Entity Framework: I set the foreign key, SaveChanges then access the navigation property, but it doesn’t load the related entity. Why not?

To ensure that lazy loading of a navigation property will work after you’ve created the parent you must not create the Survey with the new operator but create it by means of the context instance because it will instantiate a dynamic proxy that is capable to lazily load the related Client. That’s what the DbSet<T>.Create() method is for:

Survey entity = db.Surveys.Create();

entity.SurveyName = "Test Name";
entity.ClientID = 4;

db.Surveys.Add(entity);
db.SaveChanges();

Client c1 = entity.Client;
string s1 = c1.ClientName;
// will work now if a Client with ID 4 exists in the DB

Just to emphasize: It’s not the line entity.ClientID = 4; or db.Surveys.Add(entity); or db.SaveChanges that loads the client from the DB, but the line Client c1 = entity.Client; (lazy loading).