Why is homebuying such a headache?

I have bought homes in Australia ,Melborne , most are sold by Auction. Be prepared to pay 10% Deposit on the day, Agent holds this. After 30 days that becomes available to the seller.
Be prepared to sign the formal sale agreement.
Balance of sale usually 60 days or by agreement.
Some sales are by fixed price. If making an offer its formal via agent. Be prepared to pay 500 or more up front. If offer accepted then that will be off the price.
They also have sealed bids to the agent on fixed date .
I have also bought a house here. It is a very nerve racking way and it took 4 months. Agent and Conveyance No Problem very good.

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Gerry – The auction route is usually much faster than that in the UK. The fall of the hammer equals exchange of contracts. The buyer pays their 10% and completion is usually within fourteen days. That is why the system is popular for executor sales and for property that is either unmortgageable or requires much improvement so will attract developers who tend not to argue about the bits and pieces. At property auctions there are representatives of firms that provide bridging finance for people who have not got the full deposit ready or whose bid overshot their price limit and need extra funds. It’s a very fluid process for selling property but the price all depends on the people present on the day and what competition each lot is up against. I have attended many property auctions as an interested spectator, and in one case as an executor selling a property, and there are often two or three hundred people in the room. The appeal of selling by auction is the certainty and finality of the outcome – there is no opportunity for people on either side to change their minds once the deal is done.

I think this is a thoroughly good move by the Nationwide and I hope other mortgage lenders follow suit.

Another scandal that needs to be addressed is the recent and expanding practice of selling houses on new developments as leasehold properties and then selling the freeholds on to an investment company which, over time, milks the leaseholders. The only reason I can see for self-contained properties being sold on leases is to pitch the price in a lower bracket and potentially make it more readily saleable, however I doubt that there is sufficient transparency to prove that it is advantageous to anyone other than the developer and the freeholder. Leasehold is understandable for apartments where there are common structures, services and spaces that require competent management and maintenance for the safety and benefit of all the leaseholders and there is legislation in place to protect leaseholders’ rights and control freeholders’ behaviour; these rights are also available to leaseholders of free-standing property but are largely irrelevant [because there are no common parts with freeholder obligatioons] and almost entirely unenforceable in practice.

Extract for Guardian comments.
“No-one is encouraged to use “the builder’s own solicitors”.”

Unfortunately, this is exactly the opposite of what happens. I was a practising solicitor for over 35 years, and when one of my clients was buying a new build they were told to use a solicitor selected by the builder on almost every occasion. Indeed, in some cases they were offered free legal fees as an incentive.

Those solicitors were nothing more than prostitutes. Their real client was the builder, as they needed the flow of fees that the referrals produced. Their nominal client was merely a unit to be processed in a way that would keep the builder happy.

There was a blatant conflict of interest, but nobody ever stopped them, and it carries on today. In fact a quick look at the Persimmon website contains the text: “If you’d like help in buying your home or would like us to recommend a local independent solicitor, please feel free to contact Persimmon.”

persimmonhomes.com/buying-advice/growing-family/solicitors-contracts-and-completion”

A readers comment on the Guardian thread about builders/solicitors and the evil ground rent and leases being introduced over the last decade or so. The whole mess is shameful and I am totally embarrassed that Which? the consumer champion I have supported for thirty years seems blinded to the problems and a newspaper is the only source for this information.

What really sticks in the craw is the £21m losses on Which? Mortgage services [funded by subscriptions] and the that is after £12m plus of fees from building societies, solicitors etc etc. It seems to me that Which? has joined the financial circus and avoided mentioning the shoddily built houses, the cartel on land, and these insidious new tweaks of old laws to what otherwise would be freehold houses.

I would add that Which? has a preferred large solicitor Shoosmiths who were £200 more expensive than my solicitor in fees on selling a property.

Somebody didn’t like your proposals, Alfa, and gave you the thumbs-down, but I agree with you. It is the basis for tightening the relationship between the buyer and seller once an offer has been accepted and before all the legal ramifications have been dealt with. The details would need to be developed but it is a practical proposal.

Some years ago when we were selling our house in London in a difficult market a prospective purchaser made an offer that was conditional on us taking the property off the market immediately [he had obviously been watching too much Phil Spencer]. I said I would be prepared to do that if he promised not to look at another property between then and exchange of contracts. He didn’t think much of that idea so walked away.

There was a time when the buyer would make a token payment to the seller’s estate agent, acting as stakeholder, to kind of lock them in, but the amounts at risk of forfeit were so small that there was little incentive to see a purchase through if something cropped up. Your substantial stake would be far more compelling. It would also require estate agents to produce far more informative property particulars rather than leave sellers to read between the lines to discover possible drawbacks. To some extent the home condition report proposal [Home Information Pack – England and Wales] would have provided a better basis for making an offer on a property but that policy was cancelled by the Coalition government before it had a chance to demonstrate its value and the only part we are left with is the largely disregarded [and largely pointless] energy performance certificate. The Home Report remains in place in Scotland as a legal requirement.

Which? did put forward some detailed proposals on the survey some years ago and lobbied hard for the government to regulate that sellers and not buyers would have to provide the survey. IIRC the government watered down the ideas and left things much as they are,which is less than satisfactory.

The real problem is that it requires legislation to change things since otherwise there are far too many people involved in the lucrative business of property conveyancing and sale for real change to become a reality. But I don’t think the chain is the main issue. Buying any house, be it brand new or more often – pre-loved (!) – has a whole nest of complications awaiting the unwary.

Solicitors often have to be chivvied. Estate agents are more heavily regulated, now, but were not averse to making as much as they could through whatever means they could in days of yore. Problems about which the sellers might have known for some time may not have been revealed, even with a survey, and surveys are remarkably worded – almost written in invisible ink, in fact – and reassure the buyer that virtually nothing they say can be relied upon or used against them if they get it wrong. And the building survey only covers – well, not much, actually; any gas fittings have to b inspected by a Gas Safe Registered Engineer, any electrical work has to be inspected by an NIC EIC registered electrician and phrases such as “…we recommend that enquires are made with your solicitors in order to confirm etc. etc.” abound. In addition, what they actually do cover is often mildly amusing: “Where a number of concrete paving slabs have broken, these would benefit from replacement.” is roughly analogous to “Where there is a deep hole you would benefit from not falling into it”.

Other equally meaningless phrases include “appears to be in a serviceable condition however areas of deterioration are evident. Where the mortar pointing to the verge has deteriorated, we recommend these areas are repointed in the immediate term.” and in fact might even be standard placeholders. Some items are so utterly obvious that a blind man at midnight in fog would notice what a surveyor is being paid rather well to provide.

What concerns me is that a surveyor says almost nothing that any normal person wouldn’t notice and, where their expertise might be useful, such as in the roof void or loft, they don’t go in.

So I suspect the government does need to make changes. One change might be to make the surveyor report far more useful and informative, and not simply a selection of phrases cobbled together. Another change might be to add legal force to an offer. At the moment an offer can be withdrawn, or ignored, or made to more than one buyer. I think sellers have to be made to think twice about selling and buyers. It’s a fraught process, and even after exchange there’s a huge amount to do – partly because under the current system no one can start planning a move until that’s been done.