How would you like the English buying/selling process to work?

[Thurlow]

I think we'll all agree that there is so much wrong with the current system, but how do you think it should look?

Independent surveys up front would improve so much, for me, so when you view and offer you already know all the work that needs to be done and offer a suitable price.

Some kind of fixed commitment with a deposit, so gazumping and gazundering can't happen without massive legal fees.

But on another thread people are talking about markets with no chains, where everyone has to move into rental or with family for a bit, or maybe get bridging loans - I'm not sure that would remotely work in the English property market.

What would you change?

I would make it the same as the Scottish one and I'm amazed they haven't already.

Like New York. 2 to 4 week turnaround.

Definitely put the survey onus on the seller, not the buyer, and much better survey regulation and standardisation – I’ve been screwed over by multiple surveys not finding fairly obvious and costly stuff.

So sellers’ house pack should include survey, fixtures and fittings form, EPC, neighbour disclosure, all useful info on property – bin day, stopcock location, who owns the boundaries, etc

Open house viewings clustered on single days as standard, so you don’t have to clean your house 8,000 times for random viewings

Estate agents to stop talking bollocks

I think one of the biggest issues is the delays caused by the legal process.

My last purchase, well before Covid, took 4 weeks start to finish. But to achieve that I had to pay a senior partner in my firm of Solicitors and my vendor had to do the same. We made a clear commitment up front to turn all paperwork round in a day and made it clear to our Solicitors that the deal would fall apart if we didn't complete at 4 weeks.

The alternative for me was going to be a period in rental / storage and for the vendor the loss of a sale in a much slower market.

We achieved it by the skin of our teeth, almost derailed by searches.

There is no acceptable reason for searches to take so long or for the legal process to be as drawn out as it is at the moment.

Both those issues need addressing.

I would like some sort of fee if a purchaser pulls out but for that to be waived if the property is massively down valued by a lender which happened to us last year, we didn't really have a choice about pulling out. I would also like exchange and completion dates locked in at offer so that all solicitors involved have to work at the same pace. We are currently buying and selling and our seller's solicitor is appalling, they wont respond to our solicitor 9/10 times, they half arse responses to enquiries so they have to be revisited, and on Friday when they were perfectly aware we were meant to exchange, they pissed off out of the office without telling anyone.

I don;t live in the UK, but recently saw the enormous amount of paperwork a woman had to sell her flat in London. I couldn't believe how much there was, and she confirmed that selling in the UK is so very much more complicated than it is here, so surely something can be done to make it easier.

Sorry - that should have said selling in England, not the UK.

All sellers need a pack which includes every report that's needed, this is provided to a prospective buyer for use to secure mortgages check survey etc..

Once an offer is accepted its legally binding. From then there should be a 2 week cut off date for contract exchange and a maximum completion of, say, 6 weeks.

My first house purchase took 9 months! My second just under 2 months but that was excruciating as well as the contract exchanged happened last minute.

The Scottish Home Report system certainly makes much more sense. We know what a house is worth before we view it. We know exactly what is ‘wrong’ with it (within reason) etc.

It beggars belief that in England that sellers almost just pick a figure out of the air, then you view it and don’t find out about any issues further down the line and then the bank decides if it’s worth what you’re planning to pay for it. It’s just a scam.

Definitely some kind of agreement for the buyers to buy at the agreed price, or sellers have to pay for any searches/legal fees. And sellers unable to raise price once offer is accepted.

The only exceptions would be for legitimate reasons and where both parties agree (no idea what those could be though).

If anyone can beat my offer to completion time, I might feel a tad better. ONE YEAR, SEVEN MONTHS, TWENTY TWO DAYS. December 2019 to June 2021.

However the main things that held the sale up were;

Sellers who couldn't find anything suitable to buy. A global pandemic and a property market shut down. Their Solicitors being unresponsive. And finally, the poor old lady at top of our chain of 3, sadly passing away, resulting in a further EIGHT months of Probate via a beneficiary in France, none of us had any control over.

While I realise this exceptional, and some of those factors were uncontrollable, rather than my Sellers take TEN months to find a house and refuse my suggestion of going into rental, I wonder if it could be legislated they have to be out by an agreed date regardless.

