A recent tribunal has hit the headlines about a couple who are being sued for £300,000 after they ‘failed’ to tell the buyers of their £1million home about plans for a neon-lit American-style drive-thru and 61-room motel ‘next-door’.
The buyers pulled out of the sale and are suing the sellers for the refund of the deposit and damages – including the cost of the purchase of a horse due to be stabled at the new property!
Could the ‘false, misleading and/or inaccurate pre-contact statements’ which entitled the buyers to tear up the contract have simply been avoided by running a plan search?
As one of the top ten property searches and reports companies our in-depth understanding of the risks associated with property transactions is used by a large network of conveyancing solicitors throughout England and Wales to protect consumers during the purchase process.
Conveyancing law firms use our compliant range of property searches and reports as an essential part of the property-buying process. Adding a plan search into their process could have saved the couples involved in the ‘drive-thru diner and motel’ debacle a lot of unwanted media exposure – and a £300,000 bill!
However, it’s not just the multi-million pound property purchases that can fail. In the UK last year, over £400 million* was wasted on failed property transactions in England and Wales. For the consumer, this could mean one in three people losing a significant amount of money in failed attempts to buy or sell their home and for some this could put an end to their residential sale or purchase for good.
To further protect consumers, we’ve created a suite of Residential Abortive Transaction Insurance (RATI) policies. These are available to both buyers and sellers and give protection against failed property transactions.
With no excess, £1500 total cover and a 12 month expiry date, buyers are protected from losing money on conveyancing fees (including searches), lender’s arrangement fees and survey or valuation fees if their transaction fails.
We want to put homebuyers in the driving seat when making the biggest purchase of their lives – with no ‘neon-lit’ surprises.