MegaSack DRAW - 6pm Christmas Eve - LIVE on our YouTube Channel
...as the current system seems to be based on lies, lies, lies more lies and then a dollop of bullshit on top! 🐮💩💩
And house-viewing seems to be a nice weekend pastime. "We'll pop to Tesco in the morning, look at a few houses, then go and have a Sunday roast at the the pub"!
First time selling in 25yrs and it didn't seem this bad back then.
My parents have just sold their house, it took what seemed like forever. An 8 week timeline turned into nearly 6 months and they nearly lost out on the house they were moving to.
Solicitors were useless, buyer was useless, buyers mortgage company was useless. Buyer was a buy to let knobber.
We are still in our first home and want to move next year. After their experience I'm not looking forward to it, but I am going to instruct the estate agents that I'm not interested in a landlord buying unless it's cash and 50% over asking price. That should keep the vermin at bay.
I can't get my head round how everything seems to take forever with an unduly large amount of basically just sitting around waiting for solicitors to do what you pay them for.
UK? Do you mean England? Try buying in Scotland, that's much worse!
Yeah - England! 🙂
If you're struggling to sell a house currently, then something is going very wrong
on your end I'd say!!!
Buying something on the other hand, seems basically impossible.
It's awful, seems to be the only buying process there is where everyone tries their hardest not to actually sell the product to you.
What motivation do solicitors have to change the process? The massively inefficient process keep hundreds of small business going.
If you’re struggling to sell a house currently, then something is going very wrong
on your end I’d say!!!
+1
A friend is selling her house. Half a dozen viewings in the first weekend. One offer at full asking, one offer well over. The full asking offer was upped to match the top bid. Unfortunately it goes both ways. The house she liked she offered 50k over and was well under the top bid. Good time to be selling. Buying, not so much.
The conveyancing side needs a kick though. There is definitely room for some disruption
Try buying in Scotland, that’s much worse!
In what respect....because it really isn't....
I've just sold a house in Leeds, and the solicitors seem to try and do everything they can to make it the shittest process you've ever been through.
A simple empty house sale to a first time buyer took about 4 months!
England and Scotland are different.
IME England's system favours the buyer whereas Scotland's favours the seller.
Try buying in Scotland, that’s much worse!
How come? I’ve bought and sold in Scotland and England and prefer the Scottish system. Seems to get rid of the gazumping and wasters pulling out or mucking you about.
Buying and selling at the moment. I think it all comes down to the agents and solicitors involved. Our agent has been great though I imagine would have been a bit pushy if the people we are buying from had taken any longer to find somewhere to move to. Our solicitor has been fantastic. On top of everything, very good at communicating (even doing it digitally!). Compared to the last move, this has been a breeze so far.
Scotland is effectively sealed bids auctions for most stuff. As a buyer the system is a nightmare, great for sellers, but really stressful for buyers.
What motivation do solicitors have to change the process? The massively inefficient process keep hundreds of small business going.
^this. Plus estate agents.
Add in the odd UK culture around house buying as asset/ showing off / being nosey and there's some difficult people to be involved with.
I've once had problems with a mortgage - and we've bought 8 properties. The latest with Santander was really slick and easy, just have all your paper ready to scan and upload.
…as the current system seems to be based on lies, lies, lies more lies and then a dollop of bullshit on top!
Sounds like it reflects our political system perfectly.
Sstc to completion was 5 months till recently, now it’s about 4 months. Why? No idea. Customer journey is appalling. Part of me thinks it’s a lack of chain technology and local authority searches being in the loop, the other just stakeholders justifying their charges. It’s bonkers.
Scotland is effectively sealed bids auctions for most stuff. As a buyer the system is a nightmare, great for sellers, but really stressful for buyers.
Indeed but being gazumped would also be quite stressful I'd imagine. Especially is a fast paced climbing market during a process that takes for ever.
Sealed bids isn't great but almost all the rest of the process is considerably better
Properly up here is still selling within weeks, some as soon as it’s put on the market and often over the asking price.
The process is well out of date now, they seem to be one of the last professions who want to move to computer based methods.
As andrewh says, it's good selling up here, buying is pretty horrible though, thoroughly demoralising.
Properly up here is still selling within weeks, some as soon as it’s put on the market and often over the asking price.
The problem isn't getting a buyer, it is actually completing the sale once you have a buyer.
As andrewh says, it’s good selling up here, buying is pretty horrible though, thoroughly demoralising.
This is true 👆
The problem isn’t getting a buyer, it is actually completing the sale once you have a buyer.
