Moving house in Northern Ireland: what's different

If you're moving in Northern Ireland and reading a checklist written for England, most of it holds — you still exchange contracts, and the moment you're bound to buy is the same moment as anywhere else in the UK except Scotland. But three things are quietly different: the local searches your solicitor orders, where the title is registered when your solicitor is done, and what replaces council tax. And council tax — a phrase every English guide uses without a second thought — doesn't exist here at all.

This page is the Northern Ireland overlay for the moving house timeline, the same way moving house in Scotland is the Scottish one. The admin that's the same everywhere — the forty-odd organisations to tell, post redirection, broadband, the DVLA — is covered on its own pages and doesn't change at the border.

What's actually different

The search that isn't an LLC1

England and Wales guides describe the local search as an LLC1 plus CON29 — tree preservation orders, planning decisions, outstanding notices. That form doesn't exist in Northern Ireland. Your solicitor instead searches Northern Ireland's own registers, including a Statutory Charges Register, through Land & Property Services. Ask your solicitor which searches have actually been ordered rather than waiting for a form that isn't coming — the risks the search is protecting you from (a neighbouring planning application, an unadopted road, a flood risk) are the same ones, just found a different way.

The deposit and exchange: mostly familiar

Northern Ireland exchanges contracts the same way England and Wales do, so the point at which you're legally bound — and the point your buildings insurance needs to be running from — is exchange of contracts, not a Scottish-style conclusion of missives. The deposit itself is set by the contract rather than by law, and nidirect puts the normal figure at at least five per cent, cleared in your solicitor's account before they can exchange. Send it days ahead of when it's needed, not on the morning itself, and confirm your solicitor's bank details by ringing a number you already had before transferring anything — an email announcing new account details is the fraud, not the instruction.

Domestic rates: not council tax with a different name

Northern Ireland has no council tax at all. Instead, domestic rates are collected by Land & Property Services, and you tell them straight away using the "Create or update your rate account" form on nidirect.gov.uk — because rates are reassessed for the period you actually occupied the property, and a late change means a backdated bill. Closing the old account is the step people skip, and it's what stops a bill following you to the new address.

What doesn't change

• Registering to vote still means registering again at the new address — but not on the online gov.uk form. gov.uk/register-to-vote sends Northern Ireland residents to a separate paper form returned to the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland (EONI), so this is one more thing the England-shaped checklist gets slightly wrong here.
• The DVLA is the same organisation with the same two separate updates — licence and V5C — in Northern Ireland as anywhere else in the UK.
• Post redirection, broadband, banks, insurers, the GP, the dentist, HMRC, your employer — the whole notification list is UK-wide. It's on who to notify when moving house.
• If you're in a chain, completion is negotiated up and down it rather than chosen by you, and it isn't fixed until every exchange in the chain has happened — the same chain logic as England and Wales, not Scotland's missives.

A Northern Ireland plan, dated from your own move

MovePlan's checklist doesn't assume England. Every task that differs across all four nations — the survey, the local search, the tax deadline, what replaces council tax — says what the Northern Ireland route is in the task itself, with real dates worked back from your own move date. The letters are the same thirteen everyone needs, addressed to the right organisations. It's £14.99 once, for a six-month pass. It organises and drafts; you still do the telling.