Why does it take so long to buy and sell a house?
https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/property-home/article/why-does-it-take-so-long-to-buy-and-sell-a-house-hdqdfqjlw
by rein_deer7
Why does it take so long to buy and sell a house?
https://www.thetimes.com/life-style/property-home/article/why-does-it-take-so-long-to-buy-and-sell-a-house-hdqdfqjlw
by rein_deer7
32 comments
It’s so fucking stupid, i think it should be a legal requirement for the seller and the buyer to have all their papers ready before they can put it on market or put an offer. Theres so much unnecesaary back and forth rhrough solicitor.
I’m convinced it takes as long as it does because the middlemen involved want to justify their fees by making it seem more complicated than it has to be.
Conveyancers want to add to their fees too and so look for work and problems to sort – some quite rightly but others eg checking records for a 10 year old boiler I find a stretch. They are actually referred to as “fee earners” by the firm partners.
Because Britain, as a country, our political class as generalists who have at best done PPE decrees, and HMT following Treasury Orthodoxy don’t understand how productivity works.
There is this idea that the way you make the state and wider economy more effective is by reducing headcount. This reduces the revenue column of the budget, which you can then spend on other things. The idea is that this will magically mean that by saving money, the state is smaller and the world will become a better place.
In practice, the bureaucracy and administration is still there (and more often than not, increasing in response to things like Grenfell). The fictional money that you theoretically saved ends up not actually being realised, but you got to announce something and the papers can’t put two and two together when things inevitably get worse, and so you just blame lazy civil servants and Diversity and Inclusivity scheme rather than taking any form of responsibility.
The tragedy is that you can probably solve this issue in a manner that saves money in the long run by investing in digital solutions while simplifying and standardising administrative processes, but that would actually involve some degree of planning and strategy while being a lot of hard work, which is pointless when most politicians are being moved around every six months and the right wing press and most of your voters don’t actually care about delivering public services competently.
I agree. In this day and age, all land registry/searches should be digital. Should be 2 weeks max once the funds are in place.
That link is paywalled, can’t read it /:
I’m currently 6 months into the process. The biggest mistake was letting the agent recommend a conveyancer, rather than look for my own.
Between that and the management company not being able to respond to simple queries, it’s been frustrating.
Most of my time buying was waiting around for solicitors, surveyors, and people from the council to do their jobs.
Our solicitor literally went on a 2 week holiday during our process, and then promptly forgot about us on her return. We had to call and remind her we existed for her to continue the process. It was almost 3 months of waiting before we realized “shit isn’t getting done is it”
We had planned to move in early October. Didn’t move in until Christmas day, *which was super convenient, thanks.* Like, what the fuck?
Needs a tech-based disruptor to come along and reinvent the whole process, although I’m sure they’d be lobbied against. Whole process could be done online in weeks. Such an archaic process right now, but that benefits everybody involved except the seller/buyer.
I have no idea what the article says because it’s paywalled, but delays tend to be:
1. Waiting for the bank to do its valuation and approve the purchase (weeks);
2. Waiting for responses from the local authority to standard searches (weeks to months);
3. Waiting for the seller to respond to enquiries (and includes management companies on leasehold sales) (weeks);
4. Waiting for the rest of the chain to get itself in order (weeks or months).
Frankly, you could sort a lot out if the seller did 2. and 3. and had the information available. Unfortunately, estate agents don’t do anything toward 3. and don’t really do much to help 4. either.
It’s pretty ridiculous. For context, in South Africa, we have mostly open show days at which people can make a signed offer then and there which is legally binding. It is not contingent on a chain or you selling your property. As long as the seller accepts, you can realistically be living in your newly purchased home in as little as 2 weeks.
You have to get a Local Land Charges search from the Local Authority and that takes fucking ages because they’re understaffed.
It’s the exclusive reason.
The government should hold a single ledger of all properties in the UK, who owns them, the history of surveys and any other data relating to to that property.
Moving house should be as simple as updating this ledger on a website.
I was done and dusted in 9 weeks, surprised the average is so high.
Because they have to search a lot of records, many of which aren’t digital, so you know if you are buying a house with a massive high pressure ethane pipeline underneath it.
I recently sold a house, no onward chain as we were divorcing and splitting the assets, and for me it’s 100% the solicitors.
Things took so long the buyer chased the estate agent who in turn chased the sols who said they were waiting on us for paper work. The estate agent then rang me to hurry it up, at which point I let her know we’d sent the paper work back 3 weeks prior (hand delivered to reception). The estate agent sighed and said it’s not the first time this has happened.
Equally the first sale fell through the day before we were due to complete because the other side’s solicitors up to that point hadn’t made their client aware about the rising damp. We’d disclosed all the necessary reports and documentation about 12 weeks before. But they claimed they knew nothing about it, and the buyer pulled out.
