Buying a house/local authority search



Great news! Good to hear.
Can it still goes tits up from here? Or once we’ve been offered mortgage and just searches to be done?
I guess until we are sitting in the house with a nice cold glass of alcohol celebrating it could all go wrong haha.

Hopefully not of course but its not ours until contracts are signed.
 
Hi all, after a bit advice if possible. Basically me and the missus are buying a house from immediate family and there’s no chain.
we’ve been told by family’s solicitor (sellers solicitor) that there’s a 16-20 week wait for the searches, local authority, land registry, drainage etc. But when looking online it seems like it’s only 4 weeks. Can anyone shed any light or guidance ? 20 weeks seems mental, hate to think we have to wait 5 months, as there’s a lot of work we need to do in order to move in also. It’s it’s Northumberland.
thanks

Yes mate, local searches are taking an f***ing age at the minute with the councils, especially Durham. its about 8-10 weeks at the minute which is not acceptable at all.
You can get an indemnity policy for about £200 for the searches, but it's only of your mortgage provider will allow.
 
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Ask the solicitor who is quoting 20 weeks for their aspect of the search, I doubt they all need that long. Contact them yourself and chase them on it. More often than not they will find a way of speeding it up just to avoid the hassle of being chased.

In my experience solicitors can easily blame the other parties even though they are the ones dragging their feet. The 20 week search time might be a load of shit to buy them some time.
 
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Aye but it’s not just a case of finding and printing out a report.
I know mate. I used to write them.
20 weeks is excessive until you mentioned Northumberland. Drainage, coal, environmental are all back within a day or three. Northumberland still have a load of paper records (as do a lot of local authorities) and have traditionally been slow. Which part of Northumberland are you buying in? Tbh, it sounds like your solicitor is possibly blaming searches for their own slow process. Do you know if they are carrying out official or Personal local authority searches? There's a big time difference for the same information, Personal Searches are a hell of a lot quicker and cheaper.

I only do Personal Drainage searches these days and will be going to NWL later today, if you want me to have a look at the property from a Drainage perspective drop me a pm.

As I mentioned above, environmental searches and coal searches are pretty much instantaneous from the search providers perspective. Official Drainage searches should take a maximum of 5 days for the provider to turn around (I do mine normally within 24-48hrs of receiving the order). 9 times out 10 its not the searches that hold up a house sale, its the solicitor dragging their feet ordering the searches, search providers just get blamed a lot.

Not strictly true matey, Drainage searches yes, local authority searches no. To compile a local authority report you have to go to several different departments, Land Charges, Hghways, Planning, etc...a lot of authorities have some stuff online but not everything. It really is archaic, you'd be surprised.
@MackemLass @billybobmackem2312 do you know who your solicitors are/have used for search provision? I maybe able to shed some light on how long they actually take.
I used to do desk top studies and other environmental reports for Newcastle City Council PHEP. I could rattle one out in a few hours.
 
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Hi all, after a bit advice if possible. Basically me and the missus are buying a house from immediate family and there’s no chain.
we’ve been told by family’s solicitor (sellers solicitor) that there’s a 16-20 week wait for the searches, local authority, land registry, drainage etc. But when looking online it seems like it’s only 4 weeks. Can anyone shed any light or guidance ? 20 weeks seems mental, hate to think we have to wait 5 months, as there’s a lot of work we need to do in order to move in also. It’s it’s Northumberland.
thanks
We've just sold one it took 6 weeks start to finish . Even that seemed a long time . Change your solicitor he sounds crap .
 
These search things are an absolute con.
They should all be publicly accessible information, free to everyone.

The location of pipes, mining activity, flood risks etc should be available to all.

And I'm sure they don't need to pull this information from a vault each and every time - its a con.
Especially on a new estate of 200-300 houses. Wtf do they do . 200-300 x £300. Only told after I paid that new builds do not require searches.
 
