House buying

[beorhthelm]

its baffling, you cant move for regulations in most the rest of life but oddly when buying a house for hundreds of thousands theres nothing. maybe because there has always been solicitors its sort of slipped by, but the agents need something to clean up their act. do sweet fa for their money, when i brought both time i had to do the chasing to get any progress.

seems a simple solution to gazumping/gazundering is that one has a contractrual obligtion to complete with a fine, say 10%, if you pull out. and make the agent also liable to a fine too, to discourage them from marketing when a property is "off the market". might need som rules to allow for good reasons, but simply getting a better price isnt one.

 

[Guinness Boy]

1) Paging [MENTION=238]Uncle Buck[/MENTION]

2) I feel Simster's pain and agree with him completely. We put our old house on with an agent who got us the asking price a couple of years ago, and we got an offer accepted on another place. It gradually became clear - after literally months - that the people we got an offer from had a dodgy flat that they were selling that was nearly impossible to get a mortgage on. They eventually pulled out and we lost our purchase having spent just short of 2 grand. Sinnot Green are the firm you want to avoid like the plague in this instance. Oh, and he laughably claimed he could get us another offer within a week so the chain didn't break. Three weeks later he came up with fifteen grand less, at which point I binned him off.

3) My dad went through none of this shit at all when he bought in France because of the process already described.

 

[ferring seagull]

I moved from Scotland to Sussex 35 years ago but to my knowledge the essentials of the Scottish system have not changed.

If selling a property, one would establish a realistic valuation based upon the advice of an estate agent, solicitor or other such as a chartered surveyor. The property would be put on the market and, subject to 'interest' received, a closing date for offers may be set ( as an alternative to say a fixed price of £xxxx). Offers would not be divulged to any party, ie sealed offers.

An offer in writing and accepted in writing was/is binding on both parties. The offer would include price and any items to be included, a date for completion and be subject to survey and a good 'title' to the property in question, ie. that there were no legal impediments to the deal being completed, etc.

In the general course of events, people knew where they were and could make arrangements accordingly, in the vendors case to then proceed to a sale based upon offers received/to be received by a fixed closing date in the not distant future. Purchasers know then where they stand and could proceed on the same basis as the seller had so done.

The system in Scotland is/was one of confidence because of the binding contract so, assuming that individuals accepted the advice of professionals, the system works well.

 

[Uncle Buck]

Are the housing market, the joy of joys...

During the 6 month marathon of farce that I faced last year, in the end it was the solicitors who were the problem and money grabbing scum. I actually got to a point where I felt sorry for the estate agent. They were generally just thick sales people, who everyone shouted at. Where as the bottle neck tended to be the solicitors. I am sure they go out of their way to annoy their competition. They do not take calls, everything has to be posted and even if you send an email asking one question, the clock starts running for the bill.

The idiot I was buying from, had extended the lease in 2007, but forgotten to register this with the Land Registry, so this got a third set of solicitors involved, as they were the ones responsible for the lease and that meant 3 sets of legal vultures trying to out do and slow each other down.

The legal bill at the end of the process was obscene and even though after several complaints, I got some money back, I was left out of pocket. My solicitors pushed me to claim some legal costs from the sellers, but as she had refused on several other matters, that would have slowed everything down again and just made money for, guess what, the solicitors.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

I looked to sell my property this year. Ultimately we have posponed it to next year now for personal reasons but we went through PurpleBricks.

Set fee. Online hub to manage viewings, offers, negotiations etc.

In the end I did a viewing myself and negotiated an offer myself. There were certain annoyances with it but for the money saved upon completion I would say its well worth it.

I imagine a growth in people independantly marketing their property would soon force Estate Agents hands to lower their fee. Whilst we were on with PurpleBricks we had people from the 3 local estate agents all trying to offer me their services for under 1% of the final price.

 

[Deleted member 22389]

No shortage of houses in Brittany, France. People can't sell, same as is in Spain. Makes me sick the housing market in this country. The old guy two doors down just sold his bungalow for £315,000 it's nothing special. The place has been bought by a developer, so I will predict it will be gutted, extension added and then an asking price of anything from £400,000 - £500,00, it will be gone in a few weeks. Nobody locally can afford these prices. OK he is getting in there and making money while the going is good, but it still makes me sick.

House up the road from me sold for £500,000 and this is Peacehaven not London. When is it going to end? I don't think it will, I reckon we could see houses in this area pushing up towards the £1,000,000 mark. All the while this goes on more and more people are being pushed out. Eventually I can see LDC start increasing everyones council tax on top of this.

There is no fix for this I'm afraid, and you can forget about the term affordable housing. Even the new builds which are tiny in Peacehaven have a starting price of £274,000, they don't even have a proper garden or even a garage. The other new builds which are a bit bigger have nearly all sold at £315,000 each.

