Owning your own home

The main problem people have with gazumping is when they waste money on a survey / legals and end up losing out to a higher bidder.

AIUI the Scots get around this by ensuring everyone wastes money before even making an offer.

At the end of the day we have a system in the UK where contracts for the transfer of property (unlike all other types of contract) can only be made in writing and not verbally. One cannot get to a point of forming a contract without spending large sums.

The only way around it (and this should be done IMHO) is that vendors should be forced to get EVERYTHING in place at the time of marketing (perhaps even including all legals and surveys done by independents who are equally responsible to buyer and seller) so that when a buyer makes a verbal offer and it is accepted they are in a position to exchange contracts almost immediately as all the other work has already been done. I fthe seller is serious then why should they obkect to paying up front, and in theory they should get a couple of £k more for the property as the buyer has a couple of £k lower costs.

In Australia it works something like:

Make an offer, pending legals.
Offer accepted = legally binding contract for both parties (none of this English gazump/gazunder shit)
Buyer has to pay a deposit and seller then has to open up place for building surveys and shit.
If surveys all go well, buyer is legally obliged to complete and seller is legally obliged to complete

Something like that anyway.