How to read an Encumbrance Certificate
The EC is the record that catches what the deed hides. Read it the way a careful banker would, and a problem rarely gets past you.
The EC is the record of registered transactions on a property, and one of the first things a title check reads. Here is what the entries actually tell you.
What the EC is
An Encumbrance Certificate is the sub-registrar’s record of the instruments registered against a property over a set period. It lists mortgages, releases, gifts, partitions and transfers. For a lender it is the independent record of what has happened to the title.
The search period
The EC only covers the window you ask for, so the search period matters. A lender that wants the full picture asks for the period that matches its requirement, often 13 or 30 years. A shorter EC can hide an older charge.
What to look for
Watch for a mortgage that has no matching release, a charge in favour of another lender, or a gift or settlement that should have triggered deeper scrutiny. An EC entry is not a finding by itself, but an unexplained entry is a query.
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