The transaction

Surveys and searches

Three different inspections happen during a purchase and they are constantly confused with one another. They answer different questions for different people.

A valuation answers the lender's question

A valuation exists to tell a lender whether the property is adequate security for the loan. It is usually brief, often carried out without a detailed inspection of the fabric, and it belongs to the lender rather than to the buyer.

A property passing a lender's valuation says almost nothing about its condition. It says the lender is satisfied that, if the loan were not repaid, the security would cover it.

A survey answers the buyer's question

A survey is commissioned by the buyer and reports on the condition of the building. Surveys come at different depths, from a broad condition report to a detailed structural inspection, and the right depth depends mostly on the age of the building, whether it has been altered, and how much of it is hidden.

Older buildings, buildings that have been extended, and buildings that have stood empty repay the deeper inspection. A recently built and unaltered property usually does not.

A survey is a report on what was visible on the day. It is not a guarantee, and it does not open up floors or walls unless specifically instructed and permitted.

Searches answer questions about the land

Searches are legal enquiries made of public bodies and records rather than inspections of the building. Broadly they ask what the local authority knows about the property and its surroundings, what the drainage and water position is, and whether the ground has any known history that matters — mining, flooding, contamination or similar, depending on where the property is.

They also establish what plans exist for the land nearby, which is the part buyers most often wish they had read carefully.

What none of them covers

None of these routinely covers the things people assume are checked: whether the neighbours are difficult, whether the road is noisy at seven in the morning, whether the boundary fence is where both sides believe it is, or whether a service that works today is near the end of its life.

Some of those can be answered by visiting at different times, by reading the title plan carefully, and by asking direct questions during the legal stage. Others simply cannot be answered in advance, and the honest response is to treat them as risk rather than to assume they have been eliminated.

Sequencing

The useful order is: legal enquiries begin early because they depend on third parties and take the longest; the survey is commissioned once the purchase looks likely enough to justify the cost; and everything is read before exchange, because after exchange the information has nowhere to go.