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.

Great idea until you buy in a development where the reversionary interests haven't been transferred, or you buy a house with a covenant that's a deal breaker for you but you couldn't interpret it clearly, or you can't register your purchase properly because you've missed something crucial during the process. Give it a go sometime and see how it works out for you.

@Ireallywantadoughnut36 you can't DIY where there's a lender involved.
This has been explained several times in the thread you didn't bother to read before wading in with your (incorrect) opinion
Do you do that in real life? Hear a sentence in a conversation and then just blurt out what you think is correct about it?

It's ludicrous. I've had to explain why it takes so bloody long and I have no clue. Here in Canada from first viewing to owning the house normally takes max 3 weeks. That's it, no chains, no dicking around. you do the equivalent of exchanging contracts in two weeks.
Normal sales process would be list the house Monday, viewings the weekend after, offers following monday, then you have a couple of days to finalize your mortgage and get a survey, close.
No one would ever accept an offer on a house in a chain, they don't exist here.

3 weeks from first viewing to ownership? If true, I think that's way too fast. Did you mean 3 weeks from first viewing to being contractually bound?

I have no idea why anyone would want to be a conveyancing solicitor. Surely there are more interesting types of law... is this not one of the dullest legal jobs?

If not, who do the conveyancing solicitors think have it the hardest in terms of tedious work?

Most residential conveyancers aren't actually solicitors.

I'm referring to the ones that are @madamweb

In my jurisdiction (NI) we don't have conveyancers like you do in England, only a solicitor can be a conveyancer.

Agree it's very tedious, however, friends who do it like that they know what their day looks like, not bound by court schedules, and the amount of problems that pop up that need solving would surprise you. It can be a bit nerdy and puzzle-like.

It's a bit more than just organising documents, if you're the kind of person who likes reading a lot, problem solving, a little bit of client interaction, and being left alone in an office (with a good secretary to screen your calls) then it's not the worst. I did it for 3 months during training and that was enough for a lifetime though.

Agree it's probably the dullest area!

The problem is defining "bad survey" as it has to be renegotiable at that point. Irrespective of mortgage company's views.

What if something pops up on the searches like planning agreed down the road which the buyer doesn't like? There's so much nuance and the cost so eye watering. It's not like buying something cheap.

There should be a database for sure but when they tried to change it, it didn't work and all we were left with was the EPC!

I don't get why planning down the road should be a reason to pull out. Surely anyone could look this up on the council planning portal before making an offer!

I will admit to being biased. I have bought houses in both England and the Netherlands and the Dutch system is a lot less stressful. It still took two months but there was a lot less uncertainty. Basically we knew the completion date straight away and we couldn't pull out of the sale without very good reason. I believe the reasons we negotiated were inability to get a mortgage and repairs needed in excess of 25k. And my house was a complicated case with a judge having to approve the sale.

A transaction takes time. Things can happen today that didn't exist yesterday and searches look at so much that isnt easily available. There is no way searches can be done for every offer.

Indeed that was I'm sure part of the improved system a few years ago. The seller got searches in place before marketing and all that happened was they became out of date very quickly so we're done again.

It could be made simpler by having a lot more data easily accessible - searches should not take weeks to do,.for example. But beyond that all that will happen is more work will be needed to be done before an offer is made - some of that work will land on the vendor and if they don't sell within a set period,will expire anyway.

Chances are not much more would be saved in the end.

I have asked before on these sort of threads but never really had an answer.

What happens when the properties have things wrong with them which are only revealed by surveys. What happens if the necessary paperwork isn't available because works were done before legislation changed.

Because we have a buyer beware situation in this country people need to to cover themselves against sellers who put a property on the market that has quite a lot wrong with it.

How can all the checks be carried out in such a short time.

So in the Netherlands you can add specific conditions to the initial sales contract. For our house we had the condition that we could pull out of the sale if more than 25k worth of work was discovered by the survey (the house we were buying was a bit neglected so we knew we had to have some work done).

As for paperwork, there wasn't really any. We have no certificates for the extension, the windows, the boiler, no certificate for the electrics.

