The British system for buying & selling property

Lots of you still seem to have your knickers in a twist over what is happening with our house. It seems it didn't help when I said yesterday that Simon doesn't care if it sells or not!

So listen up, I'm only going to explain this once.............

We are in a chain....................actually it is now a circle but let's not get ahead of ourselves!

The chain:

1. Us. We are selling our house in order to buy a house in the village of Morton.
2. The Betts, are selling their house to us in order to fund a new house in the village which currently belongs to their nephew.
3. The nephew, one Mr Handley, is selling his house to his Aunt to enable him to buy a brand new house which is being built by David Wilson Homes.
4. David Wilson Homes (A very large house building Company in the UK) are the ones who are now buying our house in order not to lose their sale to Mr Handley.

So have you got it now? As you should already know we did originally have a buyer for our house, a Mrs Shakelton. She would have been number 1 in the chain, making the nephew number 4. When Mrs Shakelton pulled out the whole chain collapsed as no one has any money to buy.

That was when David Wilson Homes stepped in with what is known as a chain breaker deal. IE. They buy our house which then allows the chain to proceed as before except it is now a circle because David Wilson Homes are top and bottom of the chain!!

They did this because they are desperate not to lose their sale to Mr Handley. As part of this deal we had to agree to take viewings as they obviously want to get our house off their books as soon as they can. The reason Simon doesn't care is because we have already sold it to them! If we were still trying to sell it for ourselves then we would obviously want it to look as good as possible.

Except of course technically it isn't sold until we exchange contracts. The latest news on that is that it should hopefully happen Monday or Tuesday. We are rather cross that all the promises that were made to us seem to have been a bunch of lies to get us to accept the deal. Remember they said it would all be done in around a week and yet 2 weeks later we have still not exchanged.

Our system over here seems to be quite different to you Merikans. So that you can understand , here is how it happens here......

1. You decide you want to move so you contact an estate agent. They put your house up for sale and will give you details of houses to go and look at. You can have your house with just one agent or multi agents. Multi agents will cost you more in fees. Estate agents charge a percentage of the sale price. Generally this will be between 1.5% and 3%
2. Once you have a buyer for your house and have found one that you want to buy, you put in an offer via your estate agent.
3. If your offer is accepted, you get yourself a solicitor to do the necessary legal conveyancing work. Solicitors cost an arm and a leg. In our case a good few thousand pounds!
4. The legal work begins. A local search is carried out with the local authorities. A land registry search is done. An environmental search of the local area is done. A survey is carried out on the actual house. Enquiries will be raised. If a mortgage is needed then that will be arranged at this point. (fortunately we do not need one) Then a contract of sale is drawn up. Each of the above steps has to be done on the house for sale and the one for purchase.
5. When all is completed and all solicitors are happy the contracts are “exchanged” At this point the sale becomes legally binding. You pay a deposit of 10% of the sale price. The “completion” is set. This cannot be changed after this point.
6. Completion can be the same day as exchange or any number of days after. It is often a week. On this day the final paperwork is completed and the remainder of the money is paid and everything is done. Completion day is always moving day. The house no longer belongs to you so you have to be out of there.

So do we now all understand the long winded British system for buying and selling? As I said we hope to exchange early next week. As far as we know at this point completion will be the 15^th of December as that is when that nephews (Remember him?) house will be ready.

OK, I am fed up to the back teeth of this now. It is causing me stress every day. Not going to talk about it until we exchange when I might just be hysterically excited!