Advice on Moving House

Seriously, expect the chain to fail and keep looking for alternatives, nothing has been signed and in that time your seller or buyer may not choose to wait or may have a genuine reason for pulling out.

It absolutely sucks, that's why the "industry" should be overhauled and heavily regulated.
 
There are indeed many issues in the process. Mostly its time based though.

I'm not sure what good more regulation would do, of estate agents at least, as it always seems to hit the independents harder than the corporates. IME the independents are the ones that care about maintaining a good reputation after all its their business while the corporates, locally at least, change their manager at least once a year.

Every year the number standard enquires raised on behalf of the lender (as well as the buyer) is increasing, this slows the legal process down and local authorities frequently have a backlog producing local searches and answering enquiries, even now when the property market isn't exactly buzzing.

Frequently one lender who brings out a good mortgage product will be inundated with applications causing back logs.

My biggest problem is with large conveyancing companied that employ a high proportion of clerical staff (rather than legally trained ones) to follow a kind of flow chart approach to conveyancing. They are in theory overseen by a solicitor but in practice anything that deviates from the norm risks either causing big delays or being missed.

In the last 4 weeks these 2 situations have arisen due to such lawyers-

- The go where the failure of the "solicitor" to obtain a letter which costs £2.20 means that their client has to either buy an indemnity policy for £250 or wait 2 weeks for that letter to come in. I suggested obtaining it after exchange but the "solicitor" said that since they were also acting for the lender they needed either one or the other in place before exchange. (That's bullshit BTW, its just a corporate jobsworth answer)

- A modern house where the corporate conveyancer who acted on the original purchase from new had cocked up big time. The original land owner had kept a strip of land and when people bought the houses they also had to buy the "ransom strip" to gain access, unfortunately they conducted the transaction with the wrong company within the group, i.e. they bought it from ThatCompany PLC when the land was owned by ThatCompany Ltd effectively if ThatCompany had wanted to play hardball they could have charged him again about £14K! However, ThatCompany which shall remain nameless are a housing association and when they started saying about this having to be an additional transaction we suggested that the local media would find the story quite interesting.... Low and behold it was sorted for just the the cost of the fees involved, and the seller is reporting his previous conveyancer to the law society.

As far as additional regulation when you sell you are already expected to provide/obtain
- Gas safety Check
- Electrical Safety Check
- Fensa certification for your windows
- Local Search
- Environmental search
- Some areas you will need a Radon test, a Coal board search, and so on

There has been much discussion about how best to reform the buying and selling process but there has been no workable alternative. The home information pack was a waste of space and the continental and Scottish systems have their own problems as well.

Personally I would like to see a pre-contract system where a 1% deposit is lodged with solicitors by both buyer an seller and if either party withdraws then they forfeit their deposit. I would also like to see a situation where in order for lenders keep their licence to lend the have to process and provide a lending decision (either yes or no) within 14 days of application, at least 95% of the time. That would provide them with an incentive to pre-approve lending decisions, the current system of approval in principle is next to worthless. I would also like to see a streamlining of the amount of enquiries required by the buyer and their lender and a ruling that covenants are limited to a certain length of time, say 30 years, that way 100 year old clauses can't be dredged up and cause problems.

Of course none of this will ever happen and every year the process will continue to get slower and slower as more and more arse covering exercises are added in.
 
A pre-contract between buyer and seller is a good idea. Its interesting that you expect those checking, certficating and conveyancing the property to be fully trained and qualified yet anyone could literally set up an agency on the high street tommorow and deal with the most expensive purchase or sale(s) you're ever likely to make in a life time.

When I was looking to buy my first property during the recession in the early nineties the agent said the buyer was unwilling to move on price even though it had been on the market for nearly six months. I genuinely couldn't afford the asking price (in the days of 2.5 x salary only) so I did a little digging and discovered it was a reposession. Yes you guessed it I contacted the bank concerned and they told me the price they actually wanted which was as it happened a price I could afford.

I then happily told the agent what we'd agreed (priceless) and that's just one reason why agents should be regulated and licenced as well as work for a set fee irrespective of property value.

HIPS was actually a good idea watered down and poorly implemented, if it had included a legally binding search and survey in the first place the back logs you complain about would be much reduced. Sure the onus is on the sellers but why shouldn't it be and you'd stop a lot of speculative time wasters.
 
