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

Absolutely agree.
Being able to explain to your client clearly is a crucial part of the role.
One that's clearly not being fulfilled, given the number of people on this thread who simply don't understand what's going on or how things work. Not their fault, it clearly wasn't explained properly to them!

Regarding the language - there's absolutely no excuse for using opaque or complex language.
I started working as a solicitor decades ago and even then the push to use clear and simple language had been going on for a long time.

Any decent lawyer should be able to explain things in a way their client can understand

Exactly- @AcquadiP it's all very well and good you being amused by the restrictive covenant being irrelevant to you (and some of the older ones can seem very funny, granted!), but who would you have blamed if you didn't know and had wanted to keep chickens, and it turned out that the person who has the benefit of the covenant still lived next door and wanted to enforce it?...

Some people do keep chickens though, don't they, which is why someone put that restriction on the property in the first place and also why your solicitor had to tell you about it

one of the forms asked us to confirm we aren’t members of or related to the royal family or a lord/ lady.

That will be to comply with anti-bribery/money laundering requirements. Solicitors don't ask for this stuff for fun!

I live in France and this is exactly how it works. You make an offer. If accepted you both have a seven day cooling off period where either party can pull out. After that you sign a contract to buy and if either of you pull out, you pay 10% of the purchase price!
It's SO LOGICAL and so much quicker than England. The system there is archaic and crazy.

Couldn’t agree more, we are just in the process of moving, the paperwork, unbelievable, one of the forms asked us to confirm we aren’t members of or related to the royal family or a lord/ lady. We have no mortgage and are funding the purchase entirely through the sale of current home but they still ask for proof of funds. Do agree though the estate agent fees are far worse than the solicitor

I thought they had modernised it. I’m in Scotland and when I bought it it was moved across from the sasine register and lots of bits of paper to an electronic register. I sold off an outbuilding and it was much more straightforward for solicitor as everything (title deeds)was online. The English system perplexes me but I’m assuming if too is being brought up to date?

Once again for the people at the back - No. They. Don't.
When you've agreed a fixed fee, added complexity and delays make the job lessprofitable not more, and it takes longer to get paid!

I’m sure sols make such a meal out of it to justify their fees…

Absolutely.
HIPs could have worked but the Lenders and their their insurers were having none of it.

That's the system we have in E&W.
There's not that much unregistered residential property left here, and unregistered property shouldn't pose a problem if you use a solicitor who specializes in it.
The delays in E&W (other than bucket shop 'conveyancing firms' doing everything in bulk through an automated process which just goes round and round in circles) is that the mortgage is secured on the property. Last time I looked at the Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook the average number of pages of requirements for Lenders was around 26, God knows what it is now
Each Lender has different requirements.
You've seen the house you're buying, you know it's got two types of tile in the roof, a badly constructed extension, a missing chimney breast downstairs and the wiring looks 'interesting', your solicitor doesn't.
They rely on the forms sent by the seller and other bits of information, each of which gets checked against the Lender's requirements which often throw up more questions which can only be answered by the seller.
Most sellers will say 'it's fine, I've never had a problem, my solicitor didn't worry about it when I bought it, it's been like that for years, the estate agent told me not to worry, I don't understand why the buyer's Solicitor is making a fuss, the buyer doesn't care'. Most buyers will say 'I'm not bothered, it looks fine, I'll probably change it myself anyway, my Mum's house was the same and hers was always fine, the estate agent told me not to worry, I really really love the house'.
Neither of them realise that what they think is irrelevant, neither of them are forking out the money. The party who decides is the Lender.
Buyers' solicitors will always be super cautious, property purchase traditionally has the highest number of negligence claims against solicitors. For not spotting things. All the whole their clients are yelling at them not to ask questions.

Say for example the surveyor can see damage to the roof. He /she could mark that as 3 as in needs attention urgently or as a 2 will need attention at some point. (I can't remember the precise wording from the report template). That can be a subjective judgement, so estate agents could try persuading the surveyor that it's at the lower end so should be a 2. A really dodgy estate agent/surveyor might try to push it down to a 1 -basically no issues. I don't think it's often as blatant as that, but it's possible. It's well worth reading any text on the report really carefully and not just relying on the numbers.

Yes we have land register in Scotland but OP says there are still delays

What you want is the Torrens system, used in NZ, Australia and a few other places. Title passes by registration. The land register is definitive proof of who owns land and what sort of title they hold. Encumbrances are noted on the title. Only lawyers may make entries on the register.

Unregistered interests in land can also exist, but they give way to registered ones.

It's a really good system.

I'm in NZ and it's much quicker and easier here than in England also. A woman who was selling her flat in London called into my workplace one day to have the paperwork copied - it was almost a small book's worth! My friend there recently bought and sold and the whole thing took so long and sounded so complicated. It's much more straightforward here.

The French system certainly ties you in sooner…there’s only 10 days (can’t remember if that’s working or calendar) cooling off period in which to change your mind. But I am not sure it’s actually any quicker…I seem to remember it took 3 months to get from Compromis de Vente to the Acte de Vente, and of course the Compromis de Vente can include any number of reasons (results of survey, mortgage availability, anything else you negotiate in) that the transaction will halt without forfeit of deposit.

The biggest single thing, and one which is not that prevalent outside the UK, that you can do to speed up a purchase in the UK is not be in a chain.

I thought this was tried, or at least proposed, when the Home Information Pack existed. But the problem was that no sane buyer or bank would rely on a survey that had been commissioned by a third party, and the survey would have to be redone every few months. The solution to that would appear to be a better regulated system of property surveying and better indemnity cover for them. But that would push the costs of survey up, and everyone moans about the legal / compliance cost of buying a property as it stands, though compared to much of Europe and the US the actual cost of a transaction (not eh price of the property itself) in England is pretty low.

My tips for a painless process are (a) use a proper firm of solicitors that know the local area, (b) don’t be in a chain, (c) don’t involve a bank, (d) pay for private searches if needed and (e) take your own view on whether a general survey, or a targeted inspection of relevant things by a reputable builder / surveyor, would be best. Then sure you have the mobile number of your solicitor, the agent and the vendor. It should then take no more than 4 weeks do complete a sale from acceptance of the offer, and you might make it in two!

Absolutely. We had a buyer pull out on the date of exchange. Our purchasers were backing 2 houses in 2 different chains, ours was the runner up. Under the Scottish and French system, this could never happen.

I would have the Scottish system adopted in England and Wales. Simple to implement and understand.

The current one in England and Wales is a disgrace and a chancer's charter.

We have. As long as you're paying cash.
If you've got a mortgage you might find your Lender is strangely keen to know the property is worth what they're lending you. Obviously completely unreasonable of them but hey ho.

How could you tell?
And no, I'm not a conveyance.
Couple of points.
Conveyancing is fixed fee, stringing it out doesn't make more money. It makes less money because you're working for longer for less money. Delaying the transaction delays getting paid.
There are some shockingly bad firms around, you can spot them because they're very cheap and/or your estate agent recommended them because they get a referral fee. Those firms are not using solicitors to do the work. There will be one or two supervising a lot of paralegals.
Whoever does the conveyancing is at huge risk of being sued, which is why they bother about all the things that might be wrong with the property, even if you're not bothered (until you can't sell because of them).
The answer is insurance to cover what might be wrong but Lenders won't accept it.

The Scottish system is better, so is the French.