Owning your own home

wouldn't want my professional adviser speaking to them anyway

Why not?

Do they add anything of value, anything a buyer or seller couldn’t sort out themselves with a conveyancer?

Sometimes. When I last moved we viewed a few properties which were direct marketed via the obvious websites without an Estate Agent being involved. A couple.of the vendors had bonkers ideas of the selling process and needed someone experienced on their side to explain things. A conveyancer gets involved later.

You could equally ask what the point of a conveyancer is. You can read the book and do it all yourself in a lot of cases although getting mortgage funds released might be a challenge.

They are absolute cunts, followed up with lawyers/solicitors .

Think they are absolutely doing you a solid favour when they are making a packet out you! If only they were italian, they'd want the money and then you'd owe them a favour too...

Mine took a few weeks but I waited 3 months post works for them to come and look at the house.

Agent - the clue is in the name.

Are they overpriced though? Absolutely. How did we get so mugged off to accept folks can get rich being / running house selling agents.

There are some garages at the end of our garden - is there an easy way to find out who owns them? It’s not obvious from the street

They'll be listed in the title plan. It'll cost you £3 to do a land registry search for each suspected property.

The solicitor who acted for us when we bought this place did an amazing job. The previous owner did all sorts of things without planning permission which needed sorting.

Plus she wrote a letter to the moaning buyer of our house basically saying fuck off in legal terms. Top job.

Maybe she was an exception?

You'll need to do a sim search on the land registry.

That will tell you if the garages/land are registered land and if so what their title number is. You can then look the title number up at the land registry.

If they're on unregistered land then you're shit out of luck I think as there is no easy way to then find the details.

Mainly as I struggle to think of any circumstances where it would be beneficial. Nothing the estate agent says is binding on the other side and I want to choose what info the estate agent is given.

@andos I'm sorry to hear that man. They do say moving house can be one of the most stressful things, but I naively thought we'd be okay as there is no chain!

Our conveyancer does give us good updates, but obviously can't give us updates when the ball is in the court of the seller's conveyancer. I'll expand a little on the circumstance, as it's generated quite a few replies, which I really appreciate!

Current state is our conveyancer sent off enquiries to the seller's conveyancer on September 27, and still hasn't had them back. So ours can't tell us anything other than they're waiting to hear back and have chased the other conveyancer several times and not heard back. I'd got in touch with the EA in desperation as I don't have direct contact with the seller, and I had hoped the EA would be motivated to help move this along as someone who is motivated to earn their commission and move on.

The EA came back on October 16 to say that the seller's conveyancer had dictated the enquiries and sent them to the seller earlier that day. However when I then came across the seller in person on October 24, they told me they'd heard nothing from their conveyancer, that they had also called the EA the previous week and been told that we were the hold up. Both of us were kinda shocked but also not shocked.

And I think what's even worse, the seller told me that they'd only chosen the conveyancer because the estate agent offered them a package for a fixed price to sell the house that included using the EA's recommended solicitor! I told them that if I were them I'd consider firing the conveyancer, getting a refund, and then finding someone else who will do a better job.

The system in this country is absolutely cooked.

So many easy improvements to be done. No clue why the seller wouldn't have the info in the search pack ready to go when they advertise the house (asked people why, 'er dunno mate it's just done that way'...). Antagonism is built into the system because it is non-binding up until exchange so you have to trust people. Obviously you can't trust people so why even pretend? Require a deposit immediately after an offer is accepted. Der. Chains don't exist in USA/Canada/Aus because the process is so much easier.

Even ignoring the feudal leasehold shit it's just classic everyone-needs-a-taste middleman timewasting crap.

First world problems but buying a place here has been one of the most eye-opening, why do I live in this country-type experiences I've had, and I've tangoed with the Home Office a few times now.

And if they were polish, would they want the money and then steal your car?

You really come across like an idiot.

I've dealt with some real useless cunts over the last couple years.

Too many scratching each others backs, that's the issue.

Why do estate agents exist other than to take a cut of the money?

Personally, and it's probably a rare opinion, I think my estate agent earned their money.

They did a good job showing me places, suggested I look at some places I hadn't initially considered (we eventually bought in an area we'd initially ruled out) and put a fair bit of effort in to selling my place.

They were very estate agenty and I kept them out of the actual buying and selling process as much as possible once the lawyers got involved but they did a good job as salespeople.

Conveyancing solicitor fees on the other hand seem very low for the amount of work involved and I suspect that is a large part of why so many people have bad experiences.

Isn't Purple Bricks a thing? So you can buy/sell without involving an agent?

The property buying laws in this country are fucking backwards though. I think Scotland does it better. Guess too many people making too much money in Englerland for them to change the laws.

Cheers mate will give it a whirl!

AFAIK purple bricks are an online estate agent who charge a fee and not a percentage commission.

I wonder if they have made a profit yet?

Company was sold earlier this year for £1, so doubt it!

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/17/online-estate-agent-purplebricks-sold-charles-dunstone-strike

Isn't Purple Bricks a thing? So you can buy/sell with a really useless online agent?

ftfy

I’m very interested in understanding how chains don’t exist in USA/Aus/Canada. Surely people need to sell in order to buy ie a chain?

@Ben689908 can’t speak for AUS/CAN, but in the US they’re a couple of ways to resolve the issue of timing between buyers and sellers. Really depends on circumstances.

Usually, buyers can agree with their lender to buy with a very small down payment, then apply any profit from their own sale to reduce their mortgage substantially. Although it doesn’t solve the “chain” problem entirely, it makes the process less financially burdensome.

A less common example is when a seller basically agrees to pay rent back to the buyer while the seller continues their search. The buyer and seller would agree to a termination date of that agreement. Works best if the buyer has another living arrangement to fall back on in the meantime or is renting month-to-month.

There are conditional sales in Can although they aren’t that common, but there is enough looseness in the market that it usually works out ie you can walk and chew at the same time and end up buying/selling a house within a few weeks.

There are bridging loans in the US for sure designed to make this all work.

In Aus, you can effectively close after winning the auction, although then there are provisions to exit if the house has termites or is falling down. What I forgot to specify in the previous rant was I meant England only, Scotland seems to have its shit together

there are provisions to exit if the house has termites or is falling down.

US has similar provisions. You put earnest money down early on, then you pass through a few checkpoints in the process that allow you back out of the sale and recover the earnest money.