Buying a property is exciting but at the same time scary. It’s probably the most expensive purchase you ever made, and you don’t want to get it wrong. And knowledge is the best weapon against your dream home turning into a nightmare.
The conveyancing process can be complex and complicated, because there are so many things to be aware of. One big part of the process are property searches, which will be ordered by your conveyancing solicitor.
While they aren’t a legal requirement, they are a necessary part of buying a property. So in this article we will answer all your questions about this important topic.
What Are Property Searches?
They are reports from various local authorities that will give you an idea about potential issues under or in the area surrounding the home you are considering buying.
Searches are a big part of the conveyancing process and one of the ways you can find out as much as possible about the property you are about to buy and the area.
While they don’t cover the property itself, this is covered by enquiries, searches will bring to light issues around the property that could be a problem, such as flood risk or planned developments in the area.
There are different types of searches, not all of which might be needed for the property you buy. However, to ensure you get all the ones done that are needed, we recommend that you listen to the advice of your conveyancing solicitor.
Do I Need Them?
Well, yes and no. There is no legal requirement that you carry out searches before you buy a property. However, if you use a mortgage to buy your home, the lender will insist that you carry out certain searches.
That’s because they will have an interest in your property, so want to make sure that there aren’t any issues that could reduce its value. But even if you are a cash buyer, we would strongly recommend that you do all the searches your solicitor advises you to do. It’s money well spent.
Imagine, you find your dream home. It ticks all the boxes, but more importantly when you first walked in you just felt at home. You are eager to move in and once all your belongings are in, you and your family are on cloud nine.
Then one day, you receive a letter saying that your property is under a Compulsary Purchase Order (CPO) because it’s on the route of a planned road. This means you have to sell your home to the acquiring authorities if you want to or not.
If you had conducted a local authority search, this would have come up, and you could have prevented the heartbreak of losing your dream home.
Of course, the searches might come back showing that all is fine, but that doesn’t mean you have wasted your money. After all, it means you are good to buy the house without having to worry.
So even though it’s not a legal requirement to carry out searches, it’s a vital part of the process and shouldn’t be skipped.
Who Carries Out Property Searches?
While the searches are ordered by your conveyancing solicitor, it’s third parties that will do the actual work. This could be local authorities or other organisations that hold information about the property’s land or surrounding areas.
Your solicitor will know where to order the searches from and will do it on your behalf. There are fees attached, which your solicitor will pay on your behalf and then invoice you for them as part of the solicitor’s fees.
Buying A Property? FREE Step-By-Step Platform
- Bite-sized steps for buying and/or selling a property in the UK
- Easy-to-follow explanations every step of the way
- Clear actions to follow to progress your property transaction
- Trackable progress so you know what to do next
- Detailed informative articles related to every step you follow
What Types Of Property Searches Are There?
There are four main searches that today are standard for everyone who is buying a house.
Local authority
These are the most important and will highlight building control issues, highways issues, any planning issues and pollution problems.
Environmental
These are worthwhile for highlighting contaminated land issues, potential subsidence problems, flooding problems and landslide issues.
Water authority
These are also important to reveal where public sewer and drainage pipes are located, whether your water supply is rateable or metered, whether your home is connected to a public water supply, who is responsible for and who owns the drains, sewers and piping and whether permission is needed for extending the property from a water company.
Land Registry
This search is needed, because it checks the title plan and title register of the property at the Land Registry. It will show who legally owns the property and is therefore allowed to sell it.
Imagine this isn’t checked, and after you have moved it you find out the vendor you dealt with had no right to sell the house and the sale is void and you have to move out. Not to mention all the money you will have lost.
While the above-mentioned ones are the main ones that are ordered for every purchase, there are other ones a solicitor might advise you to carry out:
- Flooding/flood risk search
- Mining search
- Chancel search
- Bancruptcy search
- Radon search
Which of these you need, if any, will depend on where your property is located. Your solicitor will be able to advise you.
What searches do I need?
As you can see there are many different searches available, but that doesn’t mean you need them all.
The searches that you need when buying property will depend on its location. Your solicitor should be able to advise you on which searches are necessary for the property you want to buy.
Not all searches will be necessary for every property. Your solicitor might know that it isn’t a past coal mine area, because they have overseen the conveyancing of other properties in this area. So they might not deem a mining report necessary.
When we bought our current home, the owners told us that they installed a positive pressure vent because they had high radon levels in their previous home.
Radon is a radioactive gas that occurs naturally in every home in the UK.
The levels will depend on the ground the house is built on. In some areas the levels are quite high and remedies such as installing a positive pressure vent might be necessary. A radon search will check the levels in the area.
You can also check the government’s free radon map, if you are unsure if you need this search.
Rather than carry out the radon search, the previous owners decided to put in the positive pressure vent. For us, this meant we didn’t need to carry out this search either.
How Long Do Searches Take?
There is no set timescale for how long a property search will take to complete, most of them will be done quickly, but the obstacle may be the local authority.
On average, it can take between two and three weeks to complete, though your conveyancer will be relying on how long an external body will take to produce information.
It’s always a good idea when hiring a conveyancing solicitor to keep in regular touch to ensure they have put in the relevant requests, and you can chase them up for answers if there is a delay.