It is assumed you do due diligence before making an offer. If something is discovered after the sale and you can proof the seller was aware or lied you can sue them.

Thanks for the reply.

It is very different here, you are expected to have the necessary paperwork for many things that might have been done to your house over the years. An acquaintance of mine was in a real quandary because her buyer's solicitors were demanding paperwork for replacement windows which had been fitted by the people who sold it to her. When she bought it wasn't an issue but it seems to have become one now. Sadly I lost touch and have no idea how or if the situation was resolved.

It's increasingly difficult to find reliable trades and our housing stock is pretty old so many houses will have surveys that throw up problems which won't be easy or cheap to fix.

My dad put in a loft extension to his 30s semi in 1975. We have the planning permission and letters from the planning officer, showing that all was in order, but still get mutterings about 'not passing building regs.'

Because there weren't any in 1975 in that borough. And of course a 1970s extension wouldn't meet building regs for 2025. Probably one built in 2000 wouldn't either, because things change and improve.

But the extension has been up there for 50 years and has survived the Great Storm of 1987. I think if it was going to blow off or collapse, it would have done by now. The house itself is solid. A few large bombs landed fairly close by during the war, and it seemed untroubled.

My estate agent has an older builder friend, who has lived and worked around the area and knows how the houses were constructed. He took our buyer around and seemed to reassure him after the survey's dark warnings.

@Abra1t surely the solicitor would know this and say it wasn't necessary? Sounds like it's the buyer's issue not a solicitor one.
Keeping paperwork relating to your house is a pain and of course there are records available if you mislay documents but they need paying for, and a database would also need paying for. Who would keep it updated? Who would administer it? I have found the planners in a council don't talk to building control in the next office over, so thinking they could run a department keeping all documents for every property up to date is, well, a fantasy. Plus council may have official documents, but you have your boiler serviced (for example), so is every plumber to upload every job on to this theoretical database? Not going to happen.
What would vastly improve the buying/selling process is this: make offers legally binding. Have a set schedule for survey, mortgage approval, etc agreed at offer stage. Contingencies can be put in, but penalties too.

Solicitors don't get involved with haggling over survey price negotiations--that's more the agent in my experience. And they don't seem to pre-empt surveyors' reports by telling them what's available, even if they have seen the certificates, etc, themselves.

Perhaps the real issue in England is that either party can walk away without legal consequence until the 'exchange of contracts' (which is a misnomer as any fule kno). It allows delay, gazumping, prevarication and other general nonsense.

(Leastways that's how I understand the English system to work, but I'm in the fortunate position of never having bought or sold a house there.)

The more successful systems lock parties in earlier, so that they can only withdraw for a good reason. At least some of these countries (NZ for example) are common law countries and have the same contractual doctrines etc so it's confusing that the English system is such a pig's breakfast.

No @Catullus5 it really is a literal exchange of contracts. The magic words are said and written down on the contract. Then the contracts are posted to each other. What on earth did you think happened?????

And @Catullus5 just to clarify, the thing that slows the process down is the Lender's requirements, not the solicitors. And the fact that houses are so expensive you can't buy them with bridging finance, so you have to have chains (usually) and you can only go at the speed of the slowest person in the chain.

If you agree to sell someone a house, there is one contract under which you agree to convey the purchaser title and, in consideration, the purchaser agrees to pay you the price.

Same as buying a bar of chocolate (except that payment and conveyance happen immediately.)

I guess you could set it up another way but it seems unnecessarily faffy to me.

Okaaaaay
I'm not sure there are enough words to explain this, and as you're not currently involved in a review of the law in E&W maybe it doesn't matter too much!

I actually think solicitors deliberately drag their feet to justify their fees!

But also the long chains needing to wait for all to be ready, slow mortgage approval system and people not finding a property quickly come into play

We bought in 12 weeks 3 years ago, we were end of chain as in temporary rented

A contract requires:

• Agreement
• consideration
• intention to create legal relations

This is standard common law doctrine. Look it up in Halsbury if you don't believe me.

It's not clear to me how consideration works in your 'exchange contracts' scenario. Perhaps you can point me towards an example.