Why doesn't England and Wales adopt the Scottish system?

Before anyone thinks I'm a raving nationalist I'm not and count myself as British.
I read in the news today there are proposals to try and make the system of buying and selling houses in England and Wales better in the future but from what I can gather it looks pretty much as though it is going to be tinkering at the edges not really huge reform.
Not being a "legal eagle" I can't see why the very simple and effective Scottish system couldn't be adopted.
I have lived, bought and sold houses in both England and Scotland. Stress levels through the roof in England and pretty much stress free in Scotland . Our system is usually asking over a certain amount for a property (can be fixed price sometimes). If offers over then if you are interested as a buyer you note interest with the sellers solicitor, they contact you to advise a closing date for offers to be received. You send a closed/secret offer and they are "opened" usually at midday on the closing date. The seller is then informed of all the bids and asked if they wish to accept any of the bids. If yes then that is it pretty much done and dusted unless there is something the buyer's solicitor finds is out of order in the searches process etc. If no then the seller can either readvertise or ask the bidders if they wish to rebid a different price or say change an entry date. In my experience about 95% of sellers accept an offer 1st time around. No chains/gazumping/gazundering/pulling out at the last minute that I have heard of happening, indeed my parents had horror times twice selling property in England with once someone pulling out of the sale of their house 1/2 an hour before exchange and my parents by this stage had the removal lorry at their house ready to make the move to Scotland, dreadful. Occasionally a sale will not be able to proceed after the formal acceptance stage. Often a deposit of 10% of the value of the property has been asked for. I believe this isn't repayable if it is the buyer's fault to not complete. There are also all sorts of expenses the seller will incur to get the property sold which the defaulting buyer will be liable for. Changing your mind at the last minute is therefore EXPENSIVE.
Of course this is a potted version of the process up here, I just don't see why a very similar system couldn't be adopted in the rest of Britain. Maybe there is a reason/s I don't know of why our tried and tested method isn't adopted?

 

I agree.

I had to sell my home for a ridiculously low price due to the divorce and still being in recession, you could have bought a luxury car for the same price.

Now you could buy a car on your credit card and drive away with it, yet the solicitors dragged it out for months

 

Having recently bought here in Scotland I agree with most of what you say Silu. However, having experienced the 'closing date' idea (similar to bidding by tender) I have to disagree, it's the most stressful time I've ever been through. Closing dates are entered into if there is more than one offer on the table and the parties involved then have to put forward another higher bid for the property, then sit and wait for the closing date. The closing date usually happens a few days after the original offers. We had to wait a week and were finally told late on a Friday afternoon that our bid hadn't been successful leaving us crestfallen and even more stressed, knowing we couldn't start again because estate agents are closed for the weekend. There was just one other couple who were late to view the property and later making their offer.

 

We had nothing but stress and trauma in England. Deals falling through due to chain breaks. Our first house took two years but strangely in the end a woman whose chain had broken came back a year later and gave us the original asking price. On the second house in Bucks we moved to our place on the IoW and the day of completion the deal collapsed as the day before the girls buying it broke up! It then took another year to sell. We were then resident in Portugal so had the added expense of a trip back to complete.

Trying to 'downsize' in the property game, last month we sold both our apartment at the coast (bought in 1988) and our caravan/cabin at the river (bought in 2012).

Being a tourist area, you never know when something will sell. Thankfully buying/selling is a doddle. When an offer is accepted, a deposit (usually 10%) is made by the Buyer to the Seller and a Promissory Contract signed. This is binding. If the Buyer backs out, the Seller keeps the deposit. However, if the Seller backs out, the Seller must double the deposit back to the Buyer. Deals go through quickly to Completion and gazumping does not exist (except perhaps a higher offer may be accepted before Promissory Contract). Assuming you can get your searches, electricity certifications, etc, done promptly, the whole deal can be completed in weeks. Moving date is agreed between Seller and Buyer. We agreed to buy our current cottage in June whilst on holiday, got a Power of Attorney and were the owners mid August.

