Caveat emptor leaves the buyer to discover a property's defects, so the law's narrow exceptions — and the buyer's own investigations — carry the whole weight of protection.
Because the seller need say almost nothing about the state of the property, everything turns on knowing exactly where silence is permitted and where it is not. This chapter starts with the principle of caveat emptor and its exceptions, the divide between patent and latent physical defects, and the investigations a buyer's solicitor must therefore make — pre-contract enquiries, searches, and the position where a client wants to answer an enquiry falsely. It then works through misrepresentation: the elements of an actionable claim, half-truths and qualified replies, reliance, the fraudulent, negligent and innocent categories, and the remedies of rescission and damages alongside the limits on exclusion clauses. Finally it covers the one disclosure duty the seller cannot escape — latent incumbrances on title — and how title is deduced for registered and unregistered land.
