Why don't they change the awful way properties are bought/sold in the UK?

[wereonthemarket]

Surely it isn't in anyone's interests to have such a flakey, stressful system in place.

People view. They make an offer which doesn't really mean a lot. Buyer accepts. Survey is done. Buyer renegotiates offer.

Then at any point - even after each party has spent potentially thousands either one can pull out or completely change the offer?!

Why isn't the insane system streamlined? Buyer lists property and pays for survey, searches etc which are shown to potential buyers. An offer is made with the seller paying 10% deposit. And surely then everything moves faster, is less stressful and stops so many sales falling through?

You'd have a very similar outcome to that in England, after exchange of contracts.

In Scotland most properties are offers over. We were interested in a property before we put ours up for sale and our offer got accepted. I didn't want to mess about and wanted to put it on at a fixed price. Our EA talked us out of it and said it would make us look desperate. It ended up on the market for 3 months anyway and we had to reduce the price at one point 🙄

The differences are that you don’t tend to get people trying to renegotiate the price once the sale and purchase agreement has been signed at stage 1, unless there is a proven building issue. People do not randomly try to renegotiate £10,000 off the sale and purchase agreement the night before going unconditional because they ‘ feel the market has changed’.

I'm curious to know whether people think this is because the English property market fluctuates more than that in other countries as a rule, or whether it's loosely cultural, i.e. that people here do this kind of thing just because it's a thing that people here are in the habit of doing.

It's definitely a thing that happens more now than when I bought my first property (1980s), when it would have been practically unheard of, together with gazumping etc, but the two are not unconnected, because boom/crash cycles of the property market, and the greed is good, every man for himself type culture both originate with Thatcher imo.

Either way, I think it's difficult behaviour for people to unlearn, so I would just regulate for it tbh. The whole sector needs more regulation all round imo. I can't see how it will improve by itself.

But presumably missives had been concluded by that point, so compelling the payment of the purchase price was based on that, not on the offer.

Totally agree - I'm from Canada and the process there is excellent. Uk process - hellish.

I can only speak for myself, but I hate it because everyone seems to use it in different ways.

Say my budget is £250K and I do a RM search based on that. What I will find is some property that needs a lot of work and isn't worth anywhere near that much once the work needed has been costed in, but the place is empty and the vendor doesn't care how long it takes to sell and won't entertain sensible offers.

I will also find some houses that are worth 'around' that, and depending on the vendor's circumstances and the local market, I might be successful with an offer of 235K or I might end up having to pay, say, £265K.

And finally, I will find other houses that are lovely and probably worth more like £300, and the agent is marketing at o/o 250K so as to stimulate a bidding war, as a result of which the place ends up having 10 offers and selling for £350K.

The trouble is that unless you know the local market well, and perhaps even the individual house, it's very hard to tell which kind of house you're dealing with. Seems cheap? Is it a teaser or has it got something wrong with it? Seems expensive? Is it highly desirable or has great BTL potential, or is the seller a timewaster? It's very hard to tell, and a massive time-sink if you try to view all the houses that you think might be suitable for you, particularly if you'll be moving area and aren't very local. If you're really not very local at all, it can also be horrendously expensive. It's very dispiriting to travel a long way and incur overnight expenses to do a viewing at a house that transpires to have been a complete waste of your time because the level of interest puts it in a whole different price bracket from the one it was advertised at. It's rare for an agent to be honest about the fact that you might be wasting your time, and they never tell you the value of any other offers on the table (they aren't allowed to afaik).

But if you are the seller and have a highly desirable house, then I can see that the offers over system could work well for you, in the hands of a suitably proactive agent. It sounds like that might be you, @NewFriendlyLadybird, in which case good luck to you, but don't imagine you're saving people time by making it clear what amount you won't go below, because lots of other sellers use the system differently and it actually isn't as clear as you think it is. Depending on the general price bracket, £100K is potentially a very big undervaluation to use as the basis of your marketing and ime you'll probably be wasting just as many people's time as you'll be saving - sorry!

Just to add, the HR valuation is usually based on square footage etc and isn't always a very useful indicator of whether a house will have some desirability factor that isn't immediately apparent to a non local person, so while the HR is useful in many ways, ime that isn't one of them.