Caravans are instant sales ... pay your money and take over site fees, simplz! Just a simple Bill of Sale is in order.

 

Know what you mean@sheal having not been the highest bidder on occasions and lost out, but still think our system is vastly simpler and fairer. Ok it does perhaps favour the seller as if you REALLY want a particular property then you will need to make a very good bid for it. This of course then favours you when you come to sell. When I sold my flat in Edinburgh it was sold for over 40% over the offers over price! However when I came to buy another property I had to bid way over the asking price to be sure I got it. Usually your solicitor will point you in the right direction as to what to bid.....I think they have " means" of knowing what the opposition is like.
We once put in a bid for a house which was needing a lot doing to it. I thought our bid was pretty good but our solicitor said he didn't think we would get the house for what we had bid. It turned out to be the house sale of the year! There were over 100 bids on it and we lost buying it by 150%. Most importantly now is I hope you are settling into you new home and can get everything sorted before winter sets in.

 

Does the "chain effect" not cause problems then?

Surely if someone in the chain's buyer drops out for whatever reason and ends up losing their deposit, it puts an awful strain on the next committed buyer who has lost the sale of his property but paid a deposit which he is likely to lose through no fault of his own.

If I have read this wrong, sorry, this kind of stuff baffles me.

 

@pete it would seem to me that the buyer/seller who breaks the "chain" would be forced to return the deposit to his prospective buyer.... so he gets it from both directions if he backs out.

 

As I said, not my kind of stuff, just trying to keep up.

But surely it means the whole chain then starts returning deposits and forefitting deposits?

 

It happens here too. But I can't see any system that would be able to stop people being fickle, or perhaps circumstances change for them - i.e. death..

We've had people here buy a home and then have trouble selling theirs so they get a "bridge" loan/mortgage for a short period of time so they can sell their home later than scheduled and not have to back out of buying the new residence.

 

We had already sold our house which gave us the advantage of being cash buyers without a chain.

Here in Scotland there is no deposit paid but acceptance of an offer by the seller is binding. If either party drops out they are responsible for paying the costs of the other party. Something we did find a little unnerving is that the buyers don't sign contracts here, that is down to the sellers only. The buyers are given a formal letter from their solicitor to acknowledge the sale has been completed.

 

Our contracts are drawn up between buyer and seller or their attorneys and with all of the terms and conditions stated.

I think in spite of the supposed safe guards, I'd prefer to drop dead, much much later please, here where I am.

 

Typically there are no chains here because ...

1. If you are a first time buyer you have your mortgage in place
2. You are buying a holiday home and have your funds in order
3. You actually sell your current home first before you make an offer on another property
4. After making an offer you don't continue looking for another property
5. The laws are strict so you adhere to them

As @CanadianLori Lori mentioned, I remember in America people getting bridging loans. Actually We knew somewhere here who had to take such as deals kept falling through on their Lancashire property, cost them thousands.

 

Here in Scotland there is no deposit paid but acceptance of an offer by the seller is binding

No it's not.

Once the offer is accepted it takes a while/days/weeks for the details of the agreement to be formalised and finally signed by both sides. THEN it becomes binding.

 

There is quite an informative article,about the 2 systems on Zoopla written on 23rd October of this year which I have only just seen.5 ways the Scottish homebuying system differs to England's - Zoopla
It has been my experience that in general,solicitors are a bit more ethical than estate agents! We started using an estate agency to sell a property over in the west of Scotland....gee never again crooked didn't quite describe the bunch, we quickly realised they were trying to get us to go for a quick sale to someone who was related to 1 of the directors, so sent them packing and used solicitors who we had used before.

 

If either party drops out after the offer is accepted there is no reason why the other party can't ask for compensation.

Contracts in Scotland aren't signed by both sides now Glasgowdan, just the sellers. We bought our home under four weeks ago and were surprised by this.