Property purchase timeline in the UK ridiculously log winded.

seradane

davidmcn said:

seradane said:

davidmcn said:

seradane said:
People buy leasehold properties in Scotland.

Please see above.

Okay - I assumed they were more common than they are, but they do exist.

They don't. That'll just be an English-based online estate agent absent-mindedly clicking on "leasehold" because it's a flat.

I'm sure you're right, but then what's the deal with this one? Specifically mentions the leasehold in the description. And thus unmortgageable, apparently, but still.

Comms69

seradane said:

Comms69 said:

seradane said:

Comms69 said:

seradane said:

csgohan4 said:

seradane said:

Why do people get so defensive about a cumbersome and difficult system, just because it's the one they are familiar with?

Like it's clearly a frustrating and lengthy process, for people on here to blithely go 'Oh well if you have a problem don't buy then' is just inane. Even Scotland does it better and they have all the same rules as we do here. People in European countries buy with mortgages too. There's no reason why the English system couldn't be better than it is.

Sadly it's reality and nothing you can do unless your a cash buyer or buying an auction house, in which case 28 days and jobs done. 

We all go through it, no stamping your feet will get your buyer's solicitor to pull their finger out of their behind just for you will they? Everything has to follow due process, I'm sure you don't want to buy a house and find out later the covenant in the lease is problematic for you

Look at buying a flat with cladding now, a real PITA now, so many reports you need to get before a lender will touch it. Do you want to forgo this and risk your house being worthless? By all means buy with cash then

Op has options, but if they need a mortgage, they need to wait like every other mortgaged purchase

Yes, everyone here is aware that it's "how things are" in England, and obviously if you want to buy a house you have to deal with it.

But I assume what OP is saying is WHY, why does it have to be like this? It's so unneccessary! Other countries have all the same issues and restrictions we do. People buy houses in Germany which were built years before planning and building regs. People buy apartments in Australia that have cladding (and its a very flammable country). People buy houses with mortgages in France. People buy houses with restrictive covenants in the USA. People buy leasehold properties in Scotland.

Nothing about houses in England are particularly unique or difficult, and yet for some reason it takes us three times as long to complete a property sale as it does anywhere else. Well, that I'm familiar with.... I'm sure there must be somewhere on earth that also does it as poorly, but that's hardly something to be celebrated.

Just saying 'that's the way it is' and 'due dilligence' isn't a very good excuse, is it?

Because the lenders have stipulated a number of checks and balances - i really dont understand the confusion.

And you think the lenders in other countries just go, "nah, all, good, take a few hundred thousand pounds of our money, we're not going to bother to check what you spend it on"?

no? You asked why, im telling you why. 

You want to borrow money to buy a property, the lender says sure, as long as X, Y and Z happens. If you dont like X, Y or Z - dont borrow the money. 

It's nothing to do with anywhere else, because these are the conditions under which the money is lent by the market here. 

If people suddenly stopped taking mortgages, the lenders might change the criteria

 Sure, but this whole thread is talking about why house buying in England is/isn't different to elsewhere, so it is relevant.

But also - we're getting focused on the lender's checks. In my experience that wasn't really the problem - when we bought, from providing documents to our mortgage broker to getting the mortgage offer took all of one week. Our survey, from quote to getting the report, was also just about a week. 

The bit that really seems to hold things up is the solicitors and their searches and associated queries. That seems to take months and months. Again, yes, I know, it's all due diligence. But again I do have a hard time understanding why that all seems to be so much harder for us.

And on top of that it really isn't helped by the fact that anyone in the chain can pull out at any time for any reason, leading to everyone else having to start again. Having that surety where everyone's locked in and can't just change their mind seems to result in such a simpler process. 

The solicitor is acting on behalf of the lender too and that is what i mean by having criteria. 

davidmcn

seradane said:

davidmcn said:

seradane said:

davidmcn said:

seradane said:
People buy leasehold properties in Scotland.

Please see above.

Okay - I assumed they were more common than they are, but they do exist.

They don't. That'll just be an English-based online estate agent absent-mindedly clicking on "leasehold" because it's a flat.

I'm sure you're right, but then what's the deal with this one? Specifically mentions the leasehold in the description. And thus unmortgageable, apparently, but still.

A spectacularly weird oddity is what it is! (hence unmortgageable)

Other than a few neighbourhoods where ultra-long leases were popular (and those have all recently being converted into freehold), I can only recall encountering one residential leasehold property in *mumble* years of Scottish conveyancing.

Thrugelmir

seradane said:

Thrugelmir said:

What are home ownership levels like in other countries?

As with many things these days. People want a cheap service. To provide a cheap service conveyancing has to be a volume driven business. Staff sitting around doing nothing is a non starter. One pays ones money out of choice. Pay more and you can have a personalised service. Your solicitor on call at the other end of the telephone........

According to this, the UK sits at 65% home ownership, 4% less than the EU average. So not particularly exceptional.

To your second point, you're not wrong, but again, this isn't a problem unique to England...

The EU isn't a country. 

steve866

Comms69 said:

cooltt said:

Comms69 said:

cooltt said:

Comms69 said:

cooltt said:

Here me out here folks my head is about to explode.

Does anyone else just want to scream  at the length of time it takes to purchase a property in the UK?
Every time i purchase a property i promise myself that i will lobby my MP to radically overhaul the legal process involved which simply seems to be designed to line the pockets of the legal profession. Now don't get me wrong, i fully appreciate the due diligence involved but now that email and almost all necessary documents are in electric format, why does the process still take forever!

