Conveyancing searches, and what they are for
Searches are the part of a purchase that costs money early and appears to produce nothing. What they actually produce is the difference between buying a property and buying a problem.
The ones almost every purchase has
Local authority search
Asks the council what it knows: planning permissions and refusals, building regulations completions, enforcement notices, whether the road is adopted, and whether anything is proposed that would affect the property. The single most useful search and usually the slowest.
Drainage and water
Whether the property is connected to mains water and public sewers, where the public sewers run, and whether any run under the building. A sewer under an extension is a live issue rather than a technicality.
Environmental
Contaminated land, flood risk, ground stability and nearby landfill. A desktop study rather than a site visit, and its main job is to tell the conveyancer whether a more specific investigation is warranted.
Land Registry searches
A priority search protects the transaction for a defined window so nothing can be registered against the title ahead of your purchase. A bankruptcy search is done on the borrower for the lender’s benefit.
The ones that depend on where the property is
Some searches are specific to an area rather than to a transaction. Coal mining searches in former coalfields, tin and clay mining searches in the south west, chancel repair checks in parishes with a historic liability, and commons registration searches where the land may be subject to rights of common.
Your conveyancer decides which apply from the location and the title. A lender’s own requirements can add to that list, and where they do, the requirement sits in Part 2 of the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders’ Handbook rather than in general practice.
Why they are ordered early
Search results routinely take weeks rather than days, and the local authority search is the usual reason a transaction is waiting on nothing visible. Ordering them at the start rather than after the survey is one of the few genuine levers on timing, which is why most firms ask for search money up front.
Anything a search turns up is dealt with before exchange, not after. Where a defect cannot be resolved in the time available, an indemnity policy is often what allows the transaction to proceed.
Written as general information for England and Wales, not as advice on an individual matter. Where a lender’s own requirement applies, it sits in Part 2 of the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders’ Handbook, which lenders amend without notice.