UK property check comparison, HomeBuyerCheck vs CheckMyFile, HMLR & solicitor searches

What the £4.99 Premium tier actually buys you

Most UK property checks under £20 are sales-history-plus-flood and stop there. HomeBuyerCheck's £4.99 Premium tier adds the data points buyers actually need to renegotiate or walk away:

• Ownership flag, HMLR CCOD/OCOD live match. Tells you instantly if the registered proprietor is a UK company or an overseas entity (a serious solicitor flag).
• Companies House owner check, outstanding charges on the company, insolvency cases, disqualified directors. If the seller is a corporate entity, this catches problems your conveyancer will spot a month into the process.
• BSR Higher-Risk Building register, post-Grenfell cladding regime status. Lenders refuse without an EWS1 A or B1 rating; HomeBuyerCheck flags the HRB status before you apply for a mortgage.
• First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber history, published decisions at the building or postcode. Service charge disputes, leasehold cases, EWS1 challenges all show up.
• Full ground-risk panel, radon (UKHSA), coal (Coal Authority), shrink-swell + landslide (British Geological Survey), conservation areas, Article 4 directions, listed buildings (Historic England).
• AI buyer's verdict + seller-question pack, Anthropic Claude reads every flag and writes 8-12 specific, lawyer-style questions to ask the seller. Tailored to THIS property, not a generic list.
• Permanent shareable URL, every report is hosted at a private URL you can forward to your partner, your solicitor or your broker.

What the £6.99 Premium+ tier adds

Premium+ adds the audience-specific briefs that turn the data into actions you can take this week:

• AI Solicitor brief, TA6-style follow-up enquiries your conveyancer can adopt directly. Saves 1-2 emails and catches the obscure flags (tribunal history, overseas owner, BSR HRB).
• AI Surveyor brief, the precise items to flag to your RICS surveyor for THIS property. Stops you paying £750 for a generic Level 2 that misses the shrink-swell band 4, coal area, or listed-building specifics.
• AI Mortgage broker brief, the lending-friction flags (flood band high, BSR, listed, non-standard construction) so you can verify mortgageability with your broker before applying. UK chain fall-through rate on mortgage refusal is around 40%; this is what prevents it.
• On-demand Negotiation Report, enter the asking price and we model a defensible offer range from comparable sales, Bank of England Bank Rate, Land Registry HPI for the local authority, and every risk flag found. Typical buyer saves £3,000-£15,000 with grounded, data-backed negotiation.

Why we're cheaper than everyone else

Three reasons. First, every data source is UK government open data under the Open Government Licence v3.0, there are no per-search resale fees in our price. Second, the AI analysis runs on Anthropic Claude with prompts grounded on the real data (no hallucinations); cost per report is under 15p. Third, the product is delivered instantly online, no PDFs to post, no humans to manually review, no per-search fulfilment.

That gives us a ~94% gross margin at £4.99, which means we can keep the price low and still invest in adding data sources (ingest of full HMLR CCOD + OCOD took weeks and is free to run).

When you still need a solicitor and surveyor

Always. HomeBuyerCheck is informational, it tells you what you're looking at and helps you renegotiate. You still need:

• A solicitor to run formal CON29 + LLC1 + drainage + environmental searches and conduct the conveyance (£1,000-£1,500).
• A RICS-qualified surveyor for the physical inspection, Level 2 for standard properties (£400-£900), Level 3 for pre-1930, listed, extended or unusual (£600-£1,500).
• A mortgage broker if you're borrowing.

HomeBuyerCheck makes those people's jobs faster, more targeted, and lets you start the process from an informed position. The AI Solicitor brief is the "cheat sheet" your conveyancer can use to skip the first round of generic enquiries.

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest UK property check before making an offer?

HomeBuyerCheck at £4.99 (Premium tier) is the cheapest all-in-one UK property check that combines 20+ official data sources with AI analysis. Premium+ at £6.99 adds three AI-generated audience-specific briefs (Solicitor, Surveyor, Mortgage broker) plus an on-demand Negotiation Report. The next-cheapest comparable consumer product is CheckMyFile at £19.99, which doesn't include ground-risk bands, Companies House ownership, BSR Higher-Risk Building register, or AI analysis.

What does HomeBuyerCheck include that competitors don't?

HomeBuyerCheck is the only UK consumer property check that combines: ownership flag (UK + overseas via HMLR CCOD/OCOD); Companies House owner check (insolvency, outstanding charges, disqualified directors); BSR Higher-Risk Building register status (post-Grenfell cladding regime); First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber decision history at the building or postcode; British Geological Survey ground stability bands (radon, shrink-swell, landslide, coal); and AI-generated buyer's verdict + tailored seller-question pack. Premium+ adds three AI briefs your conveyancer, surveyor and mortgage broker can use directly.

Is HomeBuyerCheck a replacement for a solicitor or surveyor?

No. HomeBuyerCheck is informational only and sits BEFORE you instruct a solicitor (£1,000-£1,500 typical conveyancing cost) or commission a RICS survey (£400-£1,500). Its job is to help you decide whether to commit to those costs and to surface flags you can use to renegotiate the asking price 1-3% before exchange. The AI Solicitor brief is formatted as TA6-style enquiries your conveyancer can adopt; it is not legal advice and not a substitute for formal conveyancing searches.

How does HomeBuyerCheck differ from a CheckMyFile property report?

CheckMyFile (£19.99) is a credit-style file for a property address. It includes some sales and flood data but doesn't include: live ownership (UK + overseas company); Companies House owner check; BSR Higher-Risk Building register; First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber history; ground-risk bands beyond surface flood; or any AI analysis. HomeBuyerCheck at £4.99 covers all of those, plus the AI buyer's verdict and seller-question pack. The £6.99 Premium+ tier adds the three AI briefs.

Why is HomeBuyerCheck cheaper than everyone else?

HomeBuyerCheck runs entirely on UK government open data (Open Government Licence v3.0) plus Anthropic Claude for the AI analysis. There are no per-search resale licences or PropertyData reseller fees in the £4.99 / £6.99 price. Competitors who include similar data either: (a) sell to solicitors / developers at higher prices because they pay per-document licensing, or (b) restrict the data to keep their consumer price competitive. HomeBuyerCheck includes the full government open data stack at consumer pricing.

How accurate is the data?

All data is sourced live from official UK government APIs at the moment of purchase: HM Land Registry (sales history + CCOD + OCOD ownership), Environment Agency (flood + climate-projected), Police.uk (crime, 12-month rolling), GIAS / Ofsted (schools), Valuation Office Agency (council tax), Ofcom (broadband + mobile), British Geological Survey (ground risk), Coal Authority, Historic England (listed buildings), planning.data.gov.uk (planning constraints), Companies House (proprietor company), Building Safety Regulator, and First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber. The AI analysis uses Anthropic Claude grounded on the data, it summarises, it does not invent.

Can I see a sample report before paying?

Yes. The free postcode-level check is instant and unlocks the data overview. Sample Premium and Premium+ reports are at /sample and /sample-plus respectively, with the Solicitor, Surveyor, Mortgage and Negotiation samples linked from there.