What to Check Before Buying a House in the UK: 12 Checks to Run Before You Offer

Before buying a house in the UK, run nine free data checks: sold price history (HM Land Registry), flood risk (Environment Agency), the EPC rating (GOV.UK register), street-level crime (police.uk), subsidence risk (British Geological Survey), coal mining legacy (Mining Remediation Authority), planning applications (your council's register), school performance (Ofsted) and broadband speeds (Ofcom). Then inspect the property in person, scrutinise the lease if it is leasehold, and commission a RICS survey once your offer is accepted. Every data check uses an official government source, costs nothing, and can be done from your sofa before you book a single viewing.

Most guides hand you a viewing checklist and stop there. The numbers say that is not enough: 26% of UK property sales fell through before completion in 2025, and survey issues caused 18% of those collapses, according to Quick Move Now. With the average UK house price at £268,000 in March 2026 (HM Land Registry / ONS UK House Price Index), an hour or two of free due diligence is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy. This guide shows you exactly how to run each check - the tool, the URL, and what counts as a red flag.

Why you should run these checks before you offer

Here is the trap in the standard buying process: the formal checks - your conveyancer's searches and your survey - only happen after your offer is accepted. By the time a survey uncovers subsidence or a local authority search reveals a road scheme, you have typically committed £500-£800 in conveyancing fees and £300-£700 for the survey, according to MoneySavingExpert. Pull out at that point and the money is gone.

That is exactly how purchases collapse. Quick Move Now's 2025 data shows mortgage difficulties caused 33% of failed sales and survey issues another 18% - and many of those survey surprises (flood risk, ground movement, mining legacy, unapproved extensions) are visible in free public data months earlier. There is a longer-term cost too: 37% of homeowners regret aspects of the home they bought, according to the HomeOwners Alliance. Front-load the checks and you offer with confidence - or walk away having spent nothing.

The 12 checks at a glance

Checks 1-9 are pure data and cost nothing - budget two to three hours per property if you do them all manually, and repeat for every house on your shortlist. (HouseDossier pulls those nine datasets into a single report in about 60 seconds, if you would rather not repeat the legwork for each property.) Checks 10-12 kick in once you are serious about one home. Here is how to run each one.

1. Check the sold price history - and what the seller paid

HM Land Registry's Price Paid Data is free and records residential sales in England and Wales back to 1995. Search the address at GOV.UK's house price search (the same data feeds the sold sections of Rightmove and Zoopla, and our own sold house prices tool). You are looking for two things: what the seller paid and when, and what comparable homes on the street have actually sold for - not what they are listed for.

This is negotiation leverage, not trivia. With the UK House Price Index showing prices flat year-on-year at £268,000 in March 2026, a seller who bought 18 months ago and is asking 15% more needs to justify that premium with real improvements. It also pays to know the ceiling price for the street - the highest price anything nearby has ever achieved. If the asking price is above every sale within half a mile in five years, you are being asked to set the local record. Sometimes that is justified; usually it is your strongest reason to offer less.

2. Check flood risk - rivers, sea and surface water

This is the single biggest blind spot in most buying guides, and the stakes are large. The Environment Agency's National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA), published in December 2024, found around 6.3 million properties in England are in areas at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water - and that could reach roughly 8 million by mid-century as the climate changes. Enter the postcode into the free check your long term flood risk service on GOV.UK, or run a flood risk check by address.

How to read the result

The service scores three separate risks: rivers and sea, surface water, and groundwater. Pay particular attention to surface water - 4.6 million English properties are at surface-water flood risk, a 43% increase on the previous assessment, according to the Environment Agency. Surface-water flooding needs no river: it is heavy rain overwhelming drains, and it is completely invisible at a sunny Saturday viewing. A rating of medium or high on any category deserves follow-up questions, not automatic rejection.

If the property shows any risk

• Ask the seller directly whether the property has ever flooded and whether they have made any insurance claims - they must answer honestly on the TA6 property information form.
• Get an insurance quote before exchange, not after. Premiums and excesses in flood-risk areas vary enormously between insurers.
• Look for mitigation: flood doors, airbrick covers, raised electrics all suggest the risk is real but managed.

3. Check the EPC - energy costs and retrofit liability

Every home sold in the UK needs an Energy Performance Certificate, and the full register is free to search at GOV.UK's find an energy certificate service - no login needed. You will see the rating (A-G), estimated heating and lighting costs, and a list of recommended improvements with indicative costs. You can also look up any property's EPC rating alongside its other data.

