TA6 Property Information Form: The 2026 UK Seller's Guide

By Lisa Hayes · 2 August 2026

The TA6 is the Law Society's Property Information Form, and if you're selling a house in England or Wales, you will fill one in. It's the document where you, the seller, tell the buyer what you actually know about your home: the boundaries, the disputes, the dodgy extension the last owner never got signed off. From 30 March 2026, there's a new version — the 6th edition — and it's shorter, plainer and far less painful than the 32-page monster it replaced.

Most sellers meet the TA6 for the first time when their solicitor emails it over, usually right after they've accepted an offer, and their heart sinks. Fifteen sections of questions, a warning about "compensation", and a signature at the bottom. So let's take the fear out of it. I'll walk you through what's on the form, what's changed this year, the questions people get wrong, and how to fill it in without adding six weeks to your sale.

What is the TA6 Property Information Form?

The TA6 is a standard form published by the Law Society and used in almost every residential sale in England and Wales that follows the Law Society Conveyancing Protocol. Your solicitor sends it to you at the start of the legal process. You complete it, sign it, and it goes to the buyer's solicitor along with the draft contract, the title, and the other protocol forms.

Think of it as the property's honesty statement. The buyer's solicitor reads your answers and raises "enquiries" — follow-up questions — based on what you've written or, often, what you've left blank. The whole legal transaction more or less starts from this form. Get it right and it moves. Get it vague and you'll be answering emails for weeks.

Crucially, the buyer is entitled to rely on what you write. That's the bit sellers underestimate. This isn't a marketing brochure where a bit of gloss is expected. It's a legal disclosure, and the law treats it that way. If you want the full picture on your wider legal duties, our guide to what you must legally disclose when selling a house sits right alongside this one.

Do I legally have to fill in the TA6?

No. And this surprises people. There is no law forcing you to complete a TA6 form. The Law Society's own instructions say so plainly.

But here's the reality. If you refuse, three things happen. Your solicitor can't progress the file properly. The buyer's solicitor raises every question as a formal enquiry instead, which is slower and more expensive. And a cautious buyer — or, more likely, a cautious buyer's mortgage lender — starts to wonder what you're hiding. In a market where roughly a third of sales already collapse before completion, handing your buyer a reason to walk is a strange choice.

So the honest answer is this: you don't have to, but not doing it is self-sabotage. The smarter move isn't to dodge the form. It's to fill it in properly and quickly.

What changed in 2026? The 6th edition explained

If you sold a house in 2024 or early 2025, you may remember the chaos. The Law Society launched a 5th edition that tried to bolt "material information" — the stuff estate agents need for a listing, like council tax band and asking price — onto the standard legal form. The result was a dense 32-page document that ballooned to 25 sections. Conveyancers hated it. After feedback from more than 1,200 stakeholders, the Law Society reversed course.

The new 6th edition strips it back out. It focuses purely on the legal transaction that happens after an offer is accepted, and it trims the form down to 15 sections. Marketing data that belongs on the listing has gone. Newer realities — EV charging points, heat pumps, broadband and mobile coverage — are in.

What does this mean for you in practice? If your solicitor is accredited under the Conveyancing Quality Scheme (CQS) — and most decent ones are — they must use the 6th edition from 30 March 2026. The 4th and 5th editions are withdrawn from that date. If someone sends you an older form for a fresh sale now, query it. You want to be filling in the current version, not one that's about to be obsolete.

What's actually on the TA6 form?

Fifteen sections. Here's what each one is really asking, in plain English, so nothing catches you out.

• 1. Property and seller details. Your address, your details, your solicitor's details. Easy.
• 2. Boundaries. Who maintains each fence, wall and hedge? Has any boundary moved? Have you had a notice under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996? This is where neighbour history starts to surface.
• 3. Disputes. Any current dispute or complaint about your property or a neighbouring one — and, importantly, anything you think might lead to one. That grumbling row over the shared drive counts.
• 4. Notices and proposals. Letters or discussions from the council, a neighbour or a developer that affect your property or one nearby. Planned developments too.
• 5. Alterations. Extensions, loft conversions, new windows, knocked-through walls. Do you have the planning permission and building regulations sign-off? This is the section that sinks the most sales, so we'll come back to it.
• 6. Guarantees and warranties. Damp proofing, timber treatment, roofing, underpinning, electrical work, double glazing (FENSA), new-build (NHBC). Dig out the certificates.
• 7. Insurance. Do you have buildings cover? Any difficulty getting it? Any claims made?
• 8. Environmental matters. Flooding, radon, the Green Deal, and Japanese knotweed. Yes, knotweed has its own line — for good reason.
• 9. Rights and informal arrangements. Shared access, a neighbour's pipe running under your garden, a handshake agreement about a driveway. Informal doesn't mean invisible.
• 10. Parking. How you park, permit zones, and EV charging points.
• 11. Services. Heating and electrical systems, drainage, installation and service dates, certificates like the EICR.
• 12. Connection to services. Who supplies your gas, electric, water; meter locations and numbers.
• 13. Transaction information. Your chain, whether you're buying on the same day, whether the house will be empty on completion, any timing requests.
• 14. Completion. Confirming your mortgage gets paid off, that you'll leave the place clean and empty, that you'll leave the keys.
• 15. Additional information. A space to attach consents and covenants, or to explain any answer that needs more room.

