Home buyers and sellers warned search will more than double in price | Personal Finance | Finance

On December 9, HM Land Registry makes history by increasing access fees by £4, more than doubling the current price of £3 to access land registry information.

The £7 fee will be applied to all householders, buyers, sellers and anyone else who needs to inspect an individual register or plan.

Compliance information page Movable highlighted the impact this price increase will have as the register is the most used service offered by the department, particularly after the access fee has been at £3 per viewing for a decade now.

The information contained in this fee includes title, restrictions or easements, survey results, property plans and cautionary plans for a property.

With the £3 fee, HM Land Registry collected an average of £20.2million a year, with Moverly estimating the increase could see a rise of £26.9million.

CEO of Moverly, Gemma Young, warned The middle man that home buyers may find themselves particularly targeted by the increase.

She explained: “Homebuyers require a huge amount of information and documentation from various sources, which must then be pieced together to create an accurate and reliable picture of the property they are considering buying.

“That’s why providing up-front information can have a significant impact. The more a buyer knows about a property, the faster they can come to an informed buying decision.”

The expert highlighted that real estate industry veterans will understand increases like this “in the grand scheme of things” probably aren’t much of a surprise.

But the sheer numbers show how many millions of people depend on information from the register each year.

This is not the only fee either Property registration is increasing such as getting official copies of individual registers or plans will see the same increase from £3 to £7.

The registration, cancellation or correction of an entry per name, whether it is an application or the Agricultural Credits Service, will rise from £1 to £5.

All these increases apply to digital services. Anyone planning to make physical applications and searches on paper will see an increase of £6 for searches and £5 for copies.

The department noted that the more drastic increase for physical processing is “to accommodate the principle of higher fees for processing paper requests”.