How long is it taking for searches to come back in your area?

[NorthSouthcatlady]

How are searches taking in your area? We are towards the bottom of a 7 property chain, we were told we would be done by the stamp duty deadline. But week after that we haven’t gone anywhere and no date has been agreed. A guy near the top switched properties he was buying part of the way through, then said he would go into rented and then changed his mind back saying he wouldn’t. Im beginning to think he’s buying more time as he’s “been waiting for searches” for over a month now.

Ours only take seven days. A friend of mine bought her house in nine days mainly because of how good her solicitor was and how quick the searches come through here.

Bu I know someone who bought a house last year and they took two months to come back. If u google your council website it does tell u on there somewhere. Ours did.

@Paranoidandroidmarvin yeah l thought he was talking shit

It’s not my council though, the people we are buying off are moving out of area to retire and it’s people above them. I could guess the county but not the council

Ours took a month. That's apparently pretty standard at the moment.

You can check on the Council in question's website.

It can be anything from 24 hours to several months depending on the council. Very little you can do to influence it unfortunately. Average is 10 - 15 working days.

You can Google and some companies have daily updated timescales by council. They seem pretty accurate. It said 7 days for us in June when our first buyer applied; it took exactly 7 days. It’s saying 5 days now and our new buyer got them back in 3.

There’s a few places where it’s 40 days, but I don’t think there were many…

Like l said, l don’t know the council. So l can’t google it sadly, l would be curious to know

Ah sorry, I missed that!

I’m 90% sure that when I was looking for our council at the bottom of the list, I didn’t see anywhere with more than 40 days… you could Google and scroll again for verification.

But otherwise, I’d be getting a bit tetchy!

It’s been nearly two months in the area I’m buying (London Borough of Havering) yet the website says their eta is something like 15 days. Yeah right!!

Ours were returned same day. Email your council, ours were really helpful in telling us.

@housestuff like l said twice already, l don’t know the council

Sorry. Can your solicitor find out the council for you?

Some local authorities are taking a while with searches currently. This link provides a list of all councils and their current turnaround times, which you may find helpful:

search-acumen.co.uk/covid-19-coronavirus

Searches can come back, but if you then have queries, they can take way longer to be addressed. We got our searches back in 2 weeks, but then had a query, which the highways dept of our council told us they'd respond to in November (this is was in July!!!). We went via a private search co, they got the response back from the highways dept the same day (cost us £120).

Most pretty quick but one took a month, even after a request to expedite it. Things are still on go slow at some councils - it took mine almost a month to send me visitor parking permits when the website said five days.

Three months apparently Solicitors are advising purchasers to take out indemnity policies in order to keep chains together. Thus Council has always been bad. 20 years ago I was advised to pay a premium on top of the search fee to leapfrog to the top of the list, otherwise they wouldn't do my searches and the chain would collapse