What To Look For When Buying a House (Are The Sellers HIDING Something?)

Buying a house in 2023? Here are 10 x URGENT CHECKS you can carry out TODAY! These home buying tips will save you TIME and MONEY and can often reveal the REAL REASON the owners are SELLING the house.

The house buying process in the UK is slow and expensive, by using the house buying tips in this video you can avoid expensive conveyancing fees by spotting any issues long before solicitors get involved.

I recommend carrying out these checks before viewing a house or making an offer on a house as they may highlight deal breaker issues for potential home buyers.

These checks will also help you to narrow down what to look for when viewing a house as you can focus on all of the bits that are important to you.

If you are buying a house in the UK, I would recommend the following checks:

Whether you are a first time buyer buying a house for the first time or you are selling and moving at the same time, these checks will help ensure your dream property doesn't turn out to be a nightmare.

Do you have any house viewing tips for UK home buyers? Please post them in the comments below!

[emmacrawshaw]

One check you haven't mentioned is flood risk. Having previously lived in an area that regularly flooded, I now check every property I'm looking at buying. There is a website by the government that looks at the long term flood risk for that postcode, it includes rivers and surface flooding.

[chrisgemmix]

Even if that's a bit of an effort, it might be helpful to do the drive between the candidate property and your place of work, both directions, at the time you'd usually travel. That's a good way of spotting traffic issues: queueing, right turns onto busy main roads, school drop-off/pick-up locations with parents clogging the entire road etc.

[howarddavies]

Yes, still with you, what an excellent coverage of Due Diligence. This is a MUST for everybody who is looking to buy in UK. Brilliant!

[nevermind]

Very comprehensive, this short upload is a property course in and of itself. I need to go through this a couple of times to get ALL of these details. Thank you, this is invaluable knowledge.

[SuperFunklord]

Amazing content, thank you for the links

[adrianfielder]

Wow, some great detail there, great video and well timed for me !

[JamesSmith-cmsg]

You can also look a crime maps to see incidents in the postcode. Look at rent listing's to see if any houses are renting, especially rooms for hire.

[nomates]

You can also find out if there are any HMOs nearby or even next door by looking up the local council HMO register

[Boneamps]

Geat Video!! I knew about the land registry bit and I even did this when I was about to rent a flat just to Check who the Landlord was and whether he had the right to rent it as I've heard horror stories before about that. But regarding buying is a great idea to know how much people paid for the property so it gives an estimate of how much they would be willing to accept.
Nice bit about finding company info to maybe find names of potential neighbours. Intrusive, yes but I would rather know than not know. But it is limited to people that are self employed through an LTD so might not find everyone, but good idea.
Great information as always!

[claireclaire]

Be careful of auction properties. I just found out that the back garden of the house I was interested in has a separate register of title that is missing from the auction pack. Could it be that the seller is trying to sell the house quickly knowing they don't actually own the large back garden?! 😮

[phylliewilly]

Thanks so much for this -- so helpful and practical!

[combatkid]

Thank you very much, this is a very useful video

[patpalloon]

Excellent video. I can add find my street. You can find out if the road has been adopted by the council, which is really useful to know. If it hasnt you might want to give it a miss.

[SLS]

I have only just found your channel and even though I live in New Zealand, I am enjoying and getting value from your content, and have subscribed.
Thank you for the interesting and educational information.

[jimmydavis]

I love how you assume everyone has 2 cars

[Jules_Pew]

Also, knocking and asking the neighbours about the area can be a gold mine. When I bought my current one, I got a ton of info about the house and road I was buying including subsidence checks that it passed.

[PaulaDavies-pwvh]

This was brilliant Darren 😊- didn’t know half of how to go about these searches, we also do Google earth and zoom in on surrounding area, we have found public footpaths right next door to property we were interested in, builders yard, conveniently filtered out of RM pictures, list is endless and another shocking one whereby the next door neighbours to a house we liked had appeared to have built a two storey house between their garden and house directly behind them! 😂 yet again, pictures of it filtered on RM listing 🙄I’m guessing zero planning building applications- house is lovely but had been on market for nearly a year, wonder why 🤔

[stevo]

Get an insurance quote on the property.

[privateprivate]

Google maps is not up to date. We have renovated our home extensively inside and outside with planning permission for all changes. Anyone sourcing our home via Google Maps will see our home and homes in our area before renovations.

[curlysue]

Check police crime in area too. How do you find out if seller declared problems with neighbours? Thank you in advance.