JMHO

Our delay wasn't the survey we did the basic one (anything else is a waste of time) it was our seller messing on waiting for local authority searches in a mining area 🤷‍♀️ it was an absolute waste of time. Anything else in the local authority searches was publicly available. Maybe an automated local authority system digitally available and instantly searchable.

Also maybe some sort of system where you have to have an onward purchase agreed before you accept an offer or market yours and then you have a set time to sell maybe 2-3weeks or you sell and complete 1st.

Offers in Scotland are not binding
Missives are

I cannot understand exchange and completion happening on the same day as I have read happens.

As I am not living where this happens, why does it happen? Surely the potential for either party to withdraw at the last minute is real, and must be devastating. I've never heard of this before.

It’s a crazy idea, and only really should be attempted when the buyer has no chain and the property being bought is already vacant.

I would recommend looking at the house immediately before a simultaneous exchange and completion - if there is any unexpected damage, your insurance doesn't cover it and the buyer is over the hills and far away.........

You certainly can withdraw offers in Scotland. And for no reason. Happened to us during a sale / purchase earlier this year. Until the Missives are agreed and signed there is nothing to stop a buyer pulling out, and increasingly missives and happening very close to actual completion. In our case just 2 days before.

My neighbours in Scotland were gazundered a few days before the date of entry. They were emigrating and it seriously fucked things up for them.

It can and does happen.

The only real benefit that I can see from the Scottish system is the lack of a chain that can collapse, but it relies all parties being able to put their houses on the market and conclude missives swiftly enough to meet obligations.

Many countries seem to have a pay a deposit and if you pull out the seller keeps the deposit.

The whole chain this is a bit of a disaster too.

I absolutely hate the offers over/sealed bid system.

Let’s be honest, everyone hopes to find a bargain when buying a property. But that’s impossible with offers over as you risk losing the house.

Let’s say there’s a property listed for offers over £250k and my max budget is £280k. I love the house and would pay £280k if I really had to but realistically think £265-270 is a decent price. What do I bid? There’s no suggestion of what the sellers are looking for. And I’ve got no idea what others are bidding. I’ll end up bidding more just to secure the property when under the fixed price system there’s a good chance I’d have got it for £270k - and without the stress of waiting!

It’s just a massive gamble and there’s no transparency. List your house, tell me how much you want for it, and I’ll get as close to that with my offer as I can given my budget!! No secrecy. Much clearer!

I like the idea of a seller’s pack but I think part of the problem is affordability. Some people might be selling their property to downsize due to cash flow problems and finding £500-1000 might not be possible. That means they’d be stuck sitting on equity with no way of selling it to release the cash tied up.

And also, as PP said, the quality of surveyors really varies. I think lots of people would prefer to pick their own. Our buyer’s survey was insanely fast but I’m not convinced of the quality. For example, he didn’t check any of the windows, or turn on taps, look in cupboards etc - he literally just wandered around.

i think lots of the problems are created by slow mortgage offers, chains, crappy solicitors and people with unreasonable expectations/requests.

Other countries include the actual date of sale as part of the price negotiation.

you can negotiate the date, but you have to be ready by the agreed date. If you are a seller and you don’t find a new home, you move out anyway and find a rental. If you are a buyer and you current house hasn’t sold, you either default on your deposit and risk being sued, or more likely, you briefly own two homes.

occasionally someone will sell their home and then rent it from the new owners, but that only works of the new owners don’t need to take possession immediately.

There are plenty of chains in Scotland ,and they can and do collapse
The lack of bridging finance has had a massive impact on the Scottish system

Agree, when I moved to England a few years ago I couldn't get my head around this chain nonsense. Where I'm from it is noone else's responsibility to wait for you to find your 'dream home'. You sell, you maybe rent somewhere while looking for a new home, or you get a bridging loan.

No chains, each transaction is separate. No negotiating down a line of 5 different vendors to hold it all together. Its utter madness.

I think we need alternatives to Assured Shorthold Tenancies. Finding somewhere affordable to rent for less than six months is very difficult, sometimes impossible.

I was going to say exactly the same thing. Renting and subletting is way easier in most other countries.