Why check before you offer, not after
In England and Wales, most of the formal investigation — searches, the survey, the title review — happens only after your offer is accepted, often weeks in. That's why nasty surprises tend to appear late, after you've spent money and emotional energy, and it's a major reason roughly a third of agreed sales fall through.
Doing a public-record check before you offer flips that. It lets you price risk into your offer, walk away early from a dud, and move faster on a good one. The government's home-buying reform is pushing the whole market in this direction — towards knowing the key facts before you commit rather than after.
The property and its condition
Start with the basics the public record can tell you: property type and age, tenure, floor area, council-tax band, and the EPC rating — which is a useful early signal of running costs and the work an older home might need. The EPC register is free to search by address, often before you even view.
A pre-offer check is not a survey. A RICS survey, commissioned after your offer, assesses physical condition and defects. The two are complementary: the cheap public-record screen tells you whether a property is worth progressing to a paid survey at all.
The legal picture
Confirm whether the property is freehold or leasehold — and if leasehold, the years remaining, the ground rent and the service charge, because a short lease or onerous terms can dent value and mortgageability. Read (or have interpreted) the title register for restrictive covenants and easements that could limit what you do.
Check the planning and heritage position too: whether the property is listed, in a conservation area, or covered by an Article 4 direction that removes permitted-development rights. Each adds a layer of control over what you can change — important if you're buying with alterations in mind.
Risk, area and money
Screen the environmental risks: flood (river, sea and surface water), ground stability and any contaminated-land or mining context for the location. Look at the recorded-crime profile and the everyday amenities, schools and transport that shape day-to-day life there.
Finally, anchor your money. The asking price is the seller's number, not the market's — so check the property's own price-paid history and recent comparable sales from HM Land Registry to judge what's defensible. You can pull all of this yourself from free official sources, or a TrueBrick report bundles the property, legal, risk, area and price-paid record into one plain-English read before you offer. Whatever you find, your conveyancer and surveyor make the final call.
Frequently asked questions
What checks can I do for free before making an offer?
Quite a lot: the EPC register, the Environment Agency flood maps, HM Land Registry price-paid data, the local planning portal, Historic England's listing record and the Police.uk crime map are all free. A TrueBrick report simply pulls them together for a specific address and reads them back in plain English.
Do I need a survey before I make an offer?
Usually the survey comes after your offer is accepted. But screening the public record first means you only pay for a survey on properties worth progressing — and you go into negotiation already aware of the legal and risk position.
How long should checking take?
The public-record screen takes minutes, not weeks. The point isn't a long process — it's doing the quick checks before you commit money and momentum, rather than discovering a problem after offer.