New plans to make the home buying process faster
The house buying process looks like it could get quicker, saving us a lot of needless time and spending.
The time it takes to buy a home could be dramatically reduced under new plans being considered by the Government.
Government officials have held private meetings with the housing industry to look at ways to speed up house purchases, the Telegraph has reported. The meeting took place between the Department for Business Innovation and Skills and the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA).
At present it can take up to three months to buy a house from the point an offer is made until contracts are exchanged. During that time 18% of transactions (around 200,000), fall through each year. In his latest Budget chancellor George Osborne announced that an enquiry will look at how to make the process “better value for money and more consumer-friendly.”
“When you ask agents from around the world, they can’t understand why in Britain it takes so long to sell a house,” Martyn Baum, president of the NAEA told the BBC. “In the United States, it takes just three or four weeks.”
The end of gazumping?
One step that is being considered is banning gazumping – the practice where buyers outbid others who have already made an offer. The period between making an offer and exchanging contracts is incredibly stressful for buyers as they are spending money on the purchase process but have no guarantee that the sale will go through.
The Government is looking into whether the buying process in England and Wales should be changed to be more in line with the system in Scotland and much of Europe where a house sale is legally binding as soon as an offer is accepted.
That would mean the end of gazumping as sellers would be breaking contract if they accepted a better offer from another interested party.
Upfront deposits
It is also believed the enquiry will look into whether buyers should have to put down an upfront deposit when they make an offer on a property to discourage them from pulling out.
Sellers pay for surveys
Another way to speed up the process would be to make sellers produce a home report which includes a survey and energy performance certificate.
This would mean each buyer wouldn’t have to commission their own surveyor and the survey would be available as soon as an offer had been made. This is likely to prove popular with buyers as it would save them some time and money, but sellers may not be keen on shouldering the cost of the survey.
“The English system for buying and selling property dates back to the 1920s and has not been updated for nearly 100 years,” Mark Hayward, managing director of the NAEA told the Telegraph. “It is an archaic system which doesn’t allow for modern technology. It needs updating to allow for as much work to be done before the point of offer as possible.”
Get a free, no obligation mortgage quote with loveMONEY
What you should read now:
Has your house dropped £25,000 in value?
How discount supermarkets save you £400
Comments
Be the first to comment
Do you want to comment on this article? You need to be signed in for this feature