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What environmental hazards are present at a property you want to buy?

Writer's picture: Daniel Hamilton-CharltonDaniel Hamilton-Charlton

Updated: 3 days ago




An introduction to the Hazard Checker that is free to use at Property Searches Direct. Making Search alert data available to home buyers and sellers so that vital decisions can be made before significant amounts of time and money are spent.


Video Transcript:


Welcome to this quick look at our free Hazard Checker which is available to use at Property Searches Direct. The Hazard Checker enables anyone (whether viewing a property or planning to sell one) to find out what environmental hazards are likely to be shown up during the conveyancing process.


Until Property Searches Direct made them publicly available in 2021, these search alerts, or Hazards as we call them, were only ever seen by a conveyancer at the point of placing an order for the Searches.


We thought, HOLD ON A MOMENT, why should a conveyancer be the first to see the hazards when they are likely to be of significant importance to an unsuspecting home buyer before they commit to a purchase and start spending money. They are also of vital importance to anyone looking to sell a property, to avoid any nasty surprises being revealed many weeks into a transaction that could derail the sale.


Having spent over a year reviewing environmental report results and cross-referencing them with numerous environmental datasets, we made the Hazard Checker available for all to use as an indicator of the risks present within each postcode area.


We must stress that the results are not property specific, but are definitively alerts within the same postcode area. Only an environmental report ordered for a single property will show property-specific results.


To get started, all you need to do is add the postcode for the property that you would like to check Hazards against and click on submit.


Our system will then draw the postcodes polygon and overlay it with the hazard mapping data, presenting any results that have been found. All results presented can be expanded to reveal an explanation as to what each one means. The Hazards that the checker looks for include Coal, Radon, Ground Stability, Flood (both Pluvial and Fluvial) Energy, Transportation, China Clay, Tin Mining and Brine


We would recommend that anyone out viewing properties should use the Hazard Checker, as well as anyone looking to sell a property, so that you can get ahead of the risks. Perhaps even order an environmental report to offer clarity to anyone coming to view your property. Disclosure of these risks and the levels of risk that exist will lead to better understanding, better decision making and less sales falling through due to nasty shocks.


Find our Hazard Checker on our website at PropertySearchesDirect.co.uk and if you have any questions about it or any of the reporting that we make available, please get in touch via web chat, phone or email.


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