When buying our current home, one of the searches took a very long time to come back. We had to call the local authority to check with them. It turned out that there was some technical issue, which meant the search order never reached them.
Our solicitor had to re-submit the order. After that it was done very quickly. It’s always good to keep on the ball with this, as otherwise it could cause major delays.
When Should Searches Be Ordered?
Because some searches can take a while to come back, it is advisable to order them as soon as your offer has been accepted. We always ask our solicitor to order them as soon as possible to avoid any delays to the conveyancing process.
Keep in mind that solicitors will ask you to pay a deposit to carry out the searches. Make sure you pay this as soon as you can, so your solicitor can order the searches.
In some cases specialised searches might become necessary later down the line. This normally happens when something has come up where more information is needed. However, these cases tend to be quite rare.
We have bought several homes over the years, and we never needed a specialised search further down the line.
How Much Do Property Searches Cost?
The cost of searches will vary, so there is no fixed answer, but here we give a good idea of how much you should be expecting to pay. [PRICES UPDATED IN 2024]
Local authority search £60-£400
These can take from one week and up to six weeks, and in some cases several months, and cost up to £400 depending on the authority.
Water and drainage search £50-£100
The water and drainage authority search will pinpoint where your water is coming from, and whether there are drains on your property. The location of these drains may affect potential future building work.
Environmental search £25-£180
Environmental searches will establish whether the property you want to buy is on a safe brownfield land.
In other words, it will identify either built on or near to, contaminated water and land – or is even an old landfill site. This is important to highlight whether there’s the potential for toxic substances to be remaining in the ground.
A common contaminant in brownfield sites is asbestos which was used as a primary building and insulation material (Hellawell & Hughes, 2021). Its harmful effects even extended to individuals who had indirect exposure to the toxic asbestos fibres (Goswami et al., 2013).
The higher end will apply if you are buying a property with a lot of land attached to it.
Flooding search £20-£50
Knowing whether your home is liable to flooding from rivers or the sea is important.
It’s also important to consider if your area is at risk of pluvial flooding. This is usually common in low-lying urban areas where drainage systems can be overwhelmed due to extreme rainfall and the demands of a dense population (Miller & Hutchins, 2017).
Mining search £20-£120
This will be part of a location-specific search to determine, for example, whether the area was used for mining, and whether there is a risk of subsidence.
According to various data points analysed by Landmark Information in 2017, a third of England and Wales’ residential properties are within proximity of historic mining activity. Out of 385 Local Authority areas, 95 had more than half of residential properties within 250 metres of mining activity.
So, this is an important search that must not be overlooked. If you are buying a house with a lot of land, the price might be higher.
Chancel search £20-£100
A quick check to find out whether you will be responsible for paying for Parish church repairs.
Other searches when buying a property include:
Bankruptcy search £2 per name
This search is only necessary if you buy a property with a mortgage. It’s the lender that will insist that your solicitor checks if you have declared bankruptcy in the past.
Land Registry £3 for only copy and £7 for official copy
A Land Registry check is simply proving that the property seller is the actual legal owner of that property.
Title plan £2.50 plus VAT for only copy and £7 for official copy
Flood risk indicator copy £9 plus VAT
Indemnity insurance £30-£300
A general indemnity insurance policy will cover you against a specific risk that is associated with your property, including contaminated land, leasehold issues and chancel repair.
The bottom line is that you should budget for all checks to cost between £100 and £400.
Most solicitors will have a fixed price for a search package. When we bought our current home in 2021, we paid £350 for the searches. This included all the standard searches that are done for most homes.
How Do You Deal With Problems Found In Searches?
There isn’t a fixed answer to this question, because it will depend on what the issue is. But should there be a problem found during one of the searches, your conveyancing solicitor will make you aware of it.
Any good solicitor will have a wealth of experience dealing with issues from searches and will be able to advise you on how to proceed. They may recommend that you don’t buy the property if the problem is particularly acute. However, often there is a solution.
When we bought one of our previous homes, one of the searches revealed that the extension of the house didn’t have planning permission. This meant that the council could potentially order us to tear it down.
Our solicitor made us aware of the fact and gave us two options: we could ask the seller to take out indemnity insurance for it. This would mean that if the council were to order the demolishment, at least we would be covered financially.
The second option was to take out the insurance ourselves. We opted for the latter, as it wasn’t very expensive, and we didn’t want to start new negotiations, as we wanted to keep the process moving.
Are searches the same as a survey?
No, there are completely different things. As we have said, property searches cover the area that surrounds your property and are carried out by various local authorities.
On the other hand, a property survey only focusses on the property itself and the land it stands on, like the garden and the drive. While a solicitor might advise you to carry out a survey, it’s up to you to arrange it.
The only survey a mortgage company will insist on is a valuation survey to ensure that the price you have offered to pay is equivalent or lower to the value of the property.
There are different types of property surveys you can get, for example a structural survey or a damp and timber survey. Which one you need will depend on the age, location and condition of the property.
A survey is carried out by a surveyor, ideally registered with the Royal Chartered Institute of Surveyors (RCIS). Finding the right surveyor for your property is important, so it’s worth comparing different surveyors and their quotes.
