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    Buying a house – Environmental/flooding searches

    Author: admin
    July 11, 2008

    Flooded house and ceiling leaking water into kitchenBuying a house is one of the biggest financial commitments that you will ever make in your life. Would you really risk your investment for the sake of spending a few extra pounds at the beginning? Why would you not want the most detailed and relevant information available to you regarding the property?

    You can find some basic free information for properties in your area by entering the postcode at relevant sites online.

    www.homecheck.co.uk provides free flooding information.

    www.environment-agency.co.uk provides free environmental information.

    This is only the most basic information and it would be prudent to have an environmental and flooding search undertaken on the property when buying a house. Your conveyancing solicitor will undertake these searches on your behalf.

    Although this will result in additional cost to you, in the Teesside area search providers usually charge around 30 pounds. Surely this cost is justified when buying a house when you consider that if the house is in a flood risk area, in addition to the possibility of your house flooding, you may find that some insurers won’t provide you with buildings insurance!

    According to a recent article published in the Law Society’s Property in Practice magazine, currently 2.2 million homes in the UK are classed as being at flooding risk (equal to 1 in 10 homes). Added to this, the same article indicated that 70% of new build homes are built on brownfield land, sites which are statistically more likely to be affected by contamination and pollution.

    Despite the potential importance of environmental and flooding searches, you won’t find them as a standard search document in the HIP when you’re buying a house. Your conveyancing solicitor should offer to undertake the search for you and let you make the decision for yourself, unless he knows that the property is high risk and then your conveyancing solicitor will insist that the search should be undertaken, particularly so if you are getting a mortgage. Remember he has a duty to the mortgage lender to make sure all necessary searches are undertaken.

    Here’s a link to a specimen report by leading provider Ground Sure for you to get an idea about what might be contained in your search result;-

    http://www.groundsure.com/files/GroundSure%20Home%20Environmental.pdf


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