A title, or parcel register, search shows registered mortgages, liens, easements and open work orders against a property. But a judgment against the seller shows up only in a separate Sheriff’s execution search — never in the Land Registry itself.
What a search is built to catch reads, in effect, like the list of what an owner’s title-insurance policy also covers: “defects in title, undischarged mortgages and liens, unregistered easements and rights of way, encroachments in either direction, lack of legal access to a public road, municipal work orders and open permits outstanding at closing, realty tax and utility arrears from before your ownership, and existing structures that breach the zoning by-law”. That overlap is not a coincidence — a competent search is the diagnostic step a lawyer runs precisely so those problems can be fixed before closing rather than claimed on afterward, because “making a seller fix a problem before closing is cheaper than claiming on a policy after”.
The gap agents most often miss is that a parcel-register pull is not the whole search. A judgment creditor’s Writ of Seizure and Sale is a separate instrument: “writs appear in the Sheriff’s execution search — a mandatory component of every real estate title search in Ontario. They do not appear in the Land Registry itself but must be cleared for title to pass”. It is only picked up because a proper Ontario closing runs both the Land Registry search and the Sheriff’s execution search together.
A seller’s parcel register comes back clean — no registered mortgages, no registered liens. But the buyer’s lawyer’s separate Sheriff’s execution search turns up a six-year-old Writ of Seizure and Sale filed against the seller by a former business partner. It never appeared in the Land Registry, and the seller genuinely had not thought to mention it. Because the writ was caught before closing, the buyer’s lawyer requisitions it, and the seller’s lawyer arranges payoff or a holdback before funds change hands — exactly the outcome a “the seller says there’s nothing on title” assumption would have missed if the agent hadn’t assumed both searches were being run.
See also: title insurance, writ of execution and restrictive covenant.
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