Sale agreed is the estate agent’s phrase, not a legal one. It means the seller has accepted your offer and, usually, that you have paid a booking deposit to the agent. Citizens Information puts it plainly: the legal process may only start when the agent receives that deposit, and the deposit is refundable right up to the signing of the contract for sale. Until you sign, either side can walk. That is the window this guide is about.
What is binding and what is not
Nothing you have done so far binds anyone. The contract for sale does. Once you sign it, withdrawing can cost you the deposit, and the completion date in the contract is the day the balance is due. So everything you want to know about the house has to be known before that signature, not after.
One rule above the rest: get formal mortgage approval before you sign. Approval in principle is not approval. Citizens Information is blunt about the consequence: sign a contract and then fail to get the loan, and you lose your deposit and may face other penalties.
The order of things after sale agreed
Formal loan approval and the loan pack from the lender. A survey, because a seller does not have to tell you about defects. Mortgage protection and home insurance arranged, with quotes compared rather than taken from the lender by default. Your solicitor reads the contract for sale and the title documents it refers to. Then you sign and pay the deposit, less the booking fee already paid.
After signing, your solicitor raises Requisitions on Title with the seller’s solicitor, checks for judgments against the seller, and confirms where the title is held (Land Registry or Registry of Deeds) and that nothing unusual sits on it, such as an outstanding mortgage. Then the Deed of Conveyance, the loan cheque, stamp duty to Revenue through your solicitor, keys. Registration of your deeds with Tailte Éireann comes last and can take months or years; you own the house in the meantime.
What the survey and the solicitor will not tell you
The surveyor looks at the building. The solicitor looks at the title. Neither, as standard, checks whether the house sits in an OPW flood extent, whether the EPA map puts it in a High Radon Area, what the neighbour has planning permission for, or what the BER advisory report says the retrofit will cost. Citizens Information lists two of these as things a buyer should do for themselves before buying: check the BER, and check the radon map and ask whether the house was ever tested.
These checks matter now, at sale agreed, for three practical reasons. Insurers ask about flood history when they quote, and Citizens Information puts home insurance on the list of things to have in place before you complete, so a flood exclusion or a decline has to surface before contracts, not after. The valuer notes anything that affects value, such as a large scheme granted behind the back wall. And the seller answers pre-contract enquiries through the solicitors; asking about flooding, radon, knotweed and unauthorised extensions in writing before you sign gives you an answer your solicitor can hold them to.
Doing the desk check in an evening
Flood: search the address on the OPW maps (floodinfo.ie), with the river and coastal extents and the past flood events layer turned on. Radon: type the Eircode into the EPA radon map. BER: ask the agent for the BER number and look it up on the SEAI register (how to check a BER). Planning: search the address and the streets around it on the national planning register. Price: the Property Price Register for the street.
Or run the free snapshot on this site for the Eircode. It reads those sources and the rest (noise, ground, zoning, knotweed records, title type, sewer, LPT) and shows which ones flag. The full report writes each flag out with the link to the public record, so the questions you put to the seller, the surveyor and the insurer are specific and dated. That is the week to spend €24.99: after the offer is accepted and before the contract is signed.
Questions to send the agent in writing this week
Has the house or garden ever flooded, and was an insurance claim made. Has it been tested for radon, and what was the result. Is there, or was there, Japanese knotweed on or beside the property. Has any extension or conversion been done, and was permission or a certificate of exemption obtained. What is the BER number. Short questions, written answers, before contracts.