Has the Search Industry gone Mad

royP_2

DVardysShadow wrote: »

the issue will continue unless someone takes a stand and says that the search is giving too many false positives.

This is the real problem with all of this, I totally agree.

We had a similar coment in our search, so we went and took a look at the surrounding area of the house we were hoping to buy, and decided that the risk was minimal as it was on a sloping site all away from the property, but if you live miles away as was the case with the buyer of our property this is not so easy.

The reports need to be more specific and not just cover a general area.

Richard_Webster

As a professional, why are you commissioning a search which is this misleading? Obviously, the Insurers will use similar searches and this is where the problem lies, but the issue will continue unless someone takes a stand and says that the search is giving too many false positives.

I think that the insurance companies have more sophisticated information and they know where the actual problems have arisen form their claims data.

There are no more accurate environmental searches - they are all done from desktop information and that can't easily include contours. I repeat that most people can form sensible conclusions by looking at plans to see where the streams etc are and then seeing how high the property is above the stream. You can't account for someone who is frightened of their own skin.

I have recently had clients who have not been happy to proceed with a purchase because there was 1-3% of the properties in the area were at risk of having radon over the action level. It was important to them, but most people would have totally ignored the point. So, unfortunately these things just happen.

royP_2

Thanks for that Richard, I accept the point, and I think that is the problem with my buyer, she was frightened where as you say most people would ignore it all.

Now go looking for another buyer.

Thanks to all for your comments.

DVardysShadow

Richard_Webster wrote: »

... There are no more accurate environmental searches - they are all done from desktop information and that can't easily include contours.

As a technical point, I don't see what the issue is. It is straightforward to do a search for planning permission - it is just a data attribute of land. Flood level and countour height are also attributes. It just needs some organisation to get a competent sw developer to solve the problem. Obviously it is not doable by the clerk who does the search - not that is until the tools are provided. But the data already exists such that a tool could be developed and a clerk could search as simply for flooding as for planning permission.

I repeat that most people can form sensible conclusions by looking at plans to see where the streams etc are and then seeing how high the property is above the stream. You can't account for someone who is frightened of their own skin.

You and I can form sensible conclusions on flooding risk. That is not at issue. What is at issue is that although I could see that a property would not flood in 10 million years, I cannot be sure that the search would return the same result because of flawed methodology - so I could not be sure I would get insurance or a mortgage - and as in the case of the OP I could not be sure that I could resell. In other words my judgment is not entirely about flooding risk, I have to make a judgement about how others percieve the flooding risk because of faulty methodology.

property.advert

At some point, the issue of recovering all the chain's expenses incurred from a spurious report will be investigated. The argument is going to be that the survey provider is being cautious but that caution is always going to be generalised and over egged whereas the properties in a broken chain are very specific.

I would investigate taking action if my sale caused the chain to collapse because someone said my house, which sits at the top of a a high hill, was at risk of flooding.

DVardysShadow

property.advert wrote: »

... I would investigate taking action if my sale caused the chain to collapse because someone said my house, which sits at the top of a a high hill, was at risk of flooding.

Yes, it might be a hard one to pull off, but I strongly believe that condemning properties because of their horizontal proximity to a food risk rather than their vertical proximity flies in the face of physics and common sense - and I think that to return such reports based on inadequate interpretation of data is negligent. The trouble is that the searcher may only have a duty to the buyer and not to the seller.

property.advert

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Yes, it might be a hard one to pull off, but I strongly believe that condemning properties because of their horizontal proximity to a food risk rather than their vertical proximity flies in the face of physics and common sense - and I think that to return such reports based on inadequate interpretation of data is negligent. The trouble is that the searcher may only have a duty to the buyer and not to the seller.

Yes they would only have a duty to the buyer but I feel that if their report is unduly pessimistic or effectively libels your property because the report states a falsehood or even a falsehood on the balance of probabilities, then they would be unable to defend their report in court and as such, you would be able to prove a direct financial loss based on an untruth. I am not a lawyer so I do not know exactly how to structure the argument or claim but it would seem to me that people cannot just go about making up claims about other people's property without being liable for falsehoods contained in those reports.

adr0ck

the ea reports are classic

my house is shown in a flood risk area - yet its on a hill (about 50m up)

it would be goodbye London before my house was flooded

Richard_Webster

Trouble is that people don't read what the report says. If it says the property is within 250m of an area liable to flooding, that is probably not wrong and I can't see how the search provider can have any liability for that kind of statement. It is the clots who conclude that because it is horizontally near such an area it is likely to be flooded.

Yes, maybe they need to make them idiot proof. Lots of forms are routinely misread and may be the people who produce them need to explain themselves better, but there are limits and people are supposed to be able to read! People do want cotton wooling....

Twenty years ago endowmwnt policies were sold with illustrations which said things like if the underlaying investments grow by 8% per year there will be sufficient money to repay the associated mortgage loan. From my way of thinking the use of the condition must have meant that they might not grow at that rate and therefore people should have know they were taking a risk. Nevertheless a whole industry has grown up of providing compensation for people who were "missold" these policies. I am sure there were abuses but I know of people who are graduates who were perfectly capable of understanding the conditons on which the illustrations were given who jumped on the bandwagon and said they were missold. I know, I know it's a rant nothing to do with environmental searches!

Back to the point....

Actually environmental searches cause a lot more trouble when they show some "unknown filled ground" and possible contamination caused by industrial activity on or very near the site. This can be simply because an old Ordnance extract has a building on it labelled "works" and the search provider doesn't know what kind of "works" it was so plays safe. That kind of thing could result in an Environmental Search failure or recommendation of further action (to determine if there actually is a problem) which is unlikely to have occurred in the case we are talking about.

DVardysShadow

Richard_Webster wrote: »

Trouble is that people don't read what the report says. If it says the property is within 250m of an area liable to flooding, that is probably not wrong and I can't see how the search provider can have any liability for that kind of statement. It is the clots who conclude that because it is horizontally near such an area it is likely to be flooded.

Perhaps the search should just state the precise distance to the nearest floodzone, then everyone would be in the same boat [along with Noah, to develop the theme]. Part of the problem is that the search needs interpretation - and it does not provide any indication that interpretation is required. The other part of the problem is that it provides the nearly useless horizontal distance when the vertical distance would provide a much more useful measure for interpretation.