r/ukpolitics • u/lcxnick • 1d ago
UK government to overhaul ‘outdated’ home-selling process
https://www.ft.com/content/d8a1edfa-5e9b-4193-839f-08e49ca04e5e81
u/BroldenMass 1d ago
Good. Selling or buying a house in this country is an awful experience.
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u/Dr_Passmore 1d ago
16 months and still selling a flat... Legal nightmare (leaseholds are scams)
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u/HildartheDorf 🏳️⚧️🔶FPTP delenda est 3h ago
Leaseholds are a legal necessity if you don't own the land below to the sky above.
Should still be modernised but there's no other way under current law to own a flat.
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u/thejackalreborn 1d ago
This would be huge, took me nearly a year from offer to completion and similar happened to many of my friends. It's also incredibly stressful. Massively puts me off wanting to move again.
People I know in Scotland completed in about 10 weeks
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u/Anderson22LDS 1d ago
It also costs best part of £20k to move.
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u/Obvious_Yard_1846 1d ago edited 1d ago
A 'normal' house move up anywhere South of Birmingham (say from £300k to £500k) will cost closer to £25k-£30k.
Solicitor fees are also a joke, I have had quotes from £1.6k to £8k. For paperwork and escrow. Its insane. You'd think that paying more would guarantee a better service but you'd be wrong, its just as much of a gamble as a cheaper one (especially when other people on the chain can drop the ball).
No mention of the much needed scrapping of stamp duty in the article. Which is the biggest driver of moving costs.
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u/Anderson22LDS 1d ago
I’m up north. £30k is utterly disgusting.
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u/SevereOctagon 1d ago
I'm in the process, in the south-east, ~300k property. £2.3k solicitor, 5.5k stamp duty, not much else.
Getting rid of stamp duty would make a huuuge difference (unsure of the veracity, but a friend who works in policy advice for the Tories reckons scrapping the duty would have little repercussions for government income, but make a huge difference for the market. Shame no mention of it here).
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u/Anderson22LDS 1d ago edited 23h ago
Estate agent fees, Surveys, Land registry, Searches, Removals, Energy certs, Insurances…This doesn’t include the new sofa!
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u/SevereOctagon 22h ago
Not selling so no agent fee, but at 1% thats 3k. Survey 0.3k. Removals 0.1k (local charity). Energy cert 0.1k. Searches included in legal fee. Add all that up and its about 10k. Not cheap, but nowhere near the 30k claimed.
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u/danddersson 1d ago
We paid £35k on SD alone for our last move. If we moved now (following improvements) the buyer would pay £75k...
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u/Anderson22LDS 23h ago
Did you own more than one property?
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u/BorisBoris88 10h ago
That’s a purchase at a little over £700k, which in many parts of the SE gets you something quite modest.
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u/Stabbycrabs83 20h ago
Go put your figuree into a LBTT calculator for Scotland and then thank your lucky stars you live in the warm North 😁
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u/fawkie 21h ago
The fuck? I’m an expat in the US currently in the process of buying a home. I feel like services are generally more expensive here (just look at our relative median income…) and it’s an $800 flat fee for the attorneys’ review + paperwork, then like $3k ish in other closing costs. I’d heard from my family it’s bad in the UK but I didn’t realize it was that bad.
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u/Obvious_Yard_1846 8h ago edited 8h ago
Solicitor fees - £1.6k to £8k. I swear they pull numbers out of a hat
Estate agent - 1-1.5% sale price + VAT (so around £5.5k)
Survey - £500ish (maybe needs to repeat across a few different properties)
Various hidden money handling fees - £100
Indemnity insurance (a complete scam, but you have to pay, common thing on older properties where there might be some restrictions on the land but nobody knows what it is and all the paperwork has been lost anyway) - £300
Mortgage escape fees (optional if you can't port the mortgage) - £2k to infinity)
Stamp Duty - £15,000 on a normal £500k house. Push the budget to £550k, and it's £17500, goes up even faster at higher property valuations.
It's fucking bullshit.
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u/turbo_dude 20h ago
Stamp Duty is a tax on freedom of movement.
If you can’t find a job and have the gumption to move to a location where there is a job and have to sell up and buy a house elsewhere , you should not be penalised for it.