Context matters here: the median EPC score in England is 69 (band C), but more than half of homes in England and Wales are rated D or below, according to the ONS's 2025 analysis of housing energy efficiency. A band D Victorian terrace is normal; a band F bungalow is a four-figure heating bill and a retrofit project. Check the assessment date too - EPCs are valid for ten years, and a 2016 certificate may not reflect a since-replaced boiler or new windows.

4. Check subsidence and ground risk

Most guides tell you to look for cracks. Better: find out whether the ground itself is a risk before you visit. The British Geological Survey's free GeoIndex map viewer shows shrink-swell hazard - the tendency of clay soils to shrink in dry summers and swell in wet winters, which is the leading cause of subsidence. London and the South East sit on the most reactive clays in Britain.

The scale of the problem is growing. UK insurers received around 45,000 domestic subsidence claims in 2024, and the average claim has nearly doubled since 2019 to over £11,000, according to the Association of British Insurers. ABI figures show insurer support for subsidence-hit homes topped £150 million in the first half of 2025 alone, and the British Geological Survey estimates clay shrink-swell costs the UK economy over £400 million a year. At the viewing, apply the classic tests: cracks wider than a £1 coin, diagonal cracks spreading above doors and windows, and mature trees close to the house on clay ground.

5. Check coal mining and ground workings

About 7 million properties in England, Scotland and Wales lie within coalfield boundaries, and roughly 1.5 million sit directly above coal workings within 30 metres of the surface, according to the Coal Authority (now the Mining Remediation Authority). If you are buying in the North East, Yorkshire, the Midlands, South Wales or parts of Scotland, this check is not optional - 42% of properties in England fall within a coal mining reporting area.

The Mining Remediation Authority publishes a free interactive map showing coalfield boundaries, mine entries and recorded shallow workings - check it before you offer. If the property is in a reporting area, your conveyancer will order a CON29M coal mining report after your offer, which details past and planned workings, mine entries and subsidence damage claims. You can run a combined mining and subsidence check upfront to know what that report is likely to say before you spend anything.

6. Check crime levels on the actual street

Police.uk publishes street-level crime maps for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, updated monthly and broken down by category: burglary, vehicle crime, anti-social behaviour, violence and more. Not one of the big property guides explains how to use it, so here is the method that actually works.

1. Search the postcode and open the crime map for the immediate area, not the whole town.
2. Look at a full 12 months of data, not the latest month - crime is seasonal and a single month misleads.
3. Compare like with like: put your two or three shortlisted postcodes side by side rather than judging one number in isolation. You can compare crime statistics by postcode to do this in one view.
4. Read the categories, not just the total. Fifty reports of shoplifting near a retail park mean something very different from fifty burglaries on residential streets.

Data complements, rather than replaces, the old advice: walk the street on a Friday night and a Monday morning. The numbers tell you what happened; your eyes tell you how it feels.

7. Check planning applications - the house and the neighbours

Every council runs a public planning register - find yours via GOV.UK or search "[council name] planning applications". Search the property's address and the street name, and look for three things:

1. Past applications on the property itself. If there is an extension or loft conversion, was permission granted - and is there a building regulations completion certificate? Unapproved work is your problem the day you complete.
2. Neighbours' pending applications. A double-storey extension next door that blocks your garden's light is much cheaper to discover now than after exchange.
3. Major developments nearby: new estates, HMO conversions, phone masts, road schemes. Search the wider postcode area, not just the street.

While you are at it, check whether the property is listed or in a conservation area using Historic England's National Heritage List - both restrict what you can change, from windows to extensions. A planning permission history check pulls the property's application record together in one place.

8. Check schools and catchment reality

Use GOV.UK's Get Information about Schools alongside Ofsted reports to check the schools near any property. Then apply the test listings hope you will skip: "near a good school" is not the same as "gets a place at a good school". Catchments shift every year with demand, so check the council's last-distance-offered data - the furthest address that won a place last September - before paying a premium for proximity.

This check matters even if you have no children: school quality is capitalised into house prices, so it directly affects what you pay now and what you can sell for later.