^^ This
The crappy system in England and Wales suits only those employed in the industry. It doesn't serve consumers well. It's the same with high house prices. Those who have power to change the system are too close to those who benefit from the status quo.
The problem isn’t getting a buyer, it is actually completing the sale once you have a buyer.
This I would agree with.
A combination of buyers being slow / poorly prepared / numpties / deliberately awkward and solicitors and estate agents just not being as organised or slick as they could.
The sale of our Buy to Let - 'our' solicitor had retired, so we went with online but localish firm. After three weeks of no communication and no action as far as we could tell, we dumped them for a firm on a local high Street....
The process is well out of date now, they seem to be one of the last professions who want to move to computer based methods
What do you mean?, they have a copy of word and template that would srape C at GCSE (if the teacher is feeling generous) for presentation of a document. Some even use email!
We sold our house back in August. It sold within a few days of being listed at the asking price.
The issue has been, as others have said, with buying. It's a nightmare. We found our dream house and the chain was complete very quickly (our buyer has completed his sale and moved back in with his folks as the house he was buying fell through). We thought amazing, we'll be done before Christmas. Not. A. Chance. The issue was the vendors of the house we were buying pulling out of deals, finding other properties and a proceeding with those then changing their minds. In the end they just pulled out completely wasting everyone's time and money, which you've no chance of getting back.
We've now found an alternative and hopefully that works out. Can't complain about our solicitor but that's because it's my sister in law and she is very good at what she does. Hoping to be moved around Feb time so all in it will have taken around 6 months. Some friends of ours sold back in May and they have no idea when they'll be moving.
The process is ridiculous.
I agree it's a complete farce in general.
We had no chain when buying our current place, none, as in, sellers went in to rented, and we were already in rented.
Took six months.
FFS.
I’m not 100% on this as the conversation was a long time ago but I have a friend who is a realtor in Las Vegas/Henderson area. The process over there to get the house into your ownership from when you decide you want it is much better. Basically the realtor does everything for you, deals/legals etc. Yes they charge a percentage which is higher than the UK but the onus is on the realtor to get everything done 100% for you or they get no income from the sale or purchase.
See here - https://www.expatnetwork.com/buying-property-in-america/
Completion in 30 to 60 days max.
Last time I used a solicitor, their excuses got so lame they might as well have said "dog ate my homework"
I think a lot of people use online legal stuff to get it as cheap as possible but I’ve yet to hear a good review of online conveyancing. We used a local large solicitor based in our town who knew all about local sales and issues that might crop up. They did have a decent online tracker too, not perfect as I know a lot of documents have to be signed in person etc but being local meant no waiting for post to arrive, I just popped in and signed stuff or handed over documents they needed. They even waived a fee I had agreed to pay at the start but which subsequently found I didn’t need the service (and it was all my fault, they had done work for that part of the fee but still didn’t charge ) so that was fantastic.
It seems to me a large part of the issue is the allowing of chains to form.
So many folk I know have had delays or collapses due to chain issues.
Just don't allow chains.
When my folks sold up -it was 6weeks from offer accepted to moving out. They moved into rented.
When we moved in here it wasn't the smoothest due to RBS but even with that we managed to get in within 8 weeks (to beat the stamp duty)
Both were using high street solicitors
Of course folks won't like that either that'll cost them money and put the risk on them (moving to rental or use of bridging loans)
No one I know in real life has had a pain free experiance using online conveyancing. Even worse if they plumped for HSBC and got stuck with countrywide.
Best one we've had so far is from a couple we accepted an offer from. All financials checked out, seemed very, very keen. Then they pulled out after 4 weeks as our house 'wasn't right' as there was nowhere for them to park 2 cars and a campervan.
We have no parking and there's no way you could put parking in, yet they still went ahead and put an offer in! 🤬🤬
I think the difference between the Scottish and English systems is overplayed.
All the offers over/sealed bids stuff is dependent on a hot market. I sold a house in England that went to final offers, no real difference to sealed bids. I bought a house in Scotland in a sealed bid and I know I wasn't the highest bidder, the owner had reasons to prefer us over the other offers.
The supposed legal lock in early on in Scotland would take a lot of time and money to enforce, most people will just move on and find another buyer.
The up front survey is pretty useful, but no substitute for your own, independent survey.
By far the biggest stumbling block in both cases for me was solicitor incompetence.
The supposed legal lock in early on in Scotland would take a lot of time and money to enforce, most people will just move on and find another buyer.
So true, there is little incentive to get to concluding of missives quickly especially if you are in a chain and the other parties haven't done there bit.
If you’re struggling to sell a house currently, then something is going very wrong
on your end I’d say!!!
