An ‘alarming and concerning trend’ within property searches has been flagged up by a conveyancing specialist that could lead to thousands of sales turning sour.

Kate Bould (main pic), who runs the West Midlands office of residential property search specialist IndexPi, says her team is coming across an increasing number of buyers who move into homes only to find that major roads are planned to be built near their properties.

Local searches carried out by conveyancers normally pick these up, but Bould says increasingly councils are categorising new road schemes as planning permissions for ‘Private Bodies’ meaning they are invisible to the standard questions answered within the local search for homebuyers.

“Councils are putting many approved road schemes under outline planning permissions with the developer, which means they are not revealed on the local authorities register and thus not revealed by ‘standard’ search enquiries,” she says.

Vulnerable

This is leaving homebuyers vulnerable to unseen road schemes that are planned but not yet under construction within 200 metres of their doorstep, and conveyancers wide open to complaints.

After looking into one particularly shocking case where a buyer moved into a rural property only to discover that a major access road for a huge new development with 2,670 houses would be built hearby, led her to conclude that an ‘alarming, unbelievable and very concerning trend’ is gathering pace within the housing market.

“What is significant is that the local search includes questions regarding any road schemes but does not include road schemes by private bodies or developers as standard,” she adds.

“This is an additional search and cost and is rarely ordered for residential dwellings.”

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