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.

there is no chain, the buyer is not relying on a sale to purchase this house

This is irrelevant to the documents needed, inquiries etc.

The list of questions and documents I have to provide is endless

That would be the anti-momey-laundeeing/anti-bribeey checks. They are compulsory.

... there was a query over land registry ,,. When I asked (politely) why this hadn't been dealt with during the original purchase I was told 'it's a bit of a grey area'. ???

Obviously we don't know the details, but in my area of law the "grey area" could well be "well we asked your parents if they wanted to deal with this the first time round but they didn't want to incur the necessary fees to get it sorted".

Have you looked at the actual process, each step, process and how it fits together? Have you read the protocol, do you even know it exists and is what all house sales are processed on.

The process for the legals itself really is not inefficient at all, it just has elements of it that are entirely out of the conveyancers control and generally it's those areas that go askew and hold things up, number 1 culprits being the buyer and seller themselves.

It's possible to do the entire legals in an afternoon. I've done several from start to finish within a week to 10 days.

Add in a chain, buyers and sellers working to different timescales and priorities, a seller or buyer that can't cope with dealing with things online etc and time is going to get added in

I totally get you OP. I am currently in the process of selling/buying. Alot of patience is required plus a large glass of wine in the evenings😂

My last house move was here in Sweden and it was so straight forward. The whole process from first viewing to getting the keys took 2 weeks.

It's quick because everything is done by the estate agents selling the property. We made an offer. Offer was accepted. A week later we all met at the bank (us, them, estate agent, bank manager) and all the paperwork and legal stuff was done there and the keys were handed over.

A lot of houses in this country are in quite a state particularly after Brexit/Covid has made getting trades very difficult. Our house needs some work doing to it but we are old, tired and the effort involved in getting people in just seems too much. There's no doubt that a survey would bring up a lot of issues even if we told prospective purchasers that we know the house needs work and would price accordingly. Then there's the ever changing rules around regulations with things like electrics and plumbing. Work that was done on our house decades ago just doesn't have the necessary paperwork that is issued today.

Although I agree that the systems stinks and it would be wonderful if it could move more quickly I just don't know how sellers like ourselves and I am sure plenty of others could avoid prospective purchasers getting cold feet when we can't give them the paperwork needed or have works done in advance.

How other countries manage I don't know. Maybe their housing stock is just better than a lot of ours.

This is a big part of it.
Regulations around paperwork for everything that has ever been done to the house are getting tighter and tighter, regulations imposed by the Lender.
Most people don't have the paperwork.
While indemnity policies can help, sometimes they're not acceptable.

I am curious how it works on other countries where it all goes through so quickly. Presumably the seller has to prove the property is mortgageable before marketing it. Otherwise you'd offer on a house, be committed to buying and then discover you can't get a mortgage?

I live in a market town and a lot of people in small houses keep chickens here

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.

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.

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.

Money 💰

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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!

🤣🤣🤣
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!

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.

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

Mine will be around £1800-£2000.

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

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