9. Check broadband speeds and mobile signal

Most guides give connectivity one line. If you work from home, it deserves better. Ofcom's official checkers show address-level predicted broadband speeds and indoor 4G/5G coverage for each mobile network - check both before you offer, or run a broadband speed check alongside your other property data. The key question: does the address have full fibre (FTTP), or only fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC)? The difference shapes both your daily video calls and the property's appeal to the next buyer. At the viewing, test your own phone in every room - predicted coverage and real coverage are not always the same thing.

10. The viewing itself: physical red flags

With the data checks done, you arrive at the viewing knowing more about the property than most buyers learn by exchange. Now use your senses. View two or three times, at different times of day and at least once in rain, take photos of everything, and watch for:

• Damp: a musty smell, peeling wallpaper, discoloured patches on walls or ceilings, condensation between double-glazing panes - and fresh paint on just one wall, which often hides it.
• Roof: missing or slipped tiles, sagging lines, moss-blocked gutters, and the age of the roof - ask directly.
• Boiler and heating: ask the boiler's age and for its service history, run the hot tap to test pressure and speed, and touch the radiators if the heating is on.
• Electrics: an old fuse box with ceramic fuses, scorched sockets or fabric-covered wiring all hint at a rewire.
• Cracks: apply the £1 coin test from check 4, especially around doors, windows and extensions.
• Garden: Japanese knotweed (bamboo-like stems, shield-shaped leaves) and invasive bamboo - both expensive to eradicate and both mortgage problems.

Keep your questions for the agent ready too - why the seller is moving, how long the property has been listed, what is included in the sale. We cover those in detail in our guide to questions to ask when viewing a house.

11. Leasehold? Check these three numbers first

Buying a flat - or one of the minority of leasehold houses? Three numbers decide whether the deal makes sense, and you should know all three before offering:

1. Years left on the lease. Below 80 years, extending becomes dramatically more expensive (so-called marriage value) and MoneySavingExpert warns extensions can cost £10,000s - while leases below roughly 83 years are increasingly hard to mortgage and sell.
2. Annual ground rent and its review terms. A £250 ground rent that doubles every ten years is a very different liability from a peppercorn rent.
3. Service charge plus sinking fund. Ask for the last three years of service charge accounts and details of any planned major works - a £40,000 roof replacement split between eight flats lands shortly after you complete.

Leasehold reform is ongoing, so have your conveyancer confirm the current rules on extensions and ground rent before you commit.

12. The legal checks your conveyancer runs (and what they cost)

Once your offer is accepted, your conveyancer (typically £500-£800 for the whole job, per MoneySavingExpert) orders the official searches. Almost no buying guide explains what they actually are, so here is the plain-English version:

• Local authority search (£250-£300, per Zoopla): planning permissions and enforcement notices, building regulations history, nearby road schemes, conservation area status.
• Environmental search: contaminated land, landfill sites, ground stability and flood data for the plot.
• Water and drainage search: whether the property connects to mains water and sewerage, and whether a public sewer runs under the garden (which restricts extensions).
• CON29M coal mining report: ordered in coalfield areas, covering past and planned workings, mine entries and subsidence claims.
• Title check at HM Land Registry: boundaries, restrictive covenants, rights of way and who actually owns what.

Notice the timing: all of this happens after your offer, with your money already committed. That is the whole argument for running the free data versions of these checks first. One more cheap win while you wait: check the property's council tax band on the GOV.UK valuation list - MoneySavingExpert estimates up to 400,000 homes in Britain may be in the wrong band.

Which survey should you get?

A mortgage valuation is not a survey - it protects the lender, not you. For your own protection, commission a RICS surveyor and pick the level that matches the property:

Those cost ranges come from MoneySavingExpert and are money well spent: survey issues caused 18% of 2025's failed sales, according to Quick Move Now - and buyers who ran the data checks in this guide first are far less likely to be ambushed by what the surveyor finds. For help choosing and decoding the report itself, see our property survey report guide.

Do it yourself free, or get it in one report

Everything in this guide can be done free, and every official source is linked above. Realistically, the nine data checks take two to three hours per property - and you will repeat them for every house you shortlist. That is the honest trade-off HouseDossier exists for: we aggregate 15+ of these government datasets - Land Registry sold prices, EPC, Environment Agency flood risk, police.uk crime, BGS subsidence, mining records, planning, Ofsted and Ofcom - into a single report in about 60 seconds, with a free teaser, a £9.95 Quick Check and a £19.95 Full Dossier that adds ceiling price analysis for the street. Use the free sources for one property; use the report when you are comparing five.

Frequently asked questions