To think buying and selling homes could be made much much simpler..

Gov have said this is something they want to work on and believe it when I see it

It baffles me that in the US the most litigious country in the world that they can do escrow in 2 weeks! If they can surely we can.
But then we look to the land registry having a backlog here for 2 years and you get why it's grinding at a snails pace!
It's painful and rife for disruption!

Yep. I bought my first home in 1997 and latest home within the last year. Homes in between then too. Even with no chain it's taken 4-6 months each time.

In latter years, the only difference I've found is the addition of email and having to prove your identity and source of income/deposit seems to be more stringent. I don't remember so many checks and verifying everything the couple of first homes I bought.

The English system is insane. What I don't understand is who benefits from it. The only profession that seems to benefit is the surveyors as a property may have more than 1 survey before it's sold due to sales falling through. I don't think anyone wants to open the can of worms and fix it. It makes me laugh when our consumer protection regulator messes about with the likes of mattress deals and Xbox subscriptions when our conveyancing system is so obviously unfair and leaves consumers exposed to so much unnecessary stress and cost. Whilst also not benefiting anyone. If we had been able to move last time, our conveyancers, estate agents, removal firm, the Government (in the form of stamp duty) and our bank would have all benefited from the sale.

I've noticed a trend that lots of properties are coming on the market using the "modern method of auction" but maybe that's area dependent?

In this day and age it’s not like someone has to go down the land registry and search for documents unless it is a very old house! The drama some of my new build neighbours are having trying to sell their homes because the developer didn’t do such and such is ridiculous. The houses are 10 years old!

I am a solicitor and I wouldn't touch conveyancing for twice or even three times my current salary. Between the huge risk of getting sued, and the attitude of most clients it's not worth it.

Conveyancer here - I hope you will all bear with me and not judge! 95% of all conveyancers are completely overworked and overwhelmed and suffering from stress and anxiety in a very high pressure, high stress and, believe it or not, fast paced environment. We have 100’s of files each, not allowed to turn down work even though we don’t have capacity to deal with any more. We are all working weekends, nights etc to get people moved. We all agree that the system has to change. We have a huge amount of red-tape compliance to wade through, lender’s are increasingly strict about the requirements for lending and what we must obtain on their behalf, conveyancers are literally responsible for ensuring that the roof over your heads is a good buy and won’t come back and bite you in the arse. People are very quick to say ‘we dont care about that, we just want to move’ until something is actually wrong and then conveyancers are the first people you call to say we ballsed it up. I’ve been doing this job for 20 years and it just gets harder & harder each year. Most conveyancers really do understand how awful buying and selling is in this country, and we’re desperately trying to meet the expectations of our clients, the agents, the lender, the chain, and our personal targets. But I’m also a mum and a wife and I’m working so many hours I’m feeling guilty all the time because I’m struggling to keep up with my responsibilities at home and my responsibilities at work, and more often than not my family come second and my work comes first purely because I care about my clients. And I can tell you 100% that a lot of conveyancers are exactly the same. My anxiety and stress levels are through the roof because of my job and I will be leaving by the end of the year because I can’t sustain this level of working. And despite what you think we really don’t get paid as much as you’d imagine. Law firms are dreadful, we don’t get paid overtime so we’ll be paid to work 35 hours a week but most of us will 50-60 hours. It’s crazy, honestly. But having said that, the process is so stressful that I’ve sworn never to move myself! Ok - rant over!

System needs to be modernised. Surely could all be put in an app to see progress. Witchcraft needs to be removed...

This is the problem thought. It’s so cheap that conveyancers have to take on 100s of files each so everything slows down

Mine will be around £1800-£2000.

We've never paid more than £550 for conveyancing on a single transaction.

How much would you typically pay in the UK for a simple residential conveyancing matter then?

Like I said, I don't think the equivalent of £500 it's very much at all but the process here is so routine that I don't imagine it does take up much time.

🤣🤣🤣
You obviously haven't read the thread then!
Who do you think is doing all the Lender's work??
And £500 will buy you very little time, because of the cost of PI cover because of the highly risky nature of the work!

The reality is that the lawyer doesn't have to do all that much

Well for £500 I would hope not! I'm not a resident property lawyer but at my firm you'd get barely an hour of my time for that (and I'm not in London and not a partner!).

When it comes to money for doing not much, my vote would be the £999 typical "product fee" charged by lenders when taking out a new mortgage!

The last time I moved, I think I paid the lawyer the equivalent of about £500.

I'm not sure how that compares with UK conveyancing fees but to me it doesn't seem like very much. The reality is that the lawyer doesn't have to do all that much and a standard residential conveyance isn't a complicated piece of work for a generalist lawyer.

You’re mad then. If you’re willing to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds without any understanding of of what you’re buying I really have seen everything.

The English system is shit, but in large parts as the price on conveyancing is so cheap the level of experience is very low ( you can’t get decently qualified staff) and the volume is intolerably high. I’d like to see how many people complaining would be able to tolerate the work load of your average conveyancing professional (which I’m not, but I work in a business that employs them).

That's atrocious.

Here, the banks will 'pre-approve', ie, look at your finances and tell you how much they're prepared to lend. Takes about a week.

With that, once you've found a property, you tell the bank and they'll immediately say yes or no.

I've dealt with UK banks and their staff seem to border on incompetence.

That makes sense.
Here it can take weeks to months to get a mortgage offer!

Here you sign with conditions, one of which is usually being able to get the finance. If you can't then you pull out of the deal before it becomes unconditional. Once it becomes unconditional it's set in stone, unless you are prepared to forfeit the deposit.

It sounds like you have a great system there. A friend in the UK recently sold and purchased property and I was astounded by all the work she had to do - here too it is all done by the estate agent. When I sold my late DM's flat the agent came to my workplace, we sat in a room and went through the forms, I signed them and left everything else to her. So easy.

Well it seems to work well in other parts of the world. You can't have a cumbersome system on the remotely small chance that something might go wrong. People should be considering those situations BEFORE they decide to commit to buying a house anyway and not mortgaging themselves to the hilt.

Money 💰

It's like getting confirmation (probate) in Scotland. The process is complex and although you can do a bit yourself, you need a legal professional to help. The legal profession have ZERO appetite for simplifying anything as this would mean they earned less money.

Apparently the various jurisdictions in the UK have modified versions of Torrens. The Republic of Ireland has full Torrens, but I really couldn't tell you what difference that makes.

Perhaps two things here are more important, firstly how you contract, and secondly, how long you wait.

Here, the standard method is that you sign a contract subject to conditions (chiefly finance, satisfactory building inspection report) and satisfactory council file. The buyer has ten working days to raise issues. Otherwise, the buyer and seller are absolutely locked in. This makes gazumping a very risky proposition. On settlement day, title and payment are swapped and you move in (or out) and it's a very simple process.

The other thing is how fast things happen. I would expect finance, builders report etc to happen in days. It's unthinkable that I would wait weeks for the solicitor to do something, or the bank etc. it seems a feature of UK life that people seem to have to wait ages for service providers to get round to dealing with them. Here, the time from signing an offer to moving in can be less than a month.

I suspect people in the UK used to do a lot more themselves without a tradie then now. My dad wired his house and did plastering etc.