buying

Best free property check UK: what each free source covers and misses

An honest comparison of free UK property checks: flood risk, EPC, sold prices, crime, schools and the title register, what each covers and what each misses.

5 min read
Last reviewed 31 October 2026
By Your Property Check team

Part 1 of 7

Why no single free check covers everything

If you are looking for the best free property check UK buyers can use before an offer, the honest answer is that the official sources are split across several government sites. Each one is free to search and each one does one job. Combined checkers, including ours, pull several of those sources onto one page. None of them replaces the legal searches a conveyancer orders.

The comparison below uses only what each site said when we checked it on 31 October 2026.

Part 2 of 7

The free sources compared

Source	What it covers	What it misses
GOV.UK long term flood risk	Rivers and the sea, surface water, reservoirs, groundwater where data is available	England only; not how likely one property is to flood; not blocked drains or burst pipes
GOV.UK Find an energy certificate	Existing EPCs for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, by postcode, street or certificate number	Scotland has a different service; a home with no certificate shows nothing
GOV.UK Search house prices	What a property sold for in England and Wales, from HM Land Registry	Not price trends; not Scotland or Northern Ireland
UK House Price Index	Changes in the value of residential property across the UK	Not the value of one home
HM Land Registry title register	Owner, title number, rights of way, price paid where available	Costs £7 online or £11 for an official copy; the title plan shows an approximate outline, not exact boundaries
data.police.uk	Crime from the 43 geographic forces in England and Wales, plus British Transport Police and Northern Ireland	Locations are approximate by design
Ofsted inspection reports	Reports for schools, colleges and nurseries in England	Not catchment areas
PropertyChecker.co.uk	Past sale prices, tenure, year built for homes built from 1995, from HM Land Registry	Its home page did not mention flood risk, crime or schools

Part 3 of 7

What each free source does well

Flood risk. The GOV.UK service is the official source for England and covers more types of flooding than most summaries, including reservoirs and groundwater where data exists. At the time of checking (31 October 2026) it said it does not tell you how likely an individual property is to flood. Our guide on how to check if a house is in a flood zone walks through reading the result.

EPC. GOV.UK's Find an energy certificate service searches by postcode, street and town, or certificate number. If the home has never had a certificate, there is nothing to find.

Sold prices. GOV.UK's Search house prices is run from HM Land Registry price paid data. It shows what a property sold for, not where prices are heading. For trends the page points to the UK House Price Index.

Ownership and rights. Only the title register tells you who owns the home and which rights affect it. GOV.UK charged £7 for an online copy when we checked. Our Land Registry search guide explains what you get.

Crime. data.police.uk says its crime locations "always represent the approximate location of a crime", replaced with a nearby anonymous map point. Use it to compare streets, not to judge one house.

Combined checkers. At the time of checking (31 October 2026), PropertyChecker.co.uk described itself as "a free property check" for sale prices in England and Wales back to 1995, sourced from HM Land Registry, and listed year built for homes built from 1995 onwards, which is a detail our checker does not show. We could not load Property Passport's site on the day, so we have left it out rather than guess.

Part 4 of 7

What our checker adds

Our free property checker runs nine checks on one page for a postcode in England and Wales, each from an official source:

Sold prices and sale history, from HM Land Registry price paid data.
A value estimate, from HM Land Registry sales moved to today with the UK House Price Index.
Energy rating, from the GOV.UK EPC register.
Flood risk for rivers, the sea and surface water, from the Environment Agency.
Crime by category near the postcode, from Police.uk.
The nearest schools with their last Ofsted grade, from Department for Education records.
Planning constraints such as conservation areas and listed buildings, from planning.data.gov.uk.
Council tax costs per band, from MHCLG figures.
Tenure of recorded sales, from HM Land Registry.

It is free to view with no account and no email. Our sold price data runs to 30 September 2026 and was last refreshed on 28 October 2026.

We also measure the value estimate. In our July 2026 backtest of 600 real sales, using only sales and index data that existed before each sale, the typical error was 12.2%. Only 41.7% of estimates landed within 10% of the price paid, 70.2% within 20%, and the price fell inside our range 75.8% of the time. That is a sensible starting range, not a valuation. The full method is on the accuracy page.

Part 5 of 7

What we do not do

Our checker is not a legal search. It does not show the title register, so it cannot tell you who owns the home, about restrictive covenants, or rights of way. It does not replace local authority, drainage or environmental searches ordered by your solicitor. Our school check lists nearby schools by distance, not catchment, and the council tax band itself is set by the Valuation Office Agency. On flood risk, our free check reports rivers, the sea and surface water, while the GOV.UK service also covers reservoirs and groundwater, so read both.

Part 6 of 7

Thinking of selling?

If you are checking your own home because you might sell, the same data helps you price it. Our sell a house fast page explains the routes, and the sale method comparison sets an agent, an auction and a cash buyer side by side. As a rough guide, not a quote, cash buyers often offer below open-market value, sometimes around 70 to 85% of it, so compare any offer with real sold prices.

Part 7 of 7

A simple order to check in

Run a combined check for the overview.
Open the GOV.UK flood and EPC services for the official record.
Buy the title register before you offer.
Leave the legal searches to your conveyancer.

This page is general information, not legal or financial advice. Our other free tools cover stamp duty and sold prices in more detail.

Our take

Use the free checks first, then pay for the legal ones

Our view: no free check is complete, and that is fine. The official sources are each good at one job, so start with a combined view, open the GOV.UK flood and EPC records for the detail, and buy the £7 title register before you offer. The common mistake is treating a free check as a legal search. It is not.

What Your Property Check adds: OfferCheck is a plain-English risk report on any UK address before you offer, covering crime, flood, planning, tenure and more, with every figure sourced. There is a free snapshot, and the full OfferCheck Report starts at £4.99.

Get OfferCheck

Our opinion, drawn from the facts on this page: not advice and not a forecast. We earn from OfferCheck reports and from introducing sellers to cash buyers, so weigh it with that in mind (see our disclosure). We are not authorised or regulated by the FCA.

Questions, answered

Frequently asked questions

Is there one free check that covers flood risk, sold prices and EPC?

Not from the government: each is a separate GOV.UK service. Combined checkers, ours included, put several sources on one page, but you should still open the official flood and EPC services for the full record.

Is the Land Registry title register free?

No. When we checked GOV.UK on 31 October 2026, an online copy of the title register cost £7 and an official copy £11. The title plan was priced the same.

Does a free property check replace conveyancing searches?

No. Free checks use public data. Local authority, drainage and environmental searches are ordered by your solicitor or conveyancer and cover matters that public datasets do not.

How accurate is a free online value estimate?

Ours missed the price paid by a typical 12.2% in our July 2026 backtest of 600 sales, with 41.7% of estimates within 10%. Treat any free estimate as a range to check against recent sales, not a valuation.

Do I need to give my email to use the property checker?

No. Our property checker is free to view with no account and no email. It covers postcodes in England and Wales.

Where this comes from

Sources

Last reviewed 31 October 2026 by the Your Property Check team. This page is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. For your own situation, speak to a conveyancing solicitor or another qualified professional.