Naming & shaming website

azkaban420

OP, much as I understand your frustration, the 'name and shame' idea is really not worth it and is open to more problems than help....far too many what ifs.

I personally believe things happen for a reason. You may find tomorrow that your house of dreams lands in your lap and is FAR better than the one you lost out on. Then you may be thankful you got let down by the very people you are angry about now.

We got let down by two lots of sellers (one pulled out on the day of exchange, the other strung us along for months) and we have now found the house of our dreams, have exchanged and complete next Friday. In hindsight I am now grateful I didn't end up buying the other properties and the sellers did me a favour by not selling to me for whatever reason. Swings and roundabouts

Move on and focus your energies on finding the right place.

Az

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

sonastin wrote: »

The difference being, you put your offers in much later than we would in England. We check that the vendor is willing to accept our price and then check out the area and the details of the property. In Scotland, as far as I understand it, you check out the area and details of the property then find out if the vendor is willing to accept your offer. Same steps. Different order. Neither better nor worse. Just different.

The typical transaction process in Scotland would go as follows....

1. Get a mortgage offer in principle.

2. Appoint a solicitor and negotiate their fees to represent you as the buyer and make offers on your behalf. They will check that you have a mortgage offer in principle.

3. View houses.....

4. Select house you want. Read home report pack survey report. Make sure you really want house. Check area. Make sure you really, really want house, because putting an offer in is a serious thing and jerking people around is just plain rude..

5. Instruct solicitor to make offer on your behalf, in writing.

6. Wait for acceptance, usually within 24 hours, unless it's a closing date situation which may take a week or so.

7. Your solicitors exchange missives. (2-4 weeks)

8. The house is yours.

It's better because it pretty much eliminates timewasters, broken chains, gazumping, gazundering, etc.

Doing things in that order makes FAR more sense.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

sonastin wrote: »

Define "unexpected". Some people are stupid enough that they wouldn't expect the survey to disclose that the house is made of brick
Seriously though, lots of surveys highlight flaws with the property - dated wiring, old central heating, potential for damp, etc. These can all be excuses for pulling out. What to the vendor may seem trivial can be a deal breaker for the buyer. If the fate of the deposit rests on the survey report, surveyors fees will go through the roof and we won't be any closer to agreeing what is a good reason to pull out...

Well in Scotland we now have the survey (and valuation) as part of the home report, so you'd know before you offered.

I'd thoroughly recommend it, an absolutely great system.

You know up front the exact condition and mortgage valuation.

suited-aces

I'd rather rely on someone I appointed to be honest.

LOLAF

azkaban420 wrote: »

OP, much as I understand your frustration, the 'name and shame' idea is really not worth it and is open to more problems than help....far too many what ifs.

Az

I take on board all these comments. I just think that when it comes to property transactions, due to the current legal requirements, some people behave in a way they would not dare behave in their normal life and the only reason is that they know that the other side can do absolutely noting about it.

In a time where everyone "googles" everything I hoped it will deter people from behaving badly if they know that their prospective employer might find this info on them, or their friends or people they care about.

I know it's not a perfect solution but maybe it will encourage people to spend more time negotiating and then when they put/accept an offer they will actually close the deal unless material defects are discovered or really extreme circumstances arise.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

suited-aces wrote: »

I'd rather rely on someone I appointed to be honest.

And you are completely free to do that.

Spend as much of your own money as you want. The results will rarely be of significant difference.

Running_Horse

There was a similar website showing bad neighbours in America on a map:

http://google.about.com/od/googlemapsandmashups/gr/rotton_neighbor.htm

Didn't last long for some reason.

googler

LOLAF wrote: »

Is posting the truth about people, even if unpleasant, an offence?

You don't need to be a lawyer to ask

"How do we KNOW it's the truth?"

alezzandro

LOLAF wrote: »

I take on board all these comments. I just think that when it comes to property transactions, due to the current legal requirements, some people behave in a way they would not dare behave in their normal life and the only reason is that they know that the other side can do absolutely noting about it.

In a time where everyone "googles" everything I hoped it will deter people from behaving badly if they know that their prospective employer might find this info on them, or their friends or people they care about.

I know it's not a perfect solution but maybe it will encourage people to spend more time negotiating and then when they put/accept an offer they will actually close the deal unless material defects are discovered or really extreme circumstances arise.

Lolaf, to elaborate a bit on what people previously said, compare your proposal with a system like, say, eBay.

eBay allows you to give positive-neutral-negative feedback to buyers/vendors to be used by future users. If you notice, each user, even the most perfect one, has some negative feedback. Why? Because people are strange and unreasonable, because the two parties sometimes do not understand each other, or because of some other unexpected circumstances.

In any case, the system works quite well because users tend to accumulate numerous transactions and, in the long term, a sort of "wisdom of the crowds" emerges to describe the nature of a user. In other words, it eliminates the border effects.

Now, how many houses a person buys and sell in their life? Whatever the number is, it is too small to have statistical relevance and it is too easy to abuse it, volountarily or not.

In short, it cannot work.

DVardysShadow

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

The typical transaction process in Scotland would go as follows....

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6. Wait for acceptance, usually within 24 hours, unless it's a closing date situation which may take a week or so.

7. Your solicitors exchange missives. (2-4 weeks)

8.

It's better because it pretty much eliminates timewasters, broken chains, gazumping, gazundering, etc.

The significant difference is that the offer and the exgange of contracts/missives are so close together.

This means that there is no gap in the process between the offer and the point of commitment. As far as I can see, the games can carry on right to this point and although the Home Report seems to cover most of the pre-contract issues, if you need to do your own research, you don't get an exclusive period as buyer for this part of the process. In England the seller's solicitor will notify the buyer's solicitor if the seller is negotiating with more than 1 party. [But note that this exclusive period only begins when the seller's solicitor sends a draft contract to the buyer's solicitor - the OP did not get this far.]

So, I'm concluding that the effective difference is that because there is no exclusive period before contract in Scotland, everyone understands that they are proceeding at risk of losing the money they spend investigating the property right to the point of the offer being accepted. In England, the informal exclusivity of the period between offer and contract leads to false expectation and upset like the OP is expressing. In Scotland, such disappointments occur all of the time, but everyone swallows them because they understand why.