Solicitor search fees (and HIPs!?)

Hailstorm

g_attrill wrote: »

I would like to announce my new "Lion Search" it will report on whether a house has ever been attacked by a lion, whether lions are known to live in the area, and a history of lion activity since 1962. Only £25! A small price to pay when you are spending £000's!

But if your lion search comes back clean and the house does get attacked by a lion, can the costs of the attack be claimed back from you?

blizeH

Lion search?! Sounds awesome, sign me up!!

So, don't worry about the environmental search then amirite? :P

Richard_Webster

I would like to announce my new "Lion Search" it will report on whether a house has ever been attacked by a lion, whether lions are known to live in the area, and a history of lion activity since 1962. Only £25! A small price to pay when you are spending £000's!

Oh dear, I was just going to do that and he's beaten me to it!

Seriously, my view would be:

Environmental search - not vital but important if buying on a site where there was previous industrial activity - and will you necessarily know that? Some lenders implicitly require this because they want us to tell them about any issues that revealed and we can't do that if we haven't done the search.

I tend to recommend them because it is quite annoying when you come to sell to find that your buyer has one done and something comes up - a former "tank" or energy facility, for instance - what did the tank contain - nobody knows - water or oxygen - OK - chemicals could have leaked into the ground. very often the locals would say they don't know what the fuss is all about - they've never had a problem - but the difficulty is that often you can't prove there isn't a problem. If we do the saerch then a buyer can be awre of what there is and what might be raised when he sells.

Plan Search - again not vital but lots of people think the local search shows nearby planning decisions so this makes up that deficiency.

Flood Search - basic information is given in the Environmental Search so never any point doing it if that search doesn't show any risk at all. As has been said the Environment Agency site: http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/37837.aspx gives information.

In most cases it is going to be pretty obvious that you are near a watercourse and height of the property above such a watercourse is an obvious factor that has to be considered.

Chancel Check Search Although the risk is very small it is possibly there. People make wrong assumptions like - "our local Church was built in the 1960s so we can't be affected..." That local Church isn't the one we would be bothered about - it is the church of the parish that the property was in in 1836, taking historic boundaries into account. I think that this issue does need to be addressed because mortgage lenders (unlike with Environmental Searches where many say they are not interested) have not told us not to do it. Instead of doing the search costing £17.63 and then if in an area of risk possibly having to take out insurance costing around £60 at least, I simply insure every case at a cost to the client of only £10.

Radon Gas Search If you do an Environmental Search it tells you what the risk factor is in your area and you can look on publicly available maps to see this. As I understand it they have divided the country up into small squares 1Km square or possibly smaller. They look at the geological characteristics of each square and determine that given those there will be such and such a risk of a property having a reading over a level of concern. So most of my area is either under 1% risk or 1-3%. This means that given the soil characteristics it is likely that 1-3% of properties will be over this level. So if you have a 1% area and a 30% area it doesn't mean that there is 30 times much Radon in one area than the other but that 30% of properties are likely to be over the level rather than 1%.

In most places people would have local knowledge of whether this is likely to be a problem.

littlesnuggy

A radon report done through your solicitor / bought online will only tell you the likelihood that there will be high levels of radon in your property - it will not, and can not, tell you how much radon is actually in your property - the only way to do this is to put a detector in.

The report will tell you the % chance that you have high levels of radon, but this is just an estimate. From personal experience, a report said there was less than 1% chance, but a test was carried out anyway and the property had over 10 times the maximum recommended level inside (if the buyers hadn't tested & got the levels reduced, they'd all have been getting the equivalent radiation dose to having over 3 chest x-rays a day!)

When it's your health at risk, I wouldn't scrimp on £50ish to have an actual test carried out.

blizeH

Many thanks again for the replies guys - going to do that Radon test when I get home tonight, the online one just to see, as it's only £3 right? Will also get in contact with the solicitor and probably go for the environmental and planning searches... Thanks again!

Richard_Webster

Why waste £3 if you will get the same info from an environmental search?

blizeH

Eek, you're right - thanks Richard!