Hi all, after a bit advice if possible. Basically me and the missus are buying a house from immediate family and there’s no chain.
we’ve been told by family’s solicitor (sellers solicitor) that there’s a 16-20 week wait for the searches, local authority, land registry, drainage etc. But when looking online it seems like it’s only 4 weeks. Can anyone shed any light or guidance ? 20 weeks seems mental, hate to think we have to wait 5 months, as there’s a lot of work we need to do in order to move in also. It’s it’s Northumberland.
thanks
Where you located mate, and where is the property your buying
 
We've just sold one it took 6 weeks start to finish . Even that seemed a long time . Change your solicitor he sounds crap .
Aye so I may have laid it out wrong in the opening post. Our solicitor is sound he reckons 4-6 weeks but the seller solicitor is saying they’re advising their customers it’s 16-20 weeks, probably because they’ve got too much on.
Hope they don’t delay it
Just spoke to broker and asked in general how long searches would take. She said stmbc are relatively quick so est about 6 to 8 weeks! .

Hoping it'll be a bit quicker but if not, then so be it
Ah that’s great! Good luck.
Where you located mate, and where is the property your buying
It’s in Morpeth.
 
Hi all, after a bit advice if possible. Basically me and the missus are buying a house from immediate family and there’s no chain.
we’ve been told by family’s solicitor (sellers solicitor) that there’s a 16-20 week wait for the searches, local authority, land registry, drainage etc. But when looking online it seems like it’s only 4 weeks. Can anyone shed any light or guidance ? 20 weeks seems mental, hate to think we have to wait 5 months, as there’s a lot of work we need to do in order to move in also. It’s it’s Northumberland.
thanks
You any further forward?

We've now got our draft contract through to sign and with it came the environmental search and the mining search, Info from land registry was through too so I believe just waiting for local authority.

We only dropped the signed paperwork and paid the search fee last Friday so wasn't expecting anything so soon.
 
we had a bid accepted in October. no chain whatsoever and meant to be completing this coming friday.

property had an old mortgage charge that was laid off decades ago and was never removed. Honestly, we have waited about 2 months just for the old lender to check it was laid and deleted it.

absolute shambles
 
You any further forward?

We've now got our draft contract through to sign and with it came the environmental search and the mining search, Info from land registry was through too so I believe just waiting for local authority.

We only dropped the signed paperwork and paid the search fee last Friday so wasn't expecting anything so soon.
Sellers solicitor taking the absolute piss. Still hasn’t sent the contract to our solicitor so he can’t even start the searches yet.
Basically she’s got too much work on and just taking the royal piss, saying she’ll send it, then doesn’t, rinse and repeat. Very frustrating.
Gave seller the rocket on Thursday, but hands are tied on our end I think, basically at her mercy.
 
Sellers solicitor taking the absolute piss. Still hasn’t sent the contract to our solicitor so he can’t even start the searches yet.
Basically she’s got too much work on and just taking the royal piss, saying she’ll send it, then doesn’t, rinse and repeat. Very frustrating.
Gave seller the rocket on Thursday, but hands are tied on our end I think, basically at her mercy.
Ah nightmare, not sounding good. I hope you get it all sorted soon like.

Think we have been extremely lucky so far (I'm just waiting for something to happen) thankfully, the seller has requested that completion is ASAP and seems her sols have been on the ball as much as ours.
We are keeping everything crossed we can get moved between 19-23rd May.

Hope you manage to get everything sorted and its all smooth once the searches start. Hopefully giving your sols a nudge to keep following it up for you may jolt the sellers one into action.

Good luck with it all and I hope you're settling in soon.
 
Ah nightmare, not sounding good. I hope you get it all sorted soon like.

Think we have been extremely lucky so far (I'm just waiting for something to happen) thankfully, the seller has requested that completion is ASAP and seems her sols have been on the ball as much as ours.
We are keeping everything crossed we can get moved between 19-23rd May.

Hope you manage to get everything sorted and its all smooth once the searches start. Hopefully giving your sols a nudge to keep following it up for you may jolt the sellers one into action.

Good luck with it all and I hope you're settling in soon.
Thank you, same to you. Our solicitor is quite busy too so i don’t know whether they’d chase the sellers solicitor or not, or whether that’s even their job tbf.
the seller is keen as us for a sale so she’s chasing her end. Fingers crossed the searches can start next week. If she drags her heels next week I’ll be ready to blow.
 

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