolio shape — count, tenure mix, geographic spread.
What you do not have is anything about charges, boundaries, lease terms or beneficial ownership. Those need the official copy of the register and, for control questions, the PSC register. See CCOD vs the title register.
Where the ten minutes goes wrong
- Zero-stripped number. The classic. Re-check before concluding anything from a nil return.
- Parent-only search. If the company is a holding company, expect nothing in its own name.
- Current name only. Former names are where the hidden holdings sit.
- Accepting name matches unfiltered. Tolerant matching means candidates, not conclusions.
- Assuming the registers agree. They are maintained independently and update on different cycles; the proprietor entry reflects registration, not the latest corporate filing.
- Forgetting overseas entities. Non-UK proprietors sit in OCOD, not CCOD.
When ten minutes is not enough
Scale up when the structure is opaque or the stakes are high. A large group needs the full subsidiary list built from accounts, and each entity run separately. An unknown structure is better approached from the people — see director property search — resolving appointments and then checking each connected company. And where offshore holding is involved, the Register of Overseas Entities at Companies House becomes relevant alongside OCOD.
Read next
- Companies House vs Land Registry
- Company property search UK
- Tracing property through group companies and SPVs
Frequently asked questions
How do I verify that a company property match is genuine?
Check four things: the registration number on the title row against the Companies House record, the proprietor address against a registered office the company held at the time, the proprietorship category against the entity type, and the date the proprietor was added against the incorporation date. A title registered before the company existed is a name collision, not a holding.
Which register should I open first?
Companies House, because it gives you the identifiers that make the property search accurate: the full registration number with leading zeros, the former names, the incorporation date, and the registered office history. Searching the ownership data first works only when you already have a property rather than a company.
Why does the proprietor name not match the current company name?
Because the proprietor name reflects the name at the point of registration. A company renamed after a title was registered keeps the old name on that title unless the register was updated. Search the former names from the Companies House filing history to find those holdings.