Are there any plans to update the antiquated process of house buying in England?

steve866

davidmcn said:

davidggreen said:

Thanks for your reply. I am not a first-time buyer so understand the buying process from my side.

But not "how long searches actually take and what is the process"? What do you know?

Taking all-party meetings as an example, for starters you've got the practical issue of how you schedule those - difficult enough to get the two conveyancers to block out an hour or so, never mind assume that their clients will also be available (many of whom have "proper" jobs not allowing them to join during the day) or that they even fancy the idea of attending such a meeting. Plus at what stage are you doing this and what is the agenda? Enquiries might not be ready, answers won't necessarily be readily to hand. Fine if you've actually got something to negotiate and all the relevant people are there, but what if e.g. buyers need to run something past their lenders?

Whilst the idea is far from perfect, I would predict 90% of house buyers across all walks of life / professions would find an hour or take a half day off work if they could speed up their house transaction! 

Mickey666

SpiderLegs said:

Mickey666 said:

SpiderLegs said:

princeofpounds said:

Talking of surveyors lobbying... check out the location of RICS. Just over Parliament Square from the Palace of Westminster, right next to the Supreme Court. Must make it very convenient. They must be doing ok for themselves to warrant an HQ there.

I do suspect they are a big part of the problem and were an obstacle for HIPs. They don't want to lose the multiple-surveys-on-one-property business. But the thing is, they would probably need to be held to a higher standard of accountability if a seller-appointed surveyor prepared the surveys for all buyers... we all know that it's often barely worth the paper it's written on, given the amount of back-covering they engage in.

Problem with house selling is that there are a number of large, regulated institutions and professions involved in the process. All of whom want to defend their own positions and therefore have little interest in getting together to explore more efficient methods.
sometimes a nice pandemic or war or some other problem is the only way things move forwards.

There’s no appetite for rocking the boat from anyone, certainly not in government. Other than the odd forum poster who’s in despair at things taking far longer than they’d accept in their own job, the rest of us just shrug our shoulders and say yeah well that’s just the way it is,

But that's not really true is it?  Or at least it's only true to the extent that buyers and sellers want them to be.  As I described earlier, anyone with ready funds could complete a legal property transaction within a couple of hours if they wished.  They don't, of course, because they want to make loads of enquiries, pay for expert opinions on a whole range of things and usually need to coordinate with a chain of other buyer/sellers.  It is all this that takes the time and how would you propose to speed up those activities?

Property auctions prove that fast transactions CAN be done, but the generally lower prices (mostly to cover the risks involved) make them unattractive to most domestic buyers/sellers.

So the choices are out there if you really want them.

I don’t really think the solution to speeding up property transactions is for millions of people to do it all themselves.

however next time I’m in the market I’ll give it a go. Setting up my own bank should be a doddle.

Nor do I, which is why it doesn't happen and why it all takes as long as it does.

Slithery

I completed on my last purchase 12 days after first seeing it on a random internet search.

Bonniepurple

Slithery said:

I completed on my last purchase 12 days after first seeing it on a random internet search.

I can beat that.  I obtained half a property overnight (inheritance) so obviously I didn’t do any checks or searches.  When my brother bought me out, he didn’t do any either- he felt that as he owned half the property already and knew the area it wasn’t worth it.    If you can obtain the cash legally and want to take the risk, the process is very simple - HOWEVER most people need to have a mortgage which means the bank has to be satisfied, and also people, when spending hundreds of thousands of pounds, tend to want to make sure that the drainage works, that there’s a water supply, that flooding is unlikely and that there’s no current plans to build an slaughter house next door - all of which require third party involvement and add to the timescales.

BikingBud

Bonniepurple said:

Slithery said:

I completed on my last purchase 12 days after first seeing it on a random internet search.

I can beat that.  I obtained half a property overnight (inheritance) so obviously I didn’t do any checks or searches.  When my brother bought me out, he didn’t do any either- he felt that as he owned half the property already and knew the area it wasn’t worth it.    If you can obtain the cash legally and want to take the risk, the process is very simple - HOWEVER most people need to have a mortgage which means the bank has to be satisfied, and also people, when spending hundreds of thousands of pounds, tend to want to make sure that the drainage works, that there’s a water supply, that flooding is unlikely and that there’s no current plans to build an slaughter house next door - all of which require third party involvement and add to the timescales.

And all of which could be done once before the property is listed, to a defined standard and with some liability for the accuracy of the advice.  
The inertia to change comes from people who are content with the current inefficient system as it generates a steady and repetitive income stream for them.

p00hsticks

NatNat77 said:

Being able to apply for a mortgage before offering on a property would help speed things up, my buyer is almost 4 months in and still no offer! Obviously covid hasn't helped and he had an issue with his credit report so that explains part of the delay  It would have to be subject to valuation and a time limit of course. But if you knew you were guaranteed to be able to borrow X amount before you go house shopping I'm sure it would speed up the process and save some stress

Are you saying this doesn't happen these days? Admittedly it's over 40 years since I last bought a property with a mortgage so I'm  well out of touch. Back in my day, unless you were a cash buyer,  the first step in the house buying process was to have a personal interview with the local building society manager (having saved with the society for x number of years to first prove your worthiness!) in order to establish how much they were prepared to lend you, and only then did you go house hunting. As you say, having put in an offer it was still necessary for the lender to survey the chosen property to agree that they were prepared to lend on it, but the mortgage in principle had already been agreed.

teachfast

Many (not all) solicitors and conveyancers spin it out inordinately to justify their jobs and fees. A conveyancing friend said it is a trade secret that simple conveyancing can be done in 24-48 hours and even issues that arise shouldn't spin it out like the weeks they do. 

Basically, a massive scam and we're the mugs. 

Having experienced a solicitor recently who seemed to have every single stock answer ready to fob me off, including a massive file full of paper that appeared to be a prop that he thumped on the table when we arrived, I can quite believe it. 

So don't expect anything to change soon.  They're all in on it. 

Thrugelmir

greatcrested said:

BikingBud said:

PS- Why do we pay solicitors so much for it,

I was embarrassed to look him in the face seeing what the EA earned compared to the solicitor's comparatively negligible fee.

The solicitor doesn't have to recover their costs from other clients. The macro view of a business provides a very different perspective to the micro which is where people tend to base their personal views from.  Looking at their own circumstances in isolation. 

sst1234

Conveyancer can afford to be slow and ineffective as they are just churning out tick box exercises. It doesn’t exactly brain power to repeat the same process over and again. If more buyers had the confidence, mapped process and inclination, they could probably do it themselves and remove the waste that is conveyancer’s fee. You are not wrong OP.