To wish that the government should sort out/ modernise the process for buying property in England? P

[judybloomno5]

It's the first time I've bought and sold. Last time it was all relatively straight forward as I bought a new build on an estate as a first time buyer.

It just seems all back to front (and please correct me if I'm being naive here)

....but an estate agent helps you decide the price, then a seller makes an offer and it's only when you have an informal agreement (when anyone can back out or a 'gentlemans agreement) that you and each and every buyer after you spends hundreds/thousands on legal fees finding out if there's anything wrong with said property, buying flipping indemnity policies against archaic rights of way or parish church fees or building Reg breaches, searches and whether the property is worth it anyway.

Wouldn't it be more sensible for sellers to have to have got all these things before accepting offers so buyers have a clear understanding of what they are buying so time and money isn't wasted? Wouldn't this help prevent soaring house prices? The stress of moving and buying is such that people don't move but if this system worked better then they'd move more frequently and the government would benefit from stamp duty revenue?

AIBU?

In Scotland each sale or purchase is independent of the others. Of course everyone goes to a lot of trouble to try to coordinate money transfers and move-out/move-in dates and there's a lot of nail-biting just the same, but there's often either an overlap (where someone owns 2 properties for a few days) or if you are lucky, somewhere you have either a first-time buyer or someone renting who can be flexible about dates and it all hangs together.

It's just that in Scotland you are committed to buy/sell much earlier in the process. It provides more certainty.

Scotland did have a process whereby the contract was binding at an early stage of the transaction and then all the costly stuff like searches etc was carried out with the parties feeling safe the sale would go ahead. However, nowadays, there are so many conditions, including things like are the white goods working and are there warranties for them, that it is increasingly close to the English position and you will see on for sale boards a sticker say goodbye 'sold subject to conclusion of missive' (the contract). This can be very close to settlement.
The seller here also has to provide the survey but if you don't sell quickly you might need to pay for more than one.

By contrast, the land law system throughout the UK is absolutely archaic.

When I was a trainee solicitor doing a real estate rotation, our team moved from one bit of the building to another. Despite lots of careful labelling we, er, misplaced the original title deeds to Battersea Power Station. Spent the weekend in the office rooting around for it. I still giggle when I drive past.

Yanbu but nothing will change. The law is the last bastion of closed ahop restrictive arcane practises that the rest of us had to abandon in the 1970s

US system is simpler in that you buy title insurance, which protects you against any of the so called "defects" that solicitors make a song & dance about. Title insurance cuts out a whole load of c**p. When you make an offer, you have to put down a percentage of the purchase price, and if you back out, you lose it. So you don't make an offer if you are not serious. If you have any particular concerns that would require specialist advice ( no equivalent to a surveyor in US - there it means something completely different,) you ask the seller for info, before you make an offer. (Last house I sold in US I had to get a soils stability report & a termite inspection.) Once you accept an offer, it goes really quickly, due to deposit on offer & title insurance.
There is more bargaining in US - house might sell for quite a bit less than asking price, and realtors take heftier fees, but probably work harder than in UK & generally have to be licensed, so they have to take courses & tests. When I first got to the UK, I was amazed at how bizarre the system was & still is.

Australians seem to be able to buy and sell houses without a chain.

In my state, it's very simple

• Make an offer, offer accepted, 48 hour cooling period before a 5% deposit is put in escrow
• Make exchange ("going unconditional") subject to a. selling your house b. building & pest survey c. securing finance. In a competitive market, it can be hard to get a seller to accept a subject to selling clause.
• Typical timeframe is 14 days for exchange and 14 days for completion

Searches are very easy, as a trainee surveyor I could drag up everything I needed to know (title, flood maps, etc) off centralised public databases. Torrens title is a work of wonder compared to the system here.

People use bridging finance, or move into rented/rent out their house if they can't sell/buy in the required timeframe. It's accepted that you don't hold up other people because you can't buy/sell your house.