Add the common use of bridging loans. If you buy a house and don't want to move in yet then the double mortgage just gets added to your length of mortgage. Would make things a lot easier. You can get bridging loans but they are eye watering expensive.

What about if anyone pulls out rather than just the buyer?
I was about to exchange and the sellers pulled out. They just decided they didn't want to sell. I lost 1000s. They lost nothing as they were moving into one of their 'other properties'

The whole thing is a mess. The fact that nothing is legally binding until you exchange. I think some kind of financial penalty for messing people about. Or even if it's to cover the other side's costs. I do think there should be a cooling off period after offer accepted (14 days?) then after that, you are financially responsible if you pull out. Especially if the survey etc are shown before offer accepted as suggested up thread.

@user1471530109 definitely needs to be a penalty for Sellers pulling out.

There are Sellers who casually put their house on the market "to see what it might be worth" and then they "see what they might like to buy", like a bit of fantasy shopping. I had a friend caught out like this, four months they waited on their Sellers to find a property who then informed them "We've decided not to move afterall". Such a waste of everyones time.

@ThisIsStartingToBoreMe

I would make it the same as the Scottish one and I'm amazed they haven't already.

The Scottish system is also a nightmare. Offers over £250k - Home Report Valuation £280k house sells for £350,000. I just wish they would advertise at whatever price they want. Its creating hugely inflated prices as sealed bids mean people are paying £10,000s more than houses are worth, just to make sure they can get them.

The Scottish system is also a nightmare

The bidding system isn't great, I agree, but I've bought three houses in Scotland and have never gone to a bidding system. If you can put forward a decent offer the vendor will often agree and the deal can be done.

Where our system works is in the post-offer period - once both parties have agreed the deal, it's very difficult to back out and it rarely happens.

Lots of other countries manage the process in a short space of time.

We should look at their systems and simply replicate those. We don't have to make anything up. It's not hard.

Anything that includes a financial penalty if buyer or seller pulls out (unless the survey highlights something serious) once an offer is agreed.

@Londongent

Anything that includes a financial penalty if buyer or seller pulls out (unless the survey highlights something serious) once an offer is agreed.

Thinking about it, you would need a fixed time to complete a survey and then agree on offer. After that any pulling out should incur a penalty

Seems like having as much of the legal leg work done beforehand by the seller - surveys, searches, fixtures and fittings etc - so the price a property is on offer for is understood would make a huge difference, both in the timescale for exchanging and to stop people who are just dabbling at selling.

And from my perspective, definitely that no one can change their mind after a brief cooling off period without incurring heavy penalties.

What happened to the seller packs that were trialled a few years back? Weren't their proposals to amend the system? Why did nothing change?

The sellers' packs HIPs seemed a good idea but I think the problem was that conveyancers still needed to make all the enquiries that weren't covered in the HIP if they were doing their job properly so HIPs just became superfluous and were abolished. And it was the vendor who had to pay for them, so there was no financial implication for buyers and didn't make any difference to their pulling out before exchange.

Buying a property is a serious business; it's one of the biggest expenses of your life. No way am I going to commit to that based on a survey that the seller has commissioned.

Independent surveys up front would improve so much, for me, so when you view and offer you already know all the work that needs to be done and offer a suitable price.
There would have to be some changes at RICS then. At the moment surveys are filled with so many caveats, so much arse-covering and so many holes that they are almost not fit for purpose.

Once an offer is accepted its legally binding.
That's how it works now! All the negotiation before exchange is carefully worded as "subject to contract".

How about the purchaser and seller are 100% truthful. Sorry I was dreaming.

But would you trust a survey by the seller? Would the bank?
I'd go the American way. Offers are written and legally binding. You negotiate not just the price but the timescale and contingencies (what allows you to pull out - like not getting financing or bad survey); a small deposit with offer. Penalties if either pulls out without reason. The searches here are awful - I tried to buy three houses within a few hundred yards of each other (I pulled out of one due to seller faffing, seller pulled out of second due to illness, bought third). The flood risk didn't change etc etc but I needed to get the searches three times! The solicitor can do a planning and development check.
I'd still do my own survey/inspection- where I lived in the US you went around with the inspector and he showed you how the boiler worked, ran all appliances that were staying, checked the water pressure, even took the temperature of the radiator output! So very few surprises.