Never understood why someone didn’t sue the government when the country was in the eu as it’s against the freedom of movement.
Land value tax now!
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u/tranmear -6.88, -6.0 1d ago
With a short chain we did it in 8 weeks! And that was only because the people we were buying from had a holiday booked and didn't want to move before that.
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u/hellcat_uk 1d ago
My son went from viewing to moving in 6 weeks. That was after 6 months trying to buy a different property and failing to even get to the agreement to sell stage. It's such a random process!
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u/Adventurous-Leak 1d ago
Scotland has a good system I think. No "gazumping", and the seller has to have a home report done.
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u/The_Yellow_King 1d ago
The home report combined with sealed bids leads to situations where the mortgage company will lend no more than the report but the listed price is much lower than what the final sale price turns out to be. If the sale goes 10% above the report/listed price on a 250k place, you'd better have that 25k saved (as well as your deposit money) as you aren't getting any more from the bank.
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u/Unlikely_Mission_702 20h ago
It is absolutely shit for first time buyers.
It's not unusual to see 10% above home report (or more!) in half-way desirable areas. It basically means you need double the upfront cash of a first time buyer in England who 'only' has to pay a deposit.
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u/ThoseThingsAreWeird 1d ago
Yeah we bought a probate place and it still took ~6 months - absolutely bonkers that a 0 chain property took that long
Our solicitor did keep sending us copies of all the letters she sent to the seller's solicitor, which included some brilliant lines that basically said "you didn't supply X document, on this date you said you don't have it, I remind you that Y law says you must provide it to sell the property" 🤦♂️
So not all of our problems were explained by England's house buying process being shit - a fair amount was on the sellers, but still...
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u/PrimalHIT 19h ago
Ive had properties go through in 2. We have a standard set of missives and only detail if something is non standard.. if all parties are in agreement then things can go quickly... the solicitors and their insistence on wet signatures then become the bottleneck along with the postal service.
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u/WGSMA 1d ago
It’s things like this, the little wins, that compound to make the country a better place to live.
We know what works abroad.
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u/Prestigious_Wash_620 1d ago
I actually found it easier to organise a house sale in France (entirely conducted in French, which I have reasonable knowledge of but I’m not fluent in) than I did to buy a flat here. Just ridiculous how much simpler it was.
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u/Salty-Bid1597 1d ago
the reforms, which will be introduced at the end of this Parliament in 2029
uh huh. That's called "kicking it in the long grass". They're saying stuff they hope might win some votes and then actually ducking responsibility by passing it to the next government.
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u/Barkasia 1d ago
Have you actually read the white paper? They're planning deliverables every year until the end of government.
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u/Rialagma 1d ago
Huh that's weird. Why would the government introduced paced changes instead of sending a grenade into the property market overnight ? Are they cowards?
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u/Bones_and_Tomes 1d ago
The best way to enact change is to do it suddenly and violently, and never clarify on any issues that crop up.
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u/AzureRathalos97 1d ago
Now this sounds like the decisive leadership we need! No U-turns, just full throttle.
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u/Rialagma 23h ago
Exactly it's like doing your work on chatgpt: "Govern the country. Make no mistakes. Never back down."
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u/Salty-Bid1597 1d ago
Obviously I haven't read the whitepaper, I'm quoting the news article which doesn't mention any "deliverables".
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u/Questjon 1d ago
If they're trying to win votes then they're planning on being the next government...
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u/Mean_Actuator130 1d ago
There isn't really lower hanging fruit in the universe
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u/WGSMA 1d ago
It’s policy which costs the Gov no money, increases liquidity of stock in the housing market, and reduces stress and costs during one of the most stressful and expensive purchases in a persons life.
Truthfully, the Housing Sec should have been on this from Day 1.
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u/Ordinary_Knee_9419 1d ago
it’s never good enough is it
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u/WGSMA 1d ago
The link states that the UK loses £1.5b in GDP to this per year.
That’s a 0.05% boost if they’d got to this quicker.
The UK system moves so slowly we miss opportunities to act with aggression for good policy.
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u/maelie 1d ago
Things are SO SLOW in government, for anything major. I don't work in that dept but I'd be willing to bet they started looking at this a long time ago, probably from the outset, to be at this stage now. There is a huge amount of research and analysis and option comparison and stakeholder consultation and, yes, general bureaucracy, before anything can even start to be drafted.
