Are searches always necessary when buying a home?

davidmcn

dunroving wrote: »

Different country but when I sold my first house in the US, the buyers didn't bother with searches based on the rationale that if there were any untoward issues they would have been discovered when I bought the house 3 years earlier. On the face of it that seems a reasonable position to take.

If that logic applied then presumably nobody would check anything ever? There may be some confusion about what "searches" we're actually talking about.

Also in the US I believe they're more fond of just insuring against everything rather than checking titles / public records etc, so perhaps you were covered in ways which you wouldn't be in England/Scotland.

PasturesNew

I think most buyers just have the searches done because it's all a bit unclear what it's for, but it sounds important ... but they don't know what sort of things they could be "saved from" by having them done.... so, in the bigger scheme of things, you just say to the solicitor "yeah" as that seems to be "the thing you do"....

Even on this thread nobody's said "Ah, searches - they are .... for .... and you might .... and they might say ...." - it seems that most people aren't clear on what they actually are, or why, or how important, or not, they could be, for some people..... so it's easier to just say "yeah" unless you're clear/confident/local.

dunroving

davidmcn wrote: »

If that logic applied then presumably nobody would check anything ever? There may be some confusion about what "searches" we're actually talking about.

Also in the US I believe they're more fond of just insuring against everything rather than checking titles / public records etc, so perhaps you were covered in ways which you wouldn't be in England/Scotland.

I think their rationale was that searches had been conducted so recently that nothing was likely to have changed in the intervening years. They were also quite familiar with the area (small college town), and I think had a rental property so were at least fairly familiar with buying property in the area.

Not sure I'd be so confident to make the same assumption that they did.

Smodlet

PasturesNew wrote: »

I think most buyers just have the searches done because it's all a bit unclear what it's for, but it sounds important ... but they don't know what sort of things they could be "saved from" by having them done.... so, in the bigger scheme of things, you just say to the solicitor "yeah" as that seems to be "the thing you do"....

Even on this thread nobody's said "Ah, searches - they are .... for .... and you might .... and they might say ...." - it seems that most people aren't clear on what they actually are, or why, or how important, or not, they could be, for some people..... so it's easier to just say "yeah" unless you're clear/confident/local.

I agree with this. Not sure it is the same now but I can remember when having a "National Coal Board" search was compulsory, even in areas which had been agricultural and suffered no mining of any kind for centuries. I guess the powers that be thought technology might advance to the point where minerals hitherto undiscovered were miraculously revealed. More likely, it was just a racket.