Should sellers of houses have to pay in advance?

[Zak33]

Close one to my heart today

As a home SELLER, should that seller be expected to pay for all the legal searches, and the valuation or survey IN ADVANCE of putting the house on the market?

At the moment, the BUYER burdens all the costs, such as valuation, and local authority searches on drainage, land registry, boundaries etc. If the seller decides to pull out...the buyer loses it all....no money back.

So as proposed by various lobby groups, how about the seller pays for all the checks in advance? It works all the way up the chain.

It also gives first time buyers slightly less outgoings.

The issue raised previously has been that people who do this and then dont get any bids or offers on their house have wasted their money, and in low income homes that is a vital issue.

But which way is fair?

[TeePee]

Would a buyer trust a survey paid for by a seller?

[Zak33]

supposedly be an independant....youre not likely to know them.

[NiROE]

Getting the seller to pay upfront sounds like the fairest way, but as with all things in life, you'll get the dodgy/corrupt people who'll miss things out in the survey that'd benefit the seller.... *slips the survey d00d a few extra quid to not notice that his house is held up by straw and mud*

It does sound fairer though to get the seller to pay in advance imo...

[mark22]

I think it's a good idea.

The whole process of selling a house gets tied up buy the buyer and solicitors wading through all this stuff so it would be a lot quicker for the seller to have it done. I say this from a property development standpoint where quick sales are important to me though.

Only problem I can see is if you don't manage to sell your house for ages the survey might get out of date and you'd have to pay for it again.

I don't think you can bribe survey people either because it's a life or death safety issue kind of thing and if anything goes wrong it's their arse.

What's really annoying me is these stupid new eu laws on electrical wiring coming in the new year. They're changing colour codes and you need it checked if you do wiring yourself (which I do all the time).

[NiROE]

I don't think you can bribe survey people either because it's a life or death safety issue kind of thing and if anything goes wrong it's their arse.

Slightly off topic, but in any profession/trade/business there are always the dodgey/bribe taking kinds of people.. Its life

[Zak33]

Slightly off topic, but in any profession/trade/business there are always the dodgey/bribe taking kinds of people.. Its life

hmm...less of it than ever before...and besides.....if the buyer WANTS to get it re done they can...

the basic neccessity of the searches and the land registry stuff is a good good plan. Next up would be the valuation, but thats variable by the month sometimes...

[Kumagoro]

I think its a really stupid idea and open to corruption.... you the buyer will end up paying to get another survey done as you cant really trust what the one arranged by the seller.

A much better way would be that the sellers pay back the money for the survey etc if they decide not to sell...

[Zak33]

I think its a really stupid idea and open to corruption....

If that's the case, then it's already open to corruption. If you really want a particular house and you NEED it valued high, so that the mortgage company will let you borrow the money against it...you can bung a valuer for a high valuation.

Likewise if you want to buy a house cheaply, you can get your valuer to knock its value way down so you have "a negotiation tool"

Surely one is the same as the other. Besides, there are other things that need doing, such as drainage searches, boundard searches, civil disturbance searches (neighbour compaints) etc.

Surely they should be done BEFORE the house ever goes on the market. If the vendor wants to sell their property, it should be clear of all the troubles that properties are so often tied up with. Access disputes. Boundary disputes. Drainage disputes. Garden ownership disputes.

At the moment the buyer pays to find out they cant have it after all the other stuff is paid for.

[Kumagoro]

Im not saying the whole proposal is flawed but just that aspect of the property survey... people will still want to get another one done. I think something should be done but that proposal which i saw on tv has some problems with it.

[turkster]

Well it works both ways. Dont assume that the person who wants to sell a place is in any better position to afford surveys etc than the buyer.

A few months ago we were trying to buy a small house/site near us in Ireland. We paid for the engineering survey, got the area marked out etc and then the owner pulled out and sold it to his sister . That was a good bit of money down the drain that my parents could ill afford. Now we are in the opposite position trying to sell our place in England in order to buy a place in Cork but the last thing I would want to do is pay for more surveys without being sure that someone was going to buy it.

TBH I think that the buyer, if really interested, should probably pay for the survey as it is their responsibility to make sure they are getting the best value for money.

[Barakka]

I don't think the seller should take all the costs, but maybe the ones where it is done by an official/government body e.g. land registry searches.

Where a third (private) party is involved such as valuations and surveys it would IMO be daft as I know if I was buying the house I would get them done again for my own peace of mind, as I imagine most would.