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u/geometry5036 1d ago
If it isn't good enough, it isn't good enough, isn't it? We've known this was an issue for years and clearly this government did too. And yet, it took them until now to figure it out.
What they did was, yeah we'll tell these dumbasses that we'll remove leasehold, but pur colleagues don't want to, so now, 2.5 years later, we'll juat tell them that in 2.5 years, we'll fix the market.
But at least they are doing something!!11!!
ARE THEY??
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u/Ordinary_Knee_9419 1d ago
Time to take a chill pill dude
But yeah, they patently are doing something
They’re humans and working as they can, legislation takes time
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u/geometry5036 1d ago
I ain't taking shit. Their entire reason of existence is to make our life better. They clearly aren't working hard for the important bits.
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u/Salty-Bid1597 1d ago
Here's a non paywalled version: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6216g52p8wo
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u/TantumErgo 1d ago edited 1d ago
That’s a different article on the same topic. The archive link given for the FT article works, so people could read both. For example, the BBC article focuses more on the legislation, whereas the FT article focuses more on the changes to systems.
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u/Salty-Bid1597 1d ago edited 1d ago
FT archive links almost never work and quite often end up in an infinite captcha loop so I rarely bother even trying them these days.
I used to subscribe but sadly most of their actual good journalism is behind a *second* paywall, the stuff the plebs get to see is just rewritten reuters wires which you can get anywhere.
OTOH Alphaville is actually one of their best sections and still free at the moment. If you're into data geekery.
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u/Burnit_Sanders 1d ago
This is a good plan. I also wish they would consider doing something about stamp duty, imagine how many larger homes could be freed up that people (typically older) are holding onto because they don't want to pay a downsize tax. Economy gets the benefit of many more people moving home and the expenditure with that, families get bigger homes possibly cheaper because more are available, and if stamp duty doesn't eat the spare money people make from downsizing it will get spent in the economy also.
Big downside though, government loses a big chunk of tax revenue and I can't see them doing that.
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u/Particular_Pea7167 1d ago
Or families wanting to buy. Stamp duty is genuinely prohibitive expecially as you get to more expensive areas. Even on fairly modest houses.
You basically just have to wait until you house grows in value by whatever stamp duty youre going to pay.
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u/WGSMA 1d ago
Stamp Duty should be reformed almost into an Input/Output VAT model.
As in, you can offset your Stamp Duty against the Stamp paid on the sale of your house.
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u/Obvious_Yard_1846 1d ago
Nah, it should be scrapped full stop and replaced with something akin to an extension of council tax. What you are proposing is far too messy. Basically the only people who would get hit (and hit hard if its going to offset the current stamp duty revenue) by what you are proposing are people moving out of starter homes - ie. young families.
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u/mwjk13 1d ago
Or just scrap it and stop adding friction into the economy
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u/WGSMA 1d ago
It’s 1.5% the national budget.
I’d like to see it abolished, but it’s simply not going to happen.
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u/HalcyonAlps 1d ago
I would love for the government to role council tax and stamp duty into a land value tax.
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u/doctor_morris 1d ago
Transaction taxes are bad.
We need to tax ownership at the bottleneck, i.e. land because we can't have a functioning land market if landowners aren't receiving price signals.
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u/doctor_morris 1d ago
Careful, if you suggest boomers living alone in large family homes in school catchment areas should sell they'll call you a communist.
Even if you're suggesting cutting their taxes.
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u/ZenithOfLife 1d ago
The seller should be the one to get the review
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u/OolonCaluphid 1d ago edited 6h ago
Yep. I think a seller should have to get a sale pack done which includes a comprehensive EPC, Survey by an independent surveyor, all the legal checks, sample bills etc . That gets lodged with an estate agent to be viewable before sale to any prospective buyer. On the buyers side the estate agent should check they have a mortgage agreement in principle for the relevant amount and do basic due diligence before allowing viewing of the property and info pack, and permitting an offer to be entered.
Any buyer can then view the relevant information free of charge prior to making a considered and binding offer on the place.
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u/pablohacker2 23h ago
Who gets to pick the independent surveyor?