Getting buyers is fine but it's often first time buyers who can't get the mortgage wasting your time and money or someone in the chain causing your buyer to pull out as their sale has fallen through (again often the first time buyer triggering it). Also from things I've seen from friends, neighbours, first timers have no experience (obviously), jump into an offer but later read up on things, get advice and then decide they can't go through with it, either for financial reason or just they've then researched the property and area and decided it's not for them.
Stick the whole process in the Blockchain and it could be done within minutes.....won't happen for years yet though!
Solicitors are notoriously bad in communicating, i've found that to get and keep things moving you have to be all over them all of the time otherwise nothing happens!
The supposed legal lock in early on in Scotland would take a lot of time and money to enforce, most people will just move on and find another buyer.
Not my experience, it saved our sale that I suspect would have fallen through pretty quickly in England. While it's true that actual enforcement may have been more trouble than it's worth, knowing that legal protection is in place allowed our (good) solicitor to throw their weight around with enough substance to their threats to get the buyer back to the table and sale went through.
The supposed legal lock in early on in Scotland would take a lot of time and money to enforce, most people will just move on and find another buyer.
We had that when we bought the current place - we bid on two other properties, one of which was significantly better than we have here. Both other properties we were 'outbid' and legal process started with other purchasers.
The day we got keys for here, the other estate agent for the other two properties called me and said that it had all fallen through as both other buyers had not mortgage, and one had no hope of getting a mortgage. The most basic of checks surely, by estate agent, vendors and buyers solicitors and by the vendor. surely? But no, no-one thought to check....
That said, you also have to blame the people buying and selling - so many over the top expectations, people swithering, changing minds, generally behaving badly.
Not my experience, it saved our sale that I suspect would have fallen through pretty quickly in England. While it’s true that actual enforcement may have been more trouble than it’s worth, knowing that legal protection is in place allowed our (good) solicitor to throw their weight around with enough substance to their threats to get the buyer back to the table and sale went through.
Fair enough, but I wouldn't really want to drag an unwilling buyer back to the table. Obviously depends on individual circumstance.
The process is awful. It was going to change a few years back but the Tories got talked out of it by their friends who pay for political influence.
In short - a seller should be required to start the process and pay for all the searches before a house goes on the market and they should have a solicitor instructed with all the title deeds and other docs ready to go. This can take months to get in order but in the UK it doesn't start until a purchaser pays for the searches and instructs a lawyer who then starts asking questions around the title deeds etc. A simple requirement that the process is standardised and initiated at the sellers expense at the point you go on the market would take months of most completions.
Tories were scared out of it by concerns that it would deter people from selling but that is BS. It just takes the time wasters out of the system. You would have to incur some cost and commit at the outset instead of putting it all on the buyers.
4 months is pretty much the absolute minimum you could ever hope for, and that is assuming you perform the correct ritual & all the planets align 🤣 So I think you've done alright 😃A simple empty house sale to a first time buyer took about 4 months!
The problem isn’t getting a buyer, it is actually completing the sale once you have a buyer.
Agreed but in this case the seller hasn’t manage to find a buyer. I also mentioned how out of date the process is should they get that far.
We do have a buyer.
It's our vendor that's cocked things up. They've gone from 'everything's all good, we're dropping our ID with the estate we are buying from today'. This was last Thursday afternoon. To 'we've been gazumped' yesterday afternoon.
Something stinks though. Our vendors have either changed their mind about the property they were buying, they've been done over by the estate agent they were buying from or they never had an offer accepted officially in the first place.
In short – a seller should be required to start the process and pay for all the searches before a house goes on the market and they should have a solicitor instructed with all the title deeds and other docs ready to go.
That would make life so much easier. It is the case for auction properties (except you the buyer is expected to pay for it all once they win the auction). The legal pack provided with the sale is usually pretty comprehensive and available to all before buying. There is very little to do afterwards and sales are usually completed in 28 days.
I have bought two houses in my life - one around 2000 and I was living there in under a month, but the place was empty and it was my first house and I had deposit and mortgage all lined up - who wouldn't?
Second house in 2015, again around a month to getting the keys and that was with the seller chasing documentation from the council, again the place was empty and I had already sold the first house and had mortgage approval in principle.
This is a people problem not a process problem!!
7 months to sell a flat to a first time buyer , when we had nothing to buy .
Mainly caused by incompetent solicitors (which despite both being local and within spitting distance - hid behind covid as an excuse to drag out the process - like taking 2 weeks to pass on quieries etc) .
Queries that our solicitor could have put to bed by a return email to me without involving anyone else.
