Completion when searches not back.

carriesmonkies

Our house purchase has moved very quickly after everything going at a snails pace until last week.
we are due to exchange and complete tomorrow morning as funds were drawn down from the mortgage company today. 

There is a small hiccup in that one of our LA searches isn’t back.  The lender has agreed that they’ll accept insurance in place of this because the LA, in their own words, are in a bit of a pickle and they could take a couple of days or a couple of months to send this search through.  

Does anyone know if this may post a huge risk to us? I hastily just agreed to pay for the insurance during our meeting with the solicitor yesterday but now I’m wondering if we’re making a mistake.  Can anyone shed any light or give advice on this? 

AskAsk

i have not come across a transaction being completed without the searches.  personally i would not proceed without seeing them as the results could have serious impact on the property.
has your solicitor ballsed it up and requested the mortgage money before things are ready?

AdrianC

What search are we actually talking about?

If the lender's happy to go ahead, it can't be a big risk.

davidmcn

It's not a huge risk, which is the reason search insurance is available at a relatively trivial cost (cheaper than getting the search!). It's incredibly uncommon for a local authority search to throw up anything disastrous.

carriesmonkies

AskAsk said:

i have not come across a transaction being completed without the searches.  personally i would not proceed without seeing them as the results could have serious impact on the property.
has your solicitor ballsed it up and requested the mortgage money before things are ready?

Hi,
No definitely not that as getting the insurance was something we discussed prior to her requesting the funds.  

It’s the ‘local search’ which isn’t back and as mentioned below, the insurance is cheap enough at £40 so I’m not worried about paying for it.

Thankfully the current owners only purchased the house in 2017 and there was nothing untoward on their searches at that time (according to their solicitors). 

carriesmonkies

Thank you for both for putting my mind at rest.  It’s really too late to do much now, the seller has already moved out and handed her keys in and the transfer of funds is happening first thing so some reassurance will allow me to get a bit of sleep tonight after what has been a very long road up to this point! 

greatcrested

Depends what the search is, and whether you, as the potential owner, are happy to buy and own a property about which you have missing information.

AskAsk

carriesmonkies said:

AskAsk said:

i have not come across a transaction being completed without the searches.  personally i would not proceed without seeing them as the results could have serious impact on the property.
has your solicitor ballsed it up and requested the mortgage money before things are ready?

Hi,
No definitely not that as getting the insurance was something we discussed prior to her requesting the funds.  

It’s the ‘local search’ which isn’t back and as mentioned below, the insurance is cheap enough at £40 so I’m not worried about paying for it.

Thankfully the current owners only purchased the house in 2017 and there was nothing untoward on their searches at that time (according to their solicitors). 

here is a link, which states what is revealed in a local search
https://www.napthens.co.uk/blog/local-search-reveal/

Slithery

AskAsk said:

i have not come across a transaction being completed without the searches.

Really? I've made plenty of cash transactions in my time and not bothered with searches. It's not uncommon.

davidmcn

Slithery said:

AskAsk said:

i have not come across a transaction being completed without the searches.

Really? I've made plenty of cash transactions in my time and not bothered with searches. It's not uncommon.

Yep, last purchase I just got search insurance. Much of what is in the searches is readily available online anyway (planning history, roads adoption, etc) without having to pay anybody to look it up or wait for them to do so.