Buying a home is fraught with expense, aggravation … and delays.
These delays are not only frustrating, but they create a window for rival buyers to jump in and gazump a purchase.
While hanging on for weeks and, in some cases, months can cause problems with the associated mortgage deal.
Now a new study has identified those local councils where doing the required searches, for example for significant planning applications, is likely to take the longest.
The company Home Sale Pack has used information from Property Searches Direct to identify the Local Authority Search turnaround times for every council in England and Wales.
The research found that the average time taken to return a Local Authority Search is 11 days, however there are significant variations.
A number of councils do an impressive job of returning searches quickly, with some managing it in less than three days.
The fastest is Southend-on-Sea Borough Council which returns LA Searches in an average of just two days.
However, a large number take significantly more time. For example, the slowest identified in the research were Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council and Canterbury City Council, both of which took an average of 62 days to complete and return searches.
The London Borough of Camden takes 47 days, followed by Salford City Council, Tamworth Borough Council, Redbridge and Islington, which came in at 42 days.
The figure was also a painfully slow 37 days in Bridgend, Greenwich and Oldham.
A number of private companies now offer LA searches to rival those offered by the councils. They generally return the information required by buyers in an average of eight days.
Looking at the case of Wirral Metropolitan Borough, a private company can turn around the search data in an average of five days versus the standard for the council of 62.
Ruth Beeton, Co-Founder of Home Sale Pack, said: “The Local Authority Search can be a real pain point for homebuyers because until it’s done, they can’t complete on their purchase.
“This puts them at the mercy of the local council and, as our analysis reveals, it’s very much a lottery of location as to whether this happens quickly or agonisingly slowly.”
She added: “Private search firms can, in some cases, help expedite the process but come at an additional expense to the buyer.
“A far more efficient and reliable solution is for the seller to have the search completed when they first put the property on the market so that it can be given to all interested buyers straight away, rather than each prospective buyer having to go off and complete the process themselves.
“This saves the buyer an awful lot of time, speeds up the sale, and vastly reduces the chances of a fall-through.”
See how your local council performs here -using data collaged by Property Searches Direct – here.
