Property searches explained: what your solicitor checks before you buy

When you buy a home, the survey tells you about the building, but it is the property searches that tell you about everything around and beneath it, the things you could never spot on a viewing. Searches are the formal enquiries your solicitor makes of the council, the water company and other bodies before you commit. They appear as a line on your conveyancing bill that many buyers never quite understand, so here is what they are, what they reveal, and what happens if one comes back with a problem.

What are property searches?

Property searches are a set of checks your solicitor carries out on a property before you buy it, to uncover legal, planning and environmental issues that are not visible and would not show up in the deeds alone. They can reveal that a previous owner’s extension never had building regulations sign-off, that a tree in the garden is protected, that a public sewer runs beneath the property, or that the land has a history of flooding or mining. In short, they are there to make sure that what you are buying is what you think you are buying, and to protect both you and your mortgage lender.

The three main searches every buyer gets

Most purchases involve three core searches:

• The local authority search. Made up of two parts, the LLC1, which lists entries on the local land charges register (such as tree preservation orders, listed-building or conservation-area status, and planning conditions), and the CON29, a standard set of enquiries covering planning decisions, building regulations, who maintains the roads serving the property, nearby road schemes, contaminated land and radon. This is the search most likely to throw up something you need to know.
• The water and drainage search. Obtained from the water company (in much of our area, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water). It confirms whether the property is connected to the public water supply and sewers, and whether a public sewer runs within the boundary, which matters if you ever want to build an extension over it.
• The environmental search. Covers contaminated land, flood risk and ground stability, drawing on a range of data to flag whether the site has a history that could affect its safety or value.

Area-specific searches: coal mining, flooding and more

On top of the core three, your solicitor will order extra searches where the location calls for them. The most important one in our part of the world is the coal mining search. Across much of the South Wales coalfield, the valleys, and parts of Cardiff, Newport and Swansea, a coal mining search checks for past and present underground workings, mine shafts, and any history of subsidence or compensation claims affecting the property. It is a standard and often essential check here, even though buyers elsewhere may never encounter it.

Depending on the property, your solicitor may also recommend a flood search where flood risk is a concern, a chancel repair check (a historic liability that has largely fallen away since 2013 but is sometimes covered by inexpensive insurance), or a radon assessment. The point of these is simple: to match the searches to the real risks of the specific place you are buying.

What do searches cost?

As a rough guide, a typical search pack comes to somewhere between £250 and £450, though it varies with the local authority and the number of extra searches your property needs. The cost is paid by you, the buyer, usually early in the process, and your solicitor passes the fees on to the bodies carrying out the searches. It is worth remembering that searches are only one of the upfront costs of buying, Land Transaction Tax is usually the larger one, which we cover in our guide to Land Transaction Tax in Wales.

How long do searches take?

Most local authority searches now come back within two to five working days, but this is one of the biggest variables in a purchase: some councils run weeks behind, and a slow search can hold up the whole transaction even when everything else is ready. Once returned, search results are generally treated as valid for around three to six months, so if a purchase drags on, a lender may require them to be refreshed. If you want to understand where searches fit into the overall timeline, our guide to how long conveyancing takes explains the whole process.

What if a search reveals a problem?

A problem on a search is common and rarely the end of the road. What happens next depends on what it is. If the search reveals unauthorised building work, you might ask the seller to obtain the missing consent or regularise it before completion. If it reveals a risk that cannot easily be put right, such as a past planning breach, indemnity insurance is sometimes used to protect you against the specific risk. You might renegotiate the price to reflect the issue, ask the seller to resolve it, or, if it is serious enough, decide not to proceed. The value of a search is that it lets you make that decision with the facts in front of you, rather than discovering the problem after you own the property.

Do cash buyers need searches?

If you are buying without a mortgage, searches are technically optional, there is no lender insisting on them. But skipping them is a genuine risk. Without searches, you could buy a home only to discover afterwards that it sits on contaminated land, has a history of mining subsidence, or includes an extension that was never approved and may have to be put right at your expense. The cost of a search pack is small set against the cost of the problems it can uncover, which is why we recommend searches to cash buyers in almost every case.

How we help

Our conveyancing team orders and reviews the right searches for every property we handle across South Wales and the South West, explains in plain English anything they reveal, and advises you on what to do about it. You can read more about how we manage a purchase on our buying a property page, and GOV.UK has a general overview of buying and selling your home. To get started, request a callback and we will come back to you.

A note on figures: the fees and figures in this article are correct as at the date of publication shown on this article. Court fees, taxes and other charges change from time to time, so please check the current figures with the relevant official source before relying on them.