Basically every problem we had one way or the other was caused by solicitors on one side or the other.
Gotta make it take a long time so everyone involved can justify fleecing you
It varies in time because the buyers and sellers are can be in different situations. Often it involves a chain, e.g you are waiting on the seller to complete and they are waiting on their seller to complete etc.. additionally you have two different solicitors both carrying out due diligence.
The whole thing can vary an awful lot. It does take much to get a delay added.
Because your country doesn’t treat offers as contractual, in other countries an offer is done with a deposit and then treated as acceptance/consideration with some potential outs for real reasons such as finance and finding building defects.
Simply put, if you made the acceptance of an offer contractual, and prompt a 30-60 day closure period all of your councils, lawyers and banks would have to get into gear.
You want to try right to buy…..it took me 2 bloody years
When I was buying our first house in 2012 it took just over 3 weeks to complete the purchase. Estate agent said the quickest sale process they had took just 5 business days to complete.
We were buying again last year and it took… 4 months… and it was considered ‘quick’ by EA… Dont know why it looks this way, they blamed some alleged ‘covid backlog’ but I dont really know if thats true…
Solicitors absolutely drag it out. Mine would go weeks without saying a word, and suddenly had plenty to tell me every time i email to chase them up.
Like how they saw a “problem” with the decking, which I was absolutely fine with and never mentioned to them but they were hassling the other side about some stupid covenant that restricted it for 5 years (no house builder is going to come back and moan, they build and move on). They bring up the smallest thing to drag it out.
My brother lives in America.
I found a house (not in chain) that I put an offer on in December. Still awaiting to exchange now, sellers solicitors are atrocious and we are still waiting on final enquiries.
My brother started looking for a new home in a new state of the US on the other side of the country only in January, and was moved into it in March – and even sold their own home.
It isn’t right how complicated it is over here.
If it’s a straight sale on a single property there should be no issues but so many people are involved and it seems the entire line is full of incompetence
Then add a chain and it becomes a joke. One idiot anywhere down that chain holds everything up
It should be a requirement that the seller has everything related to their property available before it’s up for sale. Then all that necessary paperwork can simply be handed to the buyers solicitor to verify rather than having that being applied for during the process.
There is a total lack of accountability with estate agent. Many are charlatans.
We bought a house in 6 weeks. Where there’s a will (and a heavily pregnant woman shouting at solicitors), there’s a way.
I had an issue with the vendor of my current home where they complained about how long everything was taking, and requested their solicitor to contact mine and my buyers’ solicitor to threaten to take the house off the market, if the transaction wasn’t completed in the next month.
This was responded to with an email from my buyers’ solicitor saying they’ve been ready for ages and have themselves been requesting updates, and a follow up from me (guys my solicitor) with a photo of my front room which was full of packed boxes (and I had also been phoning/emailing my solicitor wondering what the delay was).
All of this after the vendor had wasted 6 weeks in the summer by not checking their own spam folder for emails from *their* solicitor.
This was a sale where my buyer was a first time buyer, and the vendor was already living in their new home, and I was the only link in what should have been the simplest chain imaginable.
Edit
I also did my own land registry searches to try and speed things up.
Mine took a year to buy because the seller was a useless cunt that hadn’t gotten probate. Why the fuck that isn’t a legal requirement I have no idea.
Cherry on top was I had to get a second mortgage offer, just in time for the horsewoman of the apocalypse, Liz cunting Truss to double the interest rates through her sheer dumbfuckery.
I’m 1 week away from completion and I made the offer 6 weeks ago. Granted theres no chain, but it shows what a difference 2 good solicitors/conveyancers makes.
We’re in the process of it now, buying my wife’s late grandmas, however we can’t do anything because of probate. Even though everyone is really excited for us to live there
Wow it’s the opposite here in Canada. Houses selling like hotcakes.
I pushed my (no chain) sale through in 4 weeks. Maybe I got lucky, but I went to the house and got the sellers number and quickly built a rapport with them.
We were each on the phone to the solicitors and estate agents everyday. Everyday. Even if there were no updates I’d thank the solicitor and let them know I’d be calling again tomorrow – pretty sure this lit a fire under their arse and made them want rid of us so they worked fast.
Us and the sellers made sure to keep each other informed of each move so that if one of the many middlemen tried to pull some bullshit we’d instantly sort it. They were on our side and we were on theirs. The way we saw it we were working together *against* the middlemen.
The second the solicitors or estate agents asked for documents I’d email them and then turn up with a physical copy, they could not avoid us. Nor could they claim anything got lost or forgotten about.
By the end of the process I’m pretty sure they hated us, be we didn’t care. We were paying for their services, in full and up front, so we made damn sure to get them in a timely manner.
4 weeks from offer to move in day.
Well, usually you’re going to be living in it between buying it and selling it…
2 houses around me sold in under a month.
The secret?
The price wasn’t delusional.