And all the while these new builds go up nobody is expanding or improving the local infrastructure to cope. Local people will eventually sell up and leave the area.

 

[BigGully]

1) Paging [MENTION=238]Uncle Buck[/MENTION]

2) I feel Simster's pain and agree with him completely. We put our old house on with an agent who got us the asking price a couple of years ago, and we got an offer accepted on another place. It gradually became clear - after literally months - that the people we got an offer from had a dodgy flat that they were selling that was nearly impossible to get a mortgage on. They eventually pulled out and we lost our purchase having spent just short of 2 grand. Sinnot Green are the firm you want to avoid like the plague in this instance. Oh, and he laughably claimed he could get us another offer within a week so the chain didn't break. Three weeks later he came up with fifteen grand less, at which point I binned him off.

3) My dad went through none of this shit at all when he bought in France because of the process already described.

Cash buyer by any chance ..........

 

[piersa]

I feel I'm favouring the Purple Bricks approach.

Not great imo. There are many estate agents in Brighton I would not trust as far as I could kick but I'm not sure how else you are supposed to sell. They need some legislation.

 

[Hatterlovesbrighton]

No. Honestly, this is the FIFTH time either my house sale has fallen through or we have been gazumped. Today it happened again. I have now spent £6,000 on wasted fees. I'm now just ever so slightly cross.

What happened was:
* people buying my house were dependent on their place being sold. It fell through, but chain was repaired within a week. However, this has added 6 weeks to the process
* people we were buying from got wind of this (as their estate agent was also involved down the chain), and have taken a higher offer from someone who was originally not in a proceedable position but is now.
* we were in the dark while all of this happened over a 24 hour period. Our agent didn't tell us about our buyer. Our vendor's agent didn't tell us they were considering other offers.

I feel your pain, but playing devils advocate....

Your vendor had your offer and another higher offer. They chose to go with your lower offer as you were in a position to proceed quickly. While it was clearly no fault of your own, you were then put in a position where you weren't in a position to proceed. The vendor saw that that situation had changed and so accepted the higher offer.

How long should he have to wait for before accepting another offer?

Say we had changed the system and you had to commit to buy their house. But say instead of your chain being repaired in a week, you were without a buyer. Should you be still made to buy the house?

 

[Simster]

I feel your pain, but playing devils advocate....

Your vendor had your offer and another higher offer. They chose to go with your lower offer as you were in a position to proceed quickly. While it was clearly no fault of your own, you were then put in a position where you weren't in a position to proceed. The vendor saw that that situation had changed and so accepted the higher offer.

How long should he have to wait for before accepting another offer?

Say we had changed the system and you had to commit to buy their house. But say instead of your chain being repaired in a week, you were without a buyer. Should you be still made to buy the house?

If we're being specific about my situation, I should either a) be made to pay a fine for delaying the sale by 4 weeks or b) that would be one of the conditions that allows a contract to be broken.

But of course, this probably would never have happened with suitable regulation in place, because the chain wouldn't have been broken further down the line. And you could argue they might be liable for all legal fees in the chain...

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

There is no fix for this I'm afraid

There is. In Germany the buyer typically pays 13% of the price in taxes and fees. I'm sure this would put a serious brake on the UK house market. But no government will do this especially as houses seem to be such an important part of the UK economy.

I'm looking/trying to buy over here. It's been an interesting and slightly frustrating experience. What has shocked me though, is the estate agent fees; the buyer typically pays 7%. Compare this to the 1% the lawyer charges and the €80 an hour the architect charges. These latter two need around 6/7 years of study to be able to do their work, the unqualified estate guy needs nothing. Sadly this encourages a lot of cowboys into the market as just one sale in Berlin can bank you 30k.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Not great imo. There are many estate agents in Brighton I would not trust as far as I could kick but I'm not sure how else you are supposed to sell. They need some legislation.

The Brighton property scene is riddled with dodgy and undesirable people.

 

[Jesus Gul]

I feel I'm favouring the Purple Bricks approach.

I'm favouring Sarah Beeney

 

[DarrenFreemansPerm]

I'm favouring Sarah Beeney

Interesting, my Dad has been renovating a house in Lower Bevendean for the last couple of years, he's decided to sell it himself with the aid of his Sarah Beeney book.

 

[Triggaaar]

I moved from Scotland to Sussex 35 years ago but to my knowledge the essentials of the Scottish system have not changed.

If selling a property, one would establish a realistic valuation based upon the advice of an estate agent, solicitor or other such as a chartered surveyor. The property would be put on the market and, subject to 'interest' received, a closing date for offers may be set ( as an alternative to say a fixed price of £xxxx). Offers would not be divulged to any party, ie sealed offers.

An offer in writing and accepted in writing was/is binding on both parties.

It's not binding at that stage. There is no punishment for pulling out.