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Guides for buyersAll guides →

• What sale-agreed buyers should check on the planning register before contracts are signed348 applications across the Greater Dublin councils are inside their five-week observation window today. The nine planning checks to run between sale agreed and signing — the house's own history, the neighbours' live applications, appeals, commencements, RZLT, flood and conservation flags — and which of them the €85 search will not do.
• Planning searches in conveyancing — what an €85 search covers, and what it cannot seeEvery Irish house purchase includes a planning search against the council's register. What the search returns, what the certificate of compliance adds, and the things that are moving on the day of closing that neither of them shows — a live appeal, an open observation window, a commencement notice last month.
• Certificate of compliance with planning permission in Ireland17% of GDA planning applications are retention. Who can sign a certificate of compliance with planning permission, what the RIAI / Law Society opinion covers, the gaps it leaves.
• BER and planning permission when selling a house — two separate certificates, and where they meetGreater Dublin councils granted 93% of the 1,225 extension applications they decided in 12 months, and every one of those extensions moved the house's Building Energy Rating. What a BER is, when you must have one, the exemptions, and how planning permission, Part L and the BER interact when you sell.