I think the best thing that could happen in the UK housing market would be to adopt the same rules as our neighbours north of the border. When buying a house in Scotland the offer and acceptance are binding they are effectively the contracts - rather than exchanging when the removal men are at the door like in England. If either pulls out they can be liable for the costs of the other party.

[Bro John (UK)]

I work as a Local Land Charge officer so have a lot of interest in this subject.

Interesting link below, gives all the info on the home information pack.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/b...es/timid84976?

One of the major benefits to buyer/seller will be the licensing of estate agents

One of the major problems will be that the sellers pack may be out of date before the completion of contracts

Personally I believe the buyer should pay for all the searches, at the end of the day it doesnt make much difference as to who pays and when, as the seller will normally be buying again therefore paying for all searches!

In some cases the chain/processs is held up, by delays in obtaining searches, however the government created the NLIS (national land information service) a electronic one stop shop for land and property information, which will greatly improve how long it takes to obtain searches.

Better stop now, before I fill the server,

[Sair33]

I do think that the seller should pay for the survey / valuation etc as it means that they are committed to selling the property, which in itself should give the buyer confidence. There must be a way to prevent anyone taking advantage of that.

Alternatively, and probably more straightforward, I think that something should be signed to confirm that the offer price has been accepted and to say that they will not back out of the deal. (Maybe this could be done a month after the offer is accepted as a "cooling off period") OR... there could be a clause, which says that IF the seller backs out, they will be liable for all expenses incurred by the buyer.

Either way... SOMETHING needs to be done. It is just so unreasonable of people to pull out just before exchanging contracts once the buyer has spent up to £1000 on surveys etc. It's just not on!!!


...... ...not that I'm bitter or anything....

[Kumagoro]

I do think the seller should pay for those kinds of fees IF THEY pull out. But i think the buyer should initially pay so they can have things done their way so they cant moan about anything.

If the seller pulls out the seller pays the costs that buyer the buyer incurred.

BUT the seller shouldnt have to pay if the reason for pulling out is something to do with the buyer or someone in the chain below... It would have to be a good reason though and ones set out in law.

That way Zak (sorry to hear what happened) would have been entitled to the money he spent back.

[Saracen]

Firstly, sorry to hear of the problem, Zak. It's par for the course, of course, but I'm sorry to hear it nonetheless.

I agree the system sucks as it is, but can't see any easy way to make it fair on all parties, all of the time. Part of the problem is that if someone pulls out, it could not only cost the person they are buying from/selling to a fair bit, but could conceivably cause the collapse of the entire chain costing people lots of money, when they're not even directly involved in the failed sale.

Maybe there's a case for making the seller pay the costs of fixed items like searches, but I'm far less convinced about making the seller pay for surveys. Not everybody will want the same degree of survey. A new-ish house still under a guarantee may well require a different level of survey to a 300-year-old thatched cottage. So, what level of survey do we make the seller pay for?

Also, personally, I would not be inclined to trust a survey done by someone appointed by the seller, because you never quite know what the relationship is between the seller and the surveyor (old school buddies maybe, or members of the same lodge). I'm not suggesting that a surveyor would risk totally omitting major defects, but we all know there are ways of shading things so as to have pointed out an issue in a minimalist way, whilst covering one's own arse. And I've known of occasions when surveyors have made major errors (like calling an old home-brew extension "brick-built" when it was nothing of the kind and, in fact, was structurally unsafe - which the surveyor either failed to detect or failed to mention). Despite this, the buyer was advised that legal action was risky, due to guarded wording in the survey, and potentially very expensive with no guarantee of success. So, if you get a survey from someone you have reason to feel may not be entriely independent, you're likely to end up getting another one anyway,or getting a professional opinion on the first survey.

No, I'll pick my own surveyor, thanks very much.

Maybe there's a case for making buyer AND seller both pay a deposit (£1000 say) into some third-party trust fund, and if either party pulls out without good cause (like major problems identified by the survey or search) then the person that pulls out loses their deposit to offset the costs thre other party has incurred. Of course, such a system could include giving the seller the opportunity to rectify (in timely fashion) any such defects, if it is possible to do so and such a system could also require the seller to have pre-done searches.

There would need, of course, to be quite careful definition of what type of grounds would justify a pull-out without forfeiting your deposit, because we don't want someone using a bit of flaky paintwork or dripping gutter as a reason. And, working out how to make that definition clear (to avoid legal wrangles) yet versatile enough to cover all the situations that could occur, would be a bitch of a job. We'd probably end up with an 'ombudsman' type arrangement which adds another level of bureacracy, and the attendant time delays and cost.

I can't see any simple, easy and cheap solution that could be fair in all situations.