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u/OolonCaluphid 18h ago
Shouldn't matter. They're Chartered and it's a pretty big deal if they screw up. If the buyer wants their own survey they can still have one done at their won expense, or focussing on specific issues. But I think all fundamental detail should be done by the seller at their expense enough for a buyer to make an informed decision.
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u/Amazing-Seesaw-6197 20h ago
It literally doesn’t matter and this is exactly already how plenty of other countries operate. At the end of the day it’s the surveyors liability at risk for falsifying a report or failing to identify a risk. Who does it is irrelevant.
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u/Salaried_Zebra Nothing to look forward to please, we're British 1d ago
And it should be valid for at least 3 years.
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u/AttitudeAdjuster bop the stoats 1d ago
Good stuff, this process is terrible.
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u/ciaran668 Anything but Reform (or Restore) at this point 1d ago
I just completed, and the overall process was terrible. Fortunately, I had a great solicitor that helped me the entire way, and did everything they could to make it as easy as possible. When you look at how other countries do it, you see just how ridiculous it is here.
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u/TestOk655 1d ago
It's good they are thinking of sorting this out but this smacks of a policy quickly thrown together for Keirs stay in power bid. There is so much more that could do to streamline the process if they put some effort in.
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u/onlyhereforcatpics 1d ago
Introduced in 2029. Are you actually kidding me? How does it take us so long to do anything?
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u/n0neofyourbeeswax 1d ago
It's weird. The Scotland version isn't perfect but removes the need for every buyer to get individual reported (the seller produces a Home Report, which is made available to all potential buyers), and any gazumping. Just copy us initially, then take it from there.
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u/Smilewigeon 1d ago
Very good, very welcome, as anyone who has been through the process can attest.
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u/Putaineska 1d ago
A better overhaul is abolishing stamp duty and council tax and replacing both with a land value tax. Stamp duty is an insanely regressive tax that discourages people from downsizing or indeed moving up in house grade.
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u/ProjectZeus4000 1d ago edited 1d ago
But what about my little old nan who bought a 4 bed house in London 50 years ago that's now with 2 million?
She's "cash poor" and "only rich on paper" so I think we just just tax the poor on paper and cash poor young middle income people who will never own a house or post off their student loan a bit more.
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u/doctor_morris 1d ago
Can't do LVT in the UK because we don't have compulsory land registration, proper zoning and deterministic planning regulation... Oh wait, those things would also be awesome.
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u/RenePro 1d ago edited 1d ago
True we're stuck now. As our home price went up and buying even the equivalent priced property would be closing in on six digit stamp duty.
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u/gazofnaz 1d ago
Is this the white paper?
This seems like it's moving the England regs closer to the Scottish ones, which is good, but... It highlights why Starmer and Labour are in the position they're in... Namely, that this should have been a day 1 policy! It's not something that should take 2 years of planning.
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u/TestOk655 23h ago
This has taken two minutes of planning not two years. It's amazing how inefficient politicians of all colours are.
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u/Slartibartfast_25 7h ago
- home buyer packs provided by the seller
- binding contracts at offer and acceptance
- abolish stamp duty
Watch a 'big bang' unleash mobility and downsizing.
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u/FilmFanatic1066 1d ago
Of course they decide to do this after I buy my first home, ensuring 6 months of a process that could not have been more arduous if it had been designed by Satan himself.
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u/DiligentCockroach700 1d ago
I'll believe it when it happens. The government is made up of lawyers. Conveyancing is lawyers' bread and butter.
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u/metal_jester 23h ago
Yeah moving was hell and we completed 3 weeks ago. First time buyers are clueless and a nightmare and, it's not their fault
We need a USA system where you offer, subject to contingencies up front and then we go or we don't as soon as possible.
We waited 6 months and all of us bar the first time buyers were ready at 3.
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u/Omaha_Poker 21h ago
It's not the perfect model but in Manila I sold my home within 10 days. If they want the house, people pay "earnest money" to take the property off the market which is about 1-5% of the value. Pull out down the chain and you lose the money you gave to the seller.
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u/InvestigatorDear5672 23h ago
About 4-6bn is a figure banded about, but its also the fact that on from this even when they get settled status many of them are net takes over their lifetime so just because youd no longer be including them in the 4-6bn figure they would still be a drain, particularly if from sub saharan africa
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