How to Check a Property's History for Free (UK)

Whether you're buying, selling, letting or just curious about your own home, a surprising amount of any UK property's history sits in free, official public registers. No account, no fee, no estate agent required. Here's exactly where to look and what each source will — and won't — tell you.

1. Energy history: the EPC register

Where: get-energy-performance-data.communities.gov.uk (the national EPC service, relaunched in May 2026)

Search by postcode and you'll find every Energy Performance Certificate lodged for an address — often going back to the late 2000s. Each certificate shows:

• The energy rating (A–G) and score, plus the "potential" rating
• Construction details the assessor recorded: wall type, insulation, glazing, heating system
• Recommended improvements with indicative costs

Because certificates accumulate, you can read a property's improvement story: a 2009 EPC showing an old boiler and no loft insulation next to a 2021 EPC rated C tells you work was done in between. For buyers, it's also an early warning — a G-rated cottage means budgeting for serious upgrades. Note the EPC format is being reformed into multiple metrics in the second half of 2027, but historic certificates remain on the register.

2. Sale prices: HM Land Registry Price Paid data

Where: HM Land Registry's Price Paid data — search "HM Land Registry price paid" or use the search on gov.uk

Every residential sale in England and Wales since 1995 is recorded: date, price, whether it was a new build, freehold or leasehold. For any address you can see:

• What it last sold for, and every sale before that
• How its value has moved against the street and the area
• Red flags worth a question — a sale at a big discount to neighbours, or a quick resale, usually has a story behind it

It won't show sales before 1995, inherited or gifted transfers, or (for a few weeks) the very latest completions, but as a free price history it's unmatched.

3. Planning constraints: planning.data.gov.uk

Where: planning.data.gov.uk — the government's national planning data platform, with a map you can search by address

This is the one most people don't know about, and it's often the most consequential. It shows whether a property is affected by:

• Conservation areas — extra restrictions on alterations, windows, extensions
• Listed buildings — consent needed for most changes, inside and out
• Flood zones — which affect insurance and mortgages as well as wellies
• Article 4 directions — where normal permitted development rights are removed
• Tree preservation orders (TPOs) — protected trees you can't prune or fell freely

Any one of these changes what you can do with a property and what it costs to own. Discovering them before you offer — or before you build — is vastly better than discovering them from an enforcement letter.

4. Local crime: data.police.uk

Where: data.police.uk (or police.uk's street-level crime maps)

Street-level crime data for England, Wales and Northern Ireland: what was reported, roughly where, month by month, with outcomes. Treat it sensibly — crimes are mapped to approximate points, and a busy high street will always out-report a cul-de-sac — but trends over a year or two give a fair picture of an area.

Reading the sources together

Each register answers a different question; the value comes from combining them. A worked example: Price Paid shows a house sold cheaply in 2015; the EPC register shows an F rating that year and a B in 2018 with new heating and insulation recorded; planning.data.gov.uk shows it's in a conservation area, explaining why the windows are timber rather than uPVC. In ten minutes you've assembled the story a buyer's solicitor would take weeks to piece together.

Limitations worth knowing: these registers cover public facts. They won't show private documents — building regulations certificates, guarantees, service history — which only the owner holds. That's the other half of a property's story, and it's why keeping your own records matters; our guide to property logbooks covers what that looks like.

If you'd rather not repeat the lookups by hand, HomePassport pulls these public records together for your address automatically — EPC history, sale prices and planning constraints in one view — free to try for your own home.