Then you sign and date it. If the property is owned jointly, every legal owner must sign. Selling under a power of attorney, a trust or a grant of probate? The authorised representative signs instead — and yes, that means you can complete a TA6 on behalf of someone who has lost capacity or died, which matters if you're selling an inherited property.

The questions sellers get wrong

After enough sales, you see the same mistakes over and over. These are the ones that turn a smooth completion into a three-month slog.

The unsigned-off extension. Section 5 is the graveyard of house sales. A previous owner added a conservatory or converted the garage and never got building regulations sign-off. You genuinely didn't know. But when the buyer's solicitor asks and there's no certificate, the deal stalls while everyone works out whether an indemnity policy will do or a regularisation certificate is needed. If you know the paperwork is missing, say so up front and get an indemnity policy quote ready. Don't let the buyer discover it.

"We get on fine with the neighbours." Section 3 asks about disputes, and people read "dispute" as "shouting match". It isn't. A written complaint about your extension blocking light, an ongoing niggle about a boundary fence, a noise issue you reported to the council — all of it is disclosable. If in doubt, disclose. A buyer who finds out later has a claim. A buyer who's told up front usually shrugs.

Guessing to be helpful. The form is not a memory test, and you are explicitly not expected to have expert legal or technical knowledge, or to know about things that happened before you owned the place. If you don't know, tick "not known". A confident wrong answer is far more dangerous than an honest "I'm not sure" — because the wrong answer is the one a buyer relies on.

Forgetting the informal stuff. Section 9 catches people out. The verbal agreement that you'd both keep the shared hedge trimmed. The fact that your downpipe drains onto next door's land. It feels too small to mention. Mention it anyway.

What happens if you lie — or just get it wrong?

This is the part that deserves your full attention. The TA6 is not a formality you can fudge.

If you give incorrect or incomplete information — on the form, in writing, or even in conversation through your agent — the buyer has two routes. Before completion, they can simply refuse to complete and walk away. After completion, they can bring a claim for misrepresentation and seek compensation from you. That claim can land months, sometimes years, after you've moved on and spent the money.

The legal backbone here is the Misrepresentation Act 1967. A buyer who relied on a false statement and lost out as a result can pursue damages. Courts have awarded exactly this in real cases involving hidden Japanese knotweed and concealed neighbour disputes. "I didn't think it mattered" is not a defence when you knew and stayed quiet.

One reassurance. You cannot be punished for something you honestly didn't know. The standard is what a reasonable owner in your position would know and could find out from their own paperwork — not perfect, expert knowledge. Do that, and you're safe. The trouble only starts when knowledge and answer don't match.

How to fill in the TA6 without slowing your sale

The form itself takes an evening. The delay is almost always the seller sitting on it. Here's how to get it back fast and clean.

• 1. Gather your paperwork first. Before you write a word, pull together your certificates: FENSA for windows, Gas Safe and EICR for services, building regulations completion certificates for any work, guarantees for damp or timber treatment, and any planning consents. Half the form answers itself once these are in front of you.
• 2. Answer from your own knowledge. Don't ring round trying to become an expert. Answer what you know. Where you don't know, say "not known" and move on.
• 3. When in doubt, disclose. If you're weighing up whether something is worth mentioning, that hesitation is your answer. Put it in section 15 with a short note.
• 4. Never leave a box blank. A blank looks like an evasion and generates an enquiry. "Not known" or "not applicable" is always better than empty.
• 5. Get every owner to sign. Chasing a second signature later is a classic week-waster. Do it together.
• 6. Turn it around in days, not weeks. This is the single fastest thing you can do to protect your timeline. The form waiting on your kitchen table is the reason a lot of conveyancing stalls.

