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You have been looking for your dream house for ages, and finally, you find one. You put in your best offer, and the day arrives when you are told that the seller has accepted your offer. Once your offer goes through, the next thing you should do is appoint a conveyancer or a solicitor to do the paperwork on your behalf as soon as possible. This experience, at times, would seem daunting but can also no doubt be exciting. In this blog, you will get to know how long do searches take when buying a house 2022? Our friendly team at Removals Ilford wanted to help you broaden your mind about what it takes to go about this process. We hope you find this blog informative.
Conveyancing is legally transferring a property’s ownership from one owner (person, company, etc.) to another. A conveyancer carries out the legal and administrative work of transferring property ownership.
Conveyancing or property searches provide crucial information about the property you intend to buy. These include a local authority search, environmental search, water and drainage search and title search. They highlight potential problems before you commit to the purchase. You can also use it to renegotiate the selling price. Or you can opt to pull out of the purchase altogether.
There are four main property or conveyancing searches, as follows:
Once appointed, your conveyancer will take money in advance for these searches and apply for these on your behalf. Since we are on the topic of buying a house, it would eventually close in to the point of moving, where you will need a lot of help with. Our team of experienced and friendly removals specialists will see to your moving needs. Check out our site, and stay updated About Ilford Removals.
Local Authority Search – The Local Authority Search is an indispensable part of buying a property’s conveyancing process. It carries all critical information that will help you decide whether you wish to proceed with the buying process or pull out of it. Local Authority Searches consist of two parts – the LLC1 and CON29. In ight of this, do find out more about our Local Removals Ilford service aimed for our customers based in Ilford.
The first part of the Local Authority Search is called the local land charges register search (LLC1). It tells you whether the property is a listed building; has any conditional planning permissions; is in a smoke control zone, or is located within a conservation or tree preservation area.
The other part of the Local Authority Search is the enquiries of the local authority (CON29). It contains information on any breaches of planning or building regulations, enforcement notices for the property, compulsory purchase orders, and whether any new road or traffic schemes are planned near the property. Furthermore, this article will expand on the topic of how long do searches take when buying a house 2022?
An environmental search will give you information about flood risk, risk of subsidence, history of the uses of land in the vicinity and traces of toxic waste or radon gas nearby.
A Drainage and Water Search will give you information on the location of sewers that serve the property, confirm whether the property is connected to the mains water supply and whether the property is charged for its water supply.
Title searches consist of two essential searches for buyers: the Title Register and the Title Plan. These searches confirm the property’s location, who legally owns it now, who held it previously, how much was last paid for it, and whether it has any debt. Since Removals Ilford has seen the significance of allowing our customers access informative blogs like this, we also hope to connect you with our other blogs. If you wish to compare or curious about other removals companies from the area, then check out our list of removal companies in Ilford.
The government target for returning Local Authority Searches is ten working days. In practice, it can take anywhere between a few days to ten weeks, depending on how fast the relevant authority acts and how many searches they carry out per month. Research done by Search Flow revealed the following worst offenders in a recent report, taking between 35 and 60 days to return searches:
If your local authority uses an electronic system, you can expect to receive the results in a few days. Otherwise, a delay could follow for a few weeks. However, with the rise of online conveyancing, most local authorities have or are installing an online system. Other factors that can delay the process are whether search results were sent via post or online, local authority staff availability and seasonal demand levels for these searches.
The four main property searches are listed above. Apart from these, there are less common property searches which are listed below:
Local council staff carry out official searches. Your appointed conveyancer receives these documents after getting signed and stamped by a council officer. An external agency unaffiliated with the council and working ‘independently’ from the same Local Land Charges Register conducts a personal local authority search. These are quicker and cheaper, but some solicitors and mortgage lenders prefer official investigations. Therefore, the best thing to do is to check with your conveyancer and mortgage lender.
If your searches take too long and you risk losing your desired property, you may consider taking out a Local Authority Search Indemnity Insurance. Moreover, it doesn’t cost much and can give you peace of mind to proceed without local search results. HSBC, Halifax and Bank of Ireland do not accept search delay indemnity, but Natwest and Skipton Building Society do. Therefore, checking with your mortgage lender before opting for this is best.
It usually takes between 1-3 weeks to exchange contracts after searches. It is to give yourself time to raise any queries on the search results before exchanging contracts. At the same time, you have a legal commitment to buy the property after having exchanged contracts. It usually takes another 2-4 weeks to complete after exchanging contracts. So, did you find the answers you needed on this blog of how long do searches take when buying a house 2022? We hope this helped.