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Searches
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During the course of a transaction you will probably hear the expression "searches" used quite a lot and you may wonder what is meant. Searches fall into two parts: those which are known as initial searches and are carried out before contracts are exchanged and those known as final searches which are carried out immediately before completion.
With regard to some of the initial searches you will probably be asked by your solicitor to pay for these before they are carried out.
Turning to the initial searches first, the most common of these is the Local Search which is a standard form of inquiries carried out with the Local Authority for the area in which the property is situate. In an earlier article I outlined the sort of things that a Local search covered and warned of the big limitation on a search being that it is limited only to the property searched against and does not generally tell a purchaser anything about the area round about, such as proposals for development.
There is now a new search however showing planning entries relating to neighbouring properties.
A local search may or may not reveal the status of the drains, depending on the particular local authority. If not, it is possible to carry out a separate drainage search with the local Water Company. It is obviously important to establish that the property has the benefit of mains drainage. In a case where it appears there is private drainage your solicitor will make separate enquiries with the sellers solicitors.
A fairly recent but now very common search is an Environmental Search. These are relatively inexpensive and provide between 20 and 40 pages of information about the area where you are buying including identifying nearby industrial processes, past and present industrial land use, highlighting land instability issues, e.g. coal mining, and dealing with the possibility of flooding and radon gas.
If the property you are purchasing has not yet been registered at the Land Registry than a search called a Public Index Map search has to be carried out. This search confers no priority but tells you if the property or any part of it has been registered at the Land Registry already or if someone is making a claim against the property, for instance, if there were a boundary dispute.
Where the property you are purchasing is in a rural area then a commons registration search may be carried out to check the property is not built on common land or a village green and that the accessway to it is not over common land. If however, the property you are purchasing is in or around the New Forest then a Forest Atlas Search may be carried out. This will tell you if the property has the benefit of any forest rights such as an ability to graze cattle or to collect wood.
Finally, there are a number of other searches which are carried out from time to time depending on where the property is situate. Examples of this would be a coal mining search, china clay search, tin mining search and salt search. These are not generally carried out locally.
Once contracts have been exchanged (increasingly where timescales are very short) final searches are carried out. If the property is registered at the Land Registry, then a Land Registry Search is sent off, this checks that the information you received about the legal tattle has not changed and confers a priority on you. In other words providing you as the new owner are registered at the Land Registry within the priority period nobody can register something else in the interim.
If the property is not yet registered at the Land Registry a Land Charges Search is carried out to check that there is nothing that you are not aware from looking at the title deeds. Examples of this would be if bankruptcy proceedings were being taken against the seller or if they had a second mortgage or had agreed to sell the property or part of it to someone else.
Bankruptcy Search
This is a check carried out on behalf of a mortgage lender to ensure that the borrower is not bankrupt or about to be bankrupt.
Company Search
Where a company is selling this may be carried out to ensure that only the company has not been struck off nor a receiver appointed but as to whether it has any legal charges or debentures which may have to be released by the bank which has the benefit of completion |
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