One thing to double check PC; make sure the mortgage life insurance policy is up and running by the moment of completion. I had a client (female) many years ago, whose husband died (early thirties) totally out of the blue within a couple of days of them moving into their new house. Some kind of flu that went to his heart. It turned out that the policy hadn't yet started, and she was then faced with losing her home on top of losing her husband. Obviously no-one's going to die here......but best to have that policy in place anyhow.
Other than that, not a lot you can do about the situation. It's totally out of your control, so if I was in your shoes I would probably kick something (inanimate) several times and then breeeathe.
 
Tony what you mention still happens, at a guess I would say they wanted it for themselves, but that is covered and has been for all the time I've been in Estate agency ('97). These days repo's are administered by a 3rd party (not the bank) and the terms of instruction state that the property can not be sold to a member of staff or their family.

Failure to pass through an offer is a criminal offence (not civil) general agency law covers as does specific Estate Agency law. However when trading standards catch out the wrong doers they tend to give them a telling off rather than do anything meaningful. As I understand it we all have to be a part of an ombudsman scheme now too, but again it means little. I get where you are coming from but duplicating regulations and having licensing won't stop people willing to break the law from doing so.

HIPS were flawed, an idealistic but unworkable concept.

Searches are going online and will be available instantly, that is what should happen as they are only truly valid for the day they are done. I wouldn't want a 6 month old search when I buy a house.

Survey valuations must be commissioned by the lender to avoid a specific type of fraud which occurred in the 80's & 90's.

One thing that buyers often don't recognise is that the agent is acting on behalf of the seller, I frequently have to stop people telling me what they might go up to.

Agents fees are a debatable issue, with a lot of pros and cons. Interestingly the rates charges in the UK are low in comparison to many other countries.

I am certain though that if everybody paid the same the owners of the cheapest would pay more. The way it works out for us is that the average houses pay the bills/staff wages, the expensive stuff pays for holidays and the flats aren't really that profitable but can introduce you to what will hopefully be a long standing client.

A listing fee equivalent to maybe a third of the total amount payable would be great as I pay out for printing, advertising and staffing to market houses but plenty of sellers have a change of heart and decide not to move. Sometimes part way through a sale. However, sellers like the no sale no fee way of doing things.

The problem is not that the system wrong its that its too slow and is badly understood.


soapalchemist said:
One thing to double check PC; make sure the mortgage life insurance policy is up and running by the moment of completion.
Click to expand...

I would say point of exchange actually Sharon. The one time that I had that situation the solicitors were debating how that would have panned out if the husband had died between exchange and completion. As it stood he died a few days before we expected to exchange.
 
We nearly lost our house due to the incompetence of Shoosmiths. The only thing that saved us really was when the estate agent of the seller rang us up and said they were thinking about dropping out due to the amount of queries our 'solicitor' kept going back with.

The final straw was some sort of indemnity insurance for a big council owned tree in the road!

In the end I rang Shoosmiths and said they were going to lose us the house and demanded they stop asking queries which they hadn't even mentioned to us.

If Northampton had been a bit nearer I would have happily driven up to crap on their doorstep.
 
Well we move on Friday. The whole thing has dragged on due to some idiots further up the chain going on holiday for three weeks having told nobody first. Then because things all happened at once giving little notice we struggled to find a removal firm. It's OK now but I'm feeling rather stressed about the whole thing. I'm dreading the moving day itself as I know there will be some things we've forgotten to do. Oh, and how will I manage without tinternet for the week or more it takes BT to hook us up?! :mad:

Wish me luck!! :)
 
Pig Cat said:
Well we move on Friday. The whole thing has dragged on due to some idiots further up the chain going on holiday for three weeks having told nobody first. Then because things all happened at once giving little notice we struggled to find a removal firm. It's OK now but I'm feeling rather stressed about the whole thing. I'm dreading the moving day itself as I know there will be some things we've forgotten to do.

Wish me luck!! :)
Click to expand...
Good luck, glad its all come together. Finally.

Oh, and how will I manage without tinternet for the week or more it takes BT to hook us up?! :mad:
Click to expand...
Muscle wastage shouldn't be much.
 
Good luck PC! ... and remember to do everthing as Mrs PC says and everything'll go well :D Our latest (last) move whent very smooth, for me. We had ordered packing and moving company, when the bastards, errhh, movers, came they said they knew nothing about packing... My wife was sick at the time and I was on an island far away (true), she had the move of her nightmares come through... We still talk about at times :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom