Buying a house- advice is much appreciated

Well said hailbopp plus the lazy lawyers down here expect you do to half the work they should be doing for you. Then as you say you might be gazumted at the last minute and of course the infamous chains down here.

 

How would it work for someone in England wanting to move to Scotland? Would it be easier than buying in England, from the point of view of professionals doing more of the work for the client who is moving from Eng to Scot?

Just hope to keep my options open!!!

 

This is just my experience. Employ a Scottish solicitor that has a residential department. Then find a house. Obtain a loan if one is needed and they will ask you for a surveyors report before lending the money which is advisable even if you do not need a loan. There is normally a closing date for offers.
Contact the solicitor to put the offer in. At 12.00 on closing day usually a Friday the sellers solicitor has his first look at all the offers and the highest bid wins. This bid is binding and it will cost you to walk away. Your solicitor will notify you if you are successful. You transfer the money into your solicitor’s client account. Your solicitor and the sellers solicitor do all the paper work including money transfers etc and arrange a moving in day. Yes it costs you but all you have to do is sign documents.
In Scotland the selling price is usually described as offers over not sure what it is now but you used to have to bid at least 10% over.
It is not just Estate Agents in Scotland that sell houses, the solicitors do as well and in major towns they have Solicitor Property Centres where all solicitors place their houses for sale or rent which you can visit or search the Internet.
A new house is also an option where the builder offers a lot of monetary bribes but I would do a lot of research on the building company first. At least you do not get involved in loosing out on several houses due to your low bid.
Also check out the area you are thinking of moving to.
I am sure others can fill in the gaps and/or correct my errors.

 

Thankyou, @waterbut, very helpful of you. The system in England is a major reason why I find the idea of moving house so stressful and off-putting.

 

If you think buying and selling in Scotland is easier than England then sorry, I think you're wrong. I moved house for the second time in eight years here in Scotland - four months ago. I've moved house a lot, many of those times in England and had been gazumped along the way as well as selling in a crashed market twice.

I/we, husband and I accepted a very good offer over the asking price on our last house to people that were renting, so no chain there. The bungalow we've bought was an executors sale, so no chain there either.

On selling we had to complete a home owners report and have a survey done on our house costing us £650. If you haven't sold within three months that has to be repeated again at further cost. On top of that there are the usual estate agent, solicitors fees and tax. The home owner is expected to leave all appliances, curtains and light fittings and to adopt those in the property they are moving too. It has to be written into the contract if the intention is to remove any. I did this with my Miele washing machine.

Buying, even though there wasn't a chain was a nightmare. We were looking for a bungalow and with few available they are sort after and sell quickly. Finding one and in the required area is purely luck. We found this one and within a few hours of it being marketed I'd made an appointment to view it with at least six other people interested at that point. We put in a good offer over the asking price immediately after viewing and it was rejected. We spoke to our estate agent and he said an executor will usually hold out for the highest price. By the end of the first week there were other viewings and it went to a closing date - the most stressful process we've ever been through. The date and time were set for a fortnight hence and in that time we had to judge how much over our original offer we were going to pay, knowing that we had to bid against many others too. It is also recommended that an odd figure is put forward so that it doesn't clash with another persons offer. We wanted this place, so went way over the 'asking price', not sure even then if that would be enough. That bid had to be in by noon on the day of closure. Then we sweated and stressed for a fortnight and couldn't even think about looking at other properties during that time. We received a phone call from our solicitor around 3pm on the closing date to tell us we'd got it. The relief reduced us to tears.

During the course of all this we weren't allowed to view it again until all the conveyancing was done, and even then the seller's agent wasn't happy about it. We had to get our solicitor to intervene. After the initial viewing of twenty minutes and the long gap between that and the second viewing - two weeks from moving in - we'd pretty much forgotten what it looked like inside. We'd paid out a large amount of money for a home we couldn't remember. A scary time!

There was no chain either side of us but it still took nearly three months to move, the solicitors requiring all the I's dotted and the T's crossed