I have written a few times about my frustration with various professionals who have to be involved in house sale and purchase. Specifically, I have had such trouble with solicitors who seem to live in a world of their own, and seem to think that since they will be paid regardless, does it matter who they annoy by taking so long? We had trouble when
we bought our flat in London in 2003, and more trouble when selling it. One point with the flat was that of course it was leasehold, and there was an owners' management company, so there are lots of extra parties involved in the transaction.
In fact, when buying the flat, one issue (which seemed innocuous at first) was that the solicitors of the freehold owners wanted to be sure that we were fit people to live in the rather posh block. Now, normally such fitness is determined by your income and credit worthiness etc, so you produce your bank statements and various other bills to demonstrate what a good citizen you are. These people wanted a letter from my employer (which was pointless but easy) and a reference from my bank as well! Sorry? Are they still living in the past and think you actually know your bank manager personally? Have they not heard of internet banking? Anyway, this request came out of the blue about three weeks before moving, and contracts would not be exchanged until it was resolved. So I called my bank and they said "No problem. That'll be £10". So I said "Fine" and waited. And waited. Eventually they admitted that such requests take about two weeks to do. I was pulling my hair out. Here we were, wanting to move as planned and a pointless bit of paper is holding us up. We ended up exchanging on both transactions on the day we moved out and completing the next (when we moved in). No wonder that they say that moving is one of the two most stressful things you do in your life (I don't have experience of divorce, which is the other).
The reason why we were committed to move was that we had sold our house in January to the first people to look at it, and they were in a rented property until some date in June, so we could complete at a date of our choosing in the month prior. It seemed inconceivable to us that, having had an offer for the flat accepted on April 2nd, we couldn't complete before June 12th. No problems with our mortgage, a "drive-by" survey was satisfactory and the flat was already vacant. It seems to me that solicitors do a set of first actions (i.e. send out requests for information) and then ignore your file until a few weeks before the planned completion date; this ensures that any issues arising now have to be sorted in less than four weeks. I think I only got my solicitor going by insisting that regardless of our purchase, I wanted to exchange and complete our sale on the promised date. Faced with that instruction, she got her skates on and we made it, just, but it was unnecessarily stressful.
When it came to selling the London flat in 2010, it seemed easy as there was a prospective buyer living in the same development who coveted our three bedroom flat over the two bedroom one that she already owned, largely because she was expecting her first child and wanted more space. Moreover, she was intending to keep her old flat and rent it out, so money and the completion date were not issues. Seems perfect? The multitude of solicitors re-enter the fray, in particular hers. He was an absolute waster. No other term for it. The other ones (e.g. the ones for the freehold owner) were their usual pedantic and expensive selves, but this guy was pathetic. His favourite trick was to ask silly questions which had actually already been answered, mostly in the questionnaire that we had had to complete. Every time he asked a (usually pointless) question, he delayed things another couple of weeks. He also prepared a document about the parties to the sale where he included incorrect names, addresses and postcodes for almost everyone (and the property itself!)- I have rarely seen such a sloppy bit of professional output, especially from someone who works in a profession where accuracy should be taken for granted. By the way, one thing about most of these people is that they STILL do not like to use the internet. OK, I can see that you need real signatures at certain times, but most communication can be done by e-mail, surely? Come on guys, this is the 21st Century!
I'm still not sure if the buyer's solicitor was always like that, or if in fact he was acting on her instructions as she seemed to be dithering a bit. You know, the solicitors are sent a form for completion by the buyer, and by the time they pass it on to her, she has just gone away for two weeks and so you have to wait for her to come back. By the time the form is returned it has been six weeks instead of a reasonable 7-10 days. We did everything we were asked with a virtually immediate turnaround (like, giving the documents back to the solicitor that day by hand) and it seemed to make precisely no difference to the eventual outcome. Moving out of the flat into a rented house was meant to make it easier, and I think it did, but it was a bit wearing that we could agree a sale in mid May, move out in early July and still have not exchanged contracts by the start of October!
When you are buying a property, one thing about estate agents and all solicitors except your own is that you are not paying them directly. You have no contract with them, and they are working for other parties. This means that it can be very difficult for you (or your own solicitor) to actually make them do anything by a specific date. When you are selling you have a bit more control as you are paying the estate agent. Here I want to acknowledge the positive role of Ben, the estate agent in our sale. Unusual, eh? He actually held the whole thing together and thanks to him we got top dollar for our flat in a very poor market. Had I sold it to the buyer privately (as she suggested to me!), I think I would have ended up with a significant sum less, possibly even three times the estate agent's fee, so I think he worked hard for his fee and was well worth it.
I am also grateful to Sarah, the estate agent for the vendor of this house - see this old entry. She got us the house when the vendor might have been tempted to take a later but higher offer. I wanted to go and say thank you earlier in the year when I had some progress to show her, but they have closed down. Thinking about it, when we bought the flat the estate agent was the one who persuaded the vendor that our offer (only £40k below the original asking price!) was actually quite a good one in the prevailing market. It's really thanks to Ben that we were able to make the capital gain which enabled us to buy this house and to Sarah for actually getting the purchase done at a sensible price.
Finally, surveys: Jane and I have owned five properties in our time, although we have also lived in six RAF married quarters, plus the dreadful cold house near here. Of those five owned houses, I realise that we have never had a full survey done on any of them! Firstly there was a late Victorian maisonette where I (just married and very young) relied on the lenders' survey. Then there was a brand new house which had foam in the cavity walls and hence dampness inside - it's new so surely you don't have a survey? Thirdly there was a 1930's semi in Cambridgeshire where I had a quite good lenders' survey plus a fair degree (so I thought) of understanding myself - "It's not falling down - will a survey tell me anything that I can't see which could put me off?" Fourthly we bought the flat in the heady days of "drive-by" surveys although, to be fair, it was a 15 year old conversion and maintained to a very high standard (with very high service charges to match). Then, finally, we came here and I, with a lot more knowledge and understanding, applied the logic of house #3 above and decided that a surveyor nowadays would only put in hundreds of caveats (and so actually tell me nothing that I couldn't see for myself), as well as lacking understanding of old buildings. "You need a complete re-plaster (obvious), a new roof (also obvious), a chemical DPC (no!!!!), new rainwater goods, new uPVC windows (NOOO!), complete re-pointing (no, just patches), possibly a new roof structure and a new suspended floor, not to mention a complete re-wire, re-plumb, a new kitchen and a new bathroom. Oh, and by the way, the extension is falling down".
I'm afraid that I would have seen such a survey as a complete waste of £500+. Thinking about it, I did actually have a survey once on a house I didn't buy, in 1992. It was an old house (1776, I think) and the surveyor (from the building society) essentially only told me things that I or the vendor had told him, plus a few caveats for the things that none of us had been able to access, like the roof structure. Then he gave a silly low possible valuation for the place after renovation which meant that I wouldn't be able to get a mortgage for enough to do it up. End of dream!
However, I think we have been lucky with these properties - especially the flat as you hear so many bad stories of management companies fleecing residents - and I certainly don't recommend that you ignore surveyors as we have done. It is risky unless you know enough about old houses, but I think there is a place for personal knowledge, common sense and logic. Mind you, if I was to buy a house that someone else had worked on, I certainly would want to be thoroughly sure that everything they had done had Planning Permission and Building Control Approval!
Work starts again here on Monday. Happy New Year!
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