Very frustrating, almost got to the point where I was going to pull out and restart with cash buyers only . It was only my wish that it went to a FTB than an investor that stopped me.
It's possible to improve/fix things, however...
About years ago I worked with a small group of solicitors who were applying their collective experience at all stages of the buying/selling process to streamline it - reducing timelines from months to weeks, or even days.
Trouble is, as soon as the governing body for solicitors got wind of their work, they were threatened with being struck off which was game over.
In response to the original question of plans to change it....
There is an organisation in Australia who have had some success with a property settlement solution that streamlines and modernises the whole process. I've no direct experience, but I'm aware that they're looking at how the same platform and principles could be applied to the UK market. Whether digitising paper processes makes it a fundamentally better experience from a buyer or sellers perspective is probably up for debate.
I'm sure it would require the same support and investment from central government that they apparently received in Oz, but it shows that things can change.
The whole market makes for a interesting case study in the application of Blockchain.
https://theconversation.com/how-the-blockchain-will-transform-housing-markets-75691
The only way our move went smoothly was to disconnect the process - sold in England to a cash-buyer and moved into rental. Was a cash buyer in Scotland for a plot of land to build a house - even then the solicitor/estate agent appeared extremely relaxed about the whole process, doing the minimum it appeared until the very last minute. IMO there’s too many people have a vested interest in maintaining the existing system as it results in extra income for surveyors, solicitors, EPC consultants etc.
Let me add our gripes to the thread.
Our house sale has fallen-through seven or eight times since May.
This is largely due to overzealous surveyors making wild, incorrect assumptions regarding our house, and slapping an eye-watering £50k price tag on 'potential remedial work', none of which needs doing.
In response, we hired our own Damp Expert and Structural Engineer to write independent reports which (funnily enough) refuted most of what the surveyors said.
Most offerers weren't serious. Turns out a modern trend among house-buyers is to put an offer on something... but keep looking in case something better turns up. This happened several times to us where an offer we had accepted was withdrawn because the fvckers found something else.
Useless estate agents. We've changed twice. Lost count of they times they had made mistakes or failed to confirm something or were late.
Many viewers cancelled their viewings 20 minutes before they were due to arrive, or simply didn't show up. Several times I took the morning off work to clean and tidy the house, sweep up the leaves out the front etc, only to have them cancel the viewing because they did a drive-by and 'didn't realise it was on a main road.'
We've had serial viewers. One mad couple have viewed twice, but the second time pretended they were viewing it for the first time. Estate agent gets that a lot: people just like a day-out and to be nosey. No intention of buying. You get some real maddos.
Some viewers brought free-range children with them. One was a family of five with three kids running amok. While the estate agent and parents were chatting in the entrance hall, one of the little darlings ripped a radiator off a bedroom wall. Am still wrangling with the estate agent over who should pay to have it replaced.
That all said, it seems to have sold last week. Unfortunately, there is nothing out there to buy right now. As soon as something new appears on the market, the estate agent has to take it 2 hours later off because they've got two days worth of viewings lined up.
What motivation do solicitors have to change the process? The massively inefficient process keep hundreds of small business going.
I think the problem is that conveyancing is far too cheap. You're paying peanuts and then wondering why your Solicitor isn't focussing 100% on your house sale for weeks on end. The answer is simply that to break even he's probably managing 100 in parallel.
I think the problem is that conveyancing is far too cheap.
I'd disagree with that. I'd say it's inflexible. It's done one way and that's it. I've done my own conveyancing a couple of times. Admittedly it was an easy deal, but when I approached a couple of solicitors they still wanted full whack. Took less than a day to do. By contrast I had a particularly complex buy and they still charged standard rate.
Going back to the point earlier, if all the searches and surveys were done first then the solicitor can focus on the legals. Charge more for the tricky ones, less for the easy ones, and speed the whole process up
The legal process shouldn't take five mins or any real focus either. There's a standard Law Society contract, which provides a reasonable balance between the parties. Unless one solicitor is being awkward about something to create noise, or it's an old property with historic terms, there's no reason any transaction in England should be more than following a simple checklist.
A good agent with an interested progressor will eradicate a lot of the problems people mention here.
I don’t think we’ll ever get away from Chains but it’s not helpful when there is very little view of the complete chains movements. The fact the customer cannot easily get a view of the whole chains status, nor the conveyancer or agent for that matter, is bonkers in this software age. The fact that say Connells Slough who’s selling your house and Connells Reading who’s selling the house you’re buying - or configurations thereof in the chain - but don’t know they are on the same team, is mental.
Blockchain will be coming.
