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

[Hungrycaterpillarsmummy]

If there was a sort of "legal database" where only solicitors can access and it would show all previous documents relating to a property so there is no faff of going back and forth between solicitors.
I'm having to provide building warrants and applications, affadavits for road access etc which was obviously already done when we bought the property. Now we are going through it all again using a different solicitor for the sale.

Also the jargon ..surely the jargon could be modernised?! I just had an email saying "I see that you have emailed further requesting a mandate, I will get my colleague to prepare same and forward onto you."

Prepare the same! Honestly..

Maybe I am being unreasonable but it's such a fucking fafffffff.

So many solicitors are absolutely hopeless.

I bought a small office (ground floor) about a decade ago from my, then, landlord who lived in the flat above. That was a fiasco. We agreed everything between us, I'd been renting the place for a decade beforehand, so I knew it inside out, but the solicitors insisted on all kinds of warranties, guarantees, surveys (asbestos, energy efficiency etc), that I, as buyer, didn't want, and I was paying cash so there was no mortgage lender who wanted them either. I talked to the guy daily, so when we both started getting solicitors letters blaming eachother for the delays, we gave the solicitors a right rollocking as they were just lying. Eventually, got the sale done.

Just recently, happened again trying to sell it back to the new lady who bought the upstairs and we agreed she could buy the ground floor office from me separately. I used the same solicitors as for purchase. They had no records at all of the purchase they acted for, so we had to go through it all again. Lady upstairs likewise told she needed asbestos survey, energy efficiency etc - I'd already given them to her and copied both solicitors in with the email attaching them. Took us both, again, to rollock the solicitors because just as before they were blaming us for the delays, but clearly again didn't realise we were talking daily and knew neither of us was delaying.

We were very lucky, but our house size is slightly unique for the area - a 4 bed in an estate of 3 beds with a large garden. We were prepared to move out if we had to, but didn't want to commit to a rental. Luckily the house we ended up with, was a relatively easy buy as they had no onward chain, and we put an offer in shortly before christmas, so that part has been relatively quick, and we lucked out with the house we ended up with.

So much that resonates. On the radio they said the average length of completion was 6 weeks 20-30 years ago. Now closer to 6 months despite significant digitisation. We're currently going through the mangle - the solicitors lie constantly, blaming the other side (as with pp, ourselves and buyer are in near daily contact). Random pointless bits of paperwork that we have to jump around to get. So much time wasting despite deadlines agreed in advance with generous time to complete. I can only conclude the solicitors collude to deliberately extend timeframes to justify their fee. As another pp says you can do the conveyancing yourself in straightforward sales (we've done it). It takes days rather than ducking 6 months!

It used to be. It used to be that once you had accepted an offer both sides felt bound by it, even if technically it wasn't binding until missives had been concluded. Bridging loans were really common if your sale hadn't completed by the entry date for your new purchase. Then bridging got more expensive, solicitors started saying don't worry, we'll keep asking things so that we don't conclude missives before your sale is done, and lo and behold you see chains starting to emerge. The Home Report system is better though. It can still be abused if pressure is put on surveyors to downgrade some of the scores but it's a lot better than the previous system.

I wish we had WYSIWYG house buying - what you see is what you get. No council searches or other BS associated with house buying.

You could make solicitors/ conveyancers more responsible.
Make reports easier to get or even pre on the market.

It's been a week and I still haven't had the call back I was promised nor have I been told that my vendor has made an offer on something. I think some solicitors forget that this is our lives and future, but just their job.

The Scottish system is better, so is the French.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is where we've gone wrong. We used someone Yopa referred us to although we did get a choice. I asked for a local company to quote and they said £2250 and Yopa said £1100 - to regular Joe public I imagine most people would sake the cheaper quote. But now I know for future I will never do this again!

What do you mean about pressure to downgrade scores?

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!

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'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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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?