Search fees doubled?

se2020

Trying to purchase a house with an adjoining field. Field is attached to the house,  about 6 acres.
All on one set of title deeds.

The original quote from the solicitors included £300 for searches.

They have now told us that "due to the large area of land being purchased" the search fees will actually be £600

Any particular reason for this or should I ask them for an explanation?

PJBRFC

It sounds like they have given you the reason. Does the purchase include a large area of land? Large is a relative term but I guess you should compare with the average house of it's type e.g. terrace, semi, detached. 

Edit. Ignore the question, I obviously didn't read the post properly. First sentence stands though. Likely need additional searches for the field. 

DE_612183

I would have thought the searches would be the same - unless the size of the land means now additional searches are required.

I'd ask then to justify the additional - you're paying - you should know what you are paying for.

user1977

Yes, the reason is the one you've been given. What else do you think it might be?

It's likely that e.g. the council treats the house and the field as being separate properties, so separate searches would be required. And some other types of searches will vary in price depending on the area covered. If you're buying 6 acres then I would expect to be out of the scope of normal domestic searches.

se2020

user1977 said:

Yes, the reason is the one you've been given. What else do you think it might be?

It's likely that e.g. the council treats the house and the field as being separate properties, so separate searches would be required. And some other types of searches will vary in price depending on the area covered. If you're buying 6 acres then I would expect to be out of the scope of normal domestic searches.

To be honest I don't really know how searches work!
I just presumed it would be done against the deeds so it would be a single search against the single set of total deeds for the complete property. 

The house directly adjoins the field. 
Maybe the council does treat them separately but, even if that is the case I would have thought some of the search results (local planning applications etc) would be covered by a single search?
Or do I just pay twice for duplicate results?

Also, the 'field' is separated into 3 by hedges.
Am I likely to find that I have to pay for 2 more searches if the solicitor finds out about the hedges?
The current title plan just shows the one field.

EssexHebridean

It sounds like the house and field are on separate titles, and that is probably why. Even if not though, 6 acres is a huge amount of land to come under a standard domestic purchase, so I'm not surprised there are additional fees for the searches I'm afraid! 

LHW99

No harm in asking them for more details, but it could be that with 6 acres, even that could be on more than one title. Is it a single field or several?

pjs493

Your solicitor has already given their reason. It’s worth noting that search charges differ depending on location because different councils charge different rates. 

For comparison, I paid £253 for searches. My property comes as a dwelling and also has 30 acres of parkland attached to it. The cost of searches wasn’t impacted by the size of the property (including land). But this may be due to local differences. The property and land in my case are listed so this may have made searches straightforward because of the covenants on surrounding land preventing development etc. I’m not 100% sure. 

user1977

se2020 said:

user1977 said:

Yes, the reason is the one you've been given. What else do you think it might be?

It's likely that e.g. the council treats the house and the field as being separate properties, so separate searches would be required. And some other types of searches will vary in price depending on the area covered. If you're buying 6 acres then I would expect to be out of the scope of normal domestic searches.

To be honest I don't really know how searches work!
I just presumed it would be done against the deeds so it would be a single search against the single set of total deeds for the complete property. 

No, the only searches which would relate to the deeds are those actually on the Land Registry title. Councils typically deal with it on a property by property basis (you could have one title with dozens of properties on it), other types of searches (environmental etc) may go by land area.

Bigphil1474

OP, any chance your field crosses the border to another council area?

Yorkie1

Search fees are what is known as 'disbursements' for solicitors' purposes. This means they just charge the fees - they don't put extra profit on them. So the cost is likely to be because there are an increased number of searches, rather than loading the cost of the same number of searches.