I often feel that the legal profession needs to maintain the air of complexity around the process just to continue to charge their exorbitant fees. But come on, lots of us work in very complex industries with lots of queries and docs flying around. In the 21st century does it really need to take as long as it did back in the 19th century! 

"Can i have an update please?" Hello stupid pheasant, rest assured we're doing everything we can to push your purchase along and we've even sent a couple of emails today, despite the fact you instructed us 4 weeks ago.
Obviously we'll need to wait a minimum of 2 weeks for a reply before we even consider sending a chaser, but rest assured we'll contact you as soon as we can be bothered too. 

Buying property in almost every other EU country is an absolute breeze in comparison and that's saying something about the bureaucratic French!
Seriously we should all just stay put until the government get their a*s in gear and simplify the whole process. Annoyed as hell i am.

Have a nice weekend.  

Are you buying in cash? If not, then you have no say on it.

If you are buying in cash, it's simple.

Irrelevant 

No, it's 100% relevant. 

If you want to use someone else's money to buy the property, then the framework is there to protect them.

If you're buying in cash, you can do so with-in a couple of hours. 

Which is unnecessarily long winded and complex. 

And funnily enough no-one is forcing you to do so. It's part of the conditions of the loan. Dont like it, dont borrow the money. 

You're opinion is irrelevant, because it's not your money at risk

People should be allowed to vent about a frustrating and stressful process. I travel abroad often and have experienced long queues at customs, which I often moan about. It doesn’t mean I’m going to stop travelling. 

steve866

davidmcn said:

steve866 said:

I have heard the Scottish process is better, is that true?

Main differences in Scotland:

• Home Reports mean survey / valuation / sellers questionnaire all available to buyers before they even make a viewing, so no waiting for weeks into the process before getting surprises out of the survey
• solicitors involved from prior to offer being made, rather than brought in at a later stage and only then telling their clients about problems which could have been spotted at day one
• no waiting for a draft contract, as the initial offer effectively is the draft contract
• completion date generally agreed in principle at the start, with everyone then working towards it, rather than being a mystery until months down the line
• gazumping/gazundering majorly deterred by solicitors' rules which prohibit them from getting involved
• everything is freehold tenure, so no leasehold complications about duration / rent / freeholders demanding fees
• local searches available from private searchers pretty much by return rather than after weeks of backlogs
• contracts generally in a form which can be concluded weeks or months prior to completion rather than everything being up in the air until the last minute
• no contractual deposits payable on exchange

Thanks David that is interesting and does seem like a better system. Are flat typically a ‘share of freehold’ then?

davidmcn

steve866 said:

davidmcn said:

steve866 said:

I have heard the Scottish process is better, is that true?

Main differences in Scotland:

• Home Reports mean survey / valuation / sellers questionnaire all available to buyers before they even make a viewing, so no waiting for weeks into the process before getting surprises out of the survey
• solicitors involved from prior to offer being made, rather than brought in at a later stage and only then telling their clients about problems which could have been spotted at day one
• no waiting for a draft contract, as the initial offer effectively is the draft contract
• completion date generally agreed in principle at the start, with everyone then working towards it, rather than being a mystery until months down the line
• gazumping/gazundering majorly deterred by solicitors' rules which prohibit them from getting involved
• everything is freehold tenure, so no leasehold complications about duration / rent / freeholders demanding fees
• local searches available from private searchers pretty much by return rather than after weeks of backlogs
• contracts generally in a form which can be concluded weeks or months prior to completion rather than everything being up in the air until the last minute
• no contractual deposits payable on exchange

Thanks David that is interesting and does seem like a better system. Are flat typically a ‘share of freehold’ then?

Yes, basically. The title to the flat comes with a one-eighth (or whatever) share of the communal parts of the block included.

Tiglet2

cooltt said:

I often feel that the legal profession needs to maintain the air of complexity around the process just to continue to charge their exorbitant fees. 

Really?  Compare legal fees to the EAs fees and I think you will see that it is not the legal profession who are charging exorbitant fees.  Conveyancing has become a volume based industry because sellers and purchasers want the legal part of the transaction to be as cheap as possible and conveyancers have cut their fees to compete for business.  This results in the conveyancer handling 100s of live cases at any one time.  Providing constant updates to all these clients, together with chasing third parties every couple of days, means that there is not a lot of time left for actually doing the work to progress each transaction.  A full structural survey, which takes a few hours for the surveyor to do, is likely to cost as much if not more than your solicitor will charge for months of work.

I do think aspects of the Scottish system sound better, particularly having access to the surveys/title documents at the beginning of the process, rather than discovering information piece meal mid way through the transaction.  England did try to change things for the better with the HIPS system, but people didn't want to rely on a survey provided by the seller rather than commissioning their own survey and, consequently the system was scrapped.  Reform is needed, but due diligence is important - the conveyancer needs to act in your best interests and it is better that something takes longer to do if it means it is done properly and you are happy with the advice given, rather than miss steps out or gloss over the complexities just to make the transaction quicker.

YoungBlueEyes

I’m not sure my experience is typical, but - 
I bought my house last spring (so middle of Brexit but pre Covid). I was a cash buyer buying an empty ex-rental, whilst living with a friend who’d took me in while I was house hunting. From placing an offer to getting the keys was very nearly 7 months. The main issue was the management company who took weeks for every query. I actually asked my solicitor if they were sorting out and hand writing every damned thing from scratch! They also cost me a lot more than my solic did.... THAT could do with sorting out imo.