Module 2 · Chapter 6

Searches

The register shows who owns the land. Searches show what is wrong with the land itself. This chapter reads each search on the purchase and follows the one result that found an old oil tank.

≈ 11 min read 8-question test

In this chapter

  • Which searches a buyer makes, and what each one asks
  • How to read a result, and when to pass it to a specialist
  • How an old oil tank was dealt with before exchange

6.1Searches in one paragraph

The register shows who owns Beckside Works and what burdens the title. It says nothing about the land itself: the road, the drains, old mines or what lies buried. Holmfield, the seller, need not point out physical defects (caveat emptor). So the buyer asks the bodies that keep the records.

Each question is a search, put in writing to a public body or a specialist provider. Harland Weir ordered six when Holmfield's solicitors sent the contract pack. The seventh, against Holmfield itself, waits for the week of completion.

Key point

Fellgate buys subject to whatever the searches would show, whether it looked or not. So every result about the land is read before exchange.

Also in this chapter

  1. Why the buyer bears what the searches show
  2. What the seven searches found
  3. The council: two searches, two offices
  4. Reading a coal mining result
  5. A result that needed action: the oil tank
  6. The tank in the Contract
  7. Who pays if land is contaminated
  8. Your job

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