Reading a Title Like a Conveyancer
What the guarantee covers. Registration makes the owner's fee simple conclusive against the Crown and everyone else. Section 23(2) lists what survives it anyway: reservations in the original Crown grant, taxes and local improvement assessments, a lease not exceeding three years where there is actual occupation, highways, public rights of way and watercourses, expropriation or escheat, a wrong description of boundaries or parcels, and fraud in which the registered owner participated. The register guarantees who owns. It does not guarantee the boundaries, the tenant, or anything about what the land may be used for.
The head of the print, and the word that decides an estate. Above the owner sit the title number, the title it came from, and the application dates. The value line is labelled Declared Value, which the LTSA defines as "the value of the lands being dealt with as stated by the applicant on an instrument submitted to the land title office" and cautions may differ from the assessed value. It is a figure declared on the last transfer: not market value, not the assessment, not your price. The land is a nine-digit parcel identifier and a legal description of lot, plan and district; BCFSA tells licensees to pull the plan, not trust the civic address. Then the ownership form. Joint tenants carry survivorship: a death passes the whole to the survivor and the deceased's will has no effect. Tenants in common hold undivided shares, not necessarily equal, each passing by will.
The charges section, and the two questions. Each entry gives the nature, registration number, date and time, and owner of the charge, the existence of the interest, not its terms, which live in the charge document and cost a separate order to read. Priority runs by order of registration, hence priority agreements, since a covenant registered after a mortgage can be purged on a foreclosure. Then ask two questions of every line. Does it clear on completion? Mortgages and assignments of rent, judgments, builders liens and pending-litigation certificates are money problems, discharged out of proceeds. Does it run with the land? Rights of way, easements, building schemes, rent charges and section 219 covenants do, and no closing touches them.
Section 219, precisely. A section 219 covenant may be granted in favour of the Crown, a Crown corporation or agency, a municipality, a regional district, the South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority, a local trust committee under the Islands Trust Act, or a designated conservation body. Two features make it powerful. It needs no dominant tenement, no benefiting parcel has to exist, and it binds the covenantor and the successors in title of the covenantor regardless. Unlike a common law restrictive covenant, which must be purely negative, it can impose positive obligations. Its subject matter is broad: the use of land or a building, that land is not to be built on except per specified plans, subdivision restrictions, and conservation of amenities. Acceptance by the Land Title Office is expressly not a determination that it is enforceable, and selling does not shed it, discharge needs the holder's signature or a court order under section 35 of the Property Law Act, refused for a density covenant in Natura Developments v. Ladysmith, 2015 BCSC 1673.
The Langley ones. Building Bylaw 2008 No. 4642 puts covenants on title as a permit condition: section 5.5(i) where a building sits below the Minimum Building Elevation, with a Registered Professional's report; 5.5(k) per a landslide assessment certifying the land may be used safely for the intended use; 5.5(h) where an approved mechanical sanitary pumping system is installed. Flood construction levels themselves live in the Zoning Bylaw. Streamside areas are secured by dedication or restrictive covenant, with setbacks from top of bank of 30 metres for a Class A natural watercourse and 20 for Class B, or 25 and 15 under the flexible standard. Utility and pipeline rights of way under section 218 need no benefiting parcel either and cannot impose positive obligations on you (Atco Lumber, 2014 BCSC 524). Trans Mountain alone laid roughly 19.7 kilometres of new pipeline inside the Township. The agricultural endorsement under section 60(2) of the Agricultural Land Commission Act is informational only, the Commission warns it "is not a definitive method to confirm whether the parcel is or is not in the ALR."
The rest of the vocabulary. A rent charge secures a recurring payment to a service provider and behaves like a strata fee, usually not discharged on closing. A builders lien must be filed within 45 days of a certificate of completion, or of completion, abandonment or termination of the head contract, and 45 days from conveyance for a strata lot; an action must start within a year, an owner can compress that to 21 days by notice, and it clears by paying security into court under section 24 of the Builders Lien Act. Once a certificate of pending litigation is registered the registrar must not enter anything that would charge, transfer or affect the land until it is cancelled. An option to purchase is an irrevocable offer for its term, binding your seller to sell to someone else.
What is not on title. Zoning is not a registered charge, it sits in the Zoning Bylaw and changes without your title moving a comma. Open permits and the date of an accepted final inspection are municipal records: the Township releases those, plus site plans, the septic field location and any survey certificate on file, through its building records search, a $30 fee, seven business days. Tenancies of three years or less bind you registered or not, and BCFSA warns a title search cannot reveal every occupancy interest. Encroachments appear on no title at all, only a current survey certificate shows the fence over the line.
Verified 25 August 2026 against the LTSA's Land Title Practice Manual on sections 23, 216, 218 and 219 of the Land Title Act, the LTSA's own guidance on reading a title and on declared value, its notice on Agricultural Land Commission Act title endorsements, the Agricultural Land Commission's guidance for ALR buyers, BCFSA's land title knowledge base for licensees, Young Anderson's seminar paper on charges, liens and interests, Stewart McDannold Stuart on section 219 drafting and priority, the Law Society of B.C. residential conveyance checklist, McCarthy Tétrault on the Builders Lien Act, Township of Langley Building Bylaw 2008 No. 4642 and the Township's streamside protection and building records pages, and Trans Mountain's own Langley construction figures. This report describes and informs, it is not legal advice, and specifics deserve specific verification with your lawyer or notary. Which charges on your title clear on completion, and which ones are yours for good?