They are not interchangeable
These four checks are routinely confused, and the confusion is expensive, because each one explicitly does not cover what the others do. A valuation is not a condition report. A condition report is not a boundary determination. A boundary survey says nothing about the roof. Buyers who assume one check covers the ground find out later that the small print on page two said otherwise.
The survey: lines on the ground
A survey establishes the physical extent of the parcel and how the recorded description matches what is there. It is the check that finds a fence built two feet inside a boundary, a driveway that crosses a neighbour's land, a shed sitting over a line, or an access right that runs across the garden. Where a plot is irregular, where structures sit close to a boundary, where something has obviously been added, or where a neighbour's use of the land looks established, it is the check worth having.
The inspection: condition and cost
An inspection is a visual examination of the accessible parts of the building: structure, roof covering, drainage, heating, electrical installation, insulation, damp, and evidence of movement. The report should give you two things — what is wrong, and what class of cost it implies. What it cannot give you is certainty about what is hidden. Inspectors do not lift floors, open walls or dismantle systems, and every report says so.
The useful way to read one is as a schedule of work with dates attached: what needs doing now, what needs doing within a few years, and what merely needs watching. Read that way it keeps its value long after the purchase.
The appraisal: someone else's question
A lender's valuation exists to protect the lender. It asks whether the property is adequate security for the amount being lent, and its result is a figure, not a description. A valuation that matches the price tells you nothing about the building's condition. A valuation below the price is a real event, because the loan is calculated from the lower figure and the gap has to be closed with cash or a renegotiation.
The title search: rights, not bricks
A title search establishes who has the right to sell and what travels with the land. The things it looks for are mostly invisible on a viewing:
- Liens and charges: debts secured against the property that must be cleared at transfer.
- Easements: rights other people have over the land, such as access, drainage or utilities.
- Covenants: restrictions on what may be built, changed or done there.
- Boundary and description errors carried forward through earlier transfers.
- Unresolved claims or interests, including those of people not named on the deed.
Local enquiries
Alongside the title itself, the checks made with local authorities cover what is planned or recorded around the property: road status and adoption, drainage and water connections, flood record, planning decisions on nearby land, and any notices affecting the building. These frequently matter more to the long-run value than anything found inside the house.
Reading the limits
Every one of these reports contains a section describing what it did not do. That section is not boilerplate to skip; it is the definition of what you bought. If it says the inspector could not reach the roof space, the roof space is unchecked. If the survey was based on recorded documents without a physical visit, no one has been to look at the fence. Knowing the shape of the hole is most of the value.