If you'd rather not steer any of this yourself, that's exactly what your conveyancer is for — and it's worth reading our take on whether you need a solicitor to sell your house before you instruct. A good one will talk you through the awkward sections rather than leaving you to guess.

How the TA6 fits with the other protocol forms

The TA6 doesn't travel alone. Depending on your property, your solicitor will send a small bundle of standard Law Society forms. Knowing what each does stops the paperwork feeling like an ambush.

The TA10 is the one buyers scrutinise almost as closely as the TA6, because it settles the arguments before they happen: is the shed included, are the curtains staying, what about the fitted wardrobes. Be generous and be clear. If you're selling a flat, the TA7 matters just as much as the TA6 — a vague answer on service charges or a looming major-works bill can spook a buyer fast. Our guide to selling a flat fast goes deeper on the leasehold side.

Does the TA6 apply if I sell to a cash buyer or at auction?

This is where a lot of sellers get a pleasant surprise. The TA6 is part of the Law Society Protocol used in standard open-market sales. It is not a legal requirement of every transaction. So the answer depends on the route you take.

Genuine cash house buyers and quick-sale firms often work from a streamlined pack. Because there's no mortgage lender demanding a full protocol file, the process leans more on searches and the solicitor's due diligence than on a fat bundle of forms. You'll still be expected to disclose known problems honestly — the misrepresentation risk never disappears — but the paperwork is usually lighter and faster. That's a big part of why a chain-free sale can complete in weeks rather than months. If speed and certainty are what you're after, it's worth understanding how cash house buyers actually operate and what a fast, guaranteed sale involves.

Auction sales flip the model entirely. The legal pack — including your disclosures — goes out before the sale, so bidders buy with eyes open and there's little room for later "I didn't know" claims. The disclosure burden is front-loaded rather than removed.

Selling with tenants in place brings its own wrinkle. Section 13 of the TA6 asks about occupiers, and you'll need to attach the tenancy agreements. If that's your situation, read our guide to selling a tenanted property before you fill in that section, because getting the occupier detail wrong is a common stumble.

The through-line is simple. The form may change depending on how you sell. Your duty to be honest does not.

Does the TA6 apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland?

No. The TA6 is an England and Wales form. Scotland runs a different system entirely — the seller provides a Home Report, prepared before marketing, which bundles a single survey, an energy report and a property questionnaire. Northern Ireland uses its own conveyancing process without the Law Society Protocol forms. If you're selling north of the border or across the Irish Sea, the principle of honest disclosure still holds, but the specific paperwork on your desk will look nothing like a TA6.

What happens after you send it back?

Once your completed TA6 reaches the buyer's solicitor, it's read line by line and turned into enquiries. Expect a batch of follow-up questions — that's normal, not a sign you did something wrong. The cleaner and fuller your answers, the shorter that list. A form full of blanks or one-word dodges generates a long round of back-and-forth, and every round adds days.

This is why the TA6 sits on the critical path of almost every sale. It feeds the enquiries, the enquiries feed the contract, and the contract leads to exchange. A well-completed form early in the process is one of the few levers you personally control that genuinely speeds up completion.

• 15sections in the 2026 6th edition
• 30 Mar 2026date the new form became mandatory
• All ownersmust sign before it's valid

If your sale is dragging and you can't see why, ask your solicitor a blunt question: is my TA6 the hold-up, or are we waiting on enquiries, searches or the other side? Nine times out of ten the honest answer points you straight at the next thing to chase. For the full journey from offer to keys, our guide to conveyancing explained maps out where the form fits.

The bottom line

The TA6 has a fearsome reputation it mostly doesn't deserve. It's fifteen sections of "tell the buyer what you know". The 2026 version is shorter and saner than the one that caused all the fuss. Fill it in honestly, dig out your certificates, tick "not known" when you don't know, and get it back to your solicitor in days rather than weeks — and it becomes one of the smoothest parts of your sale rather than the bottleneck.

Where sellers come unstuck is treating it as a sales pitch instead of a legal statement. Don't. The buyer relies on it, the courts back that up, and the cost of a hidden problem is far higher than the discomfort of admitting it now.

If you're weighing up how to sell at all — the open market, a cash buyer, or somewhere in between — the fastest way to see your real options is to compare offers on your home with no obligation. Know what your house is worth to each type of buyer, and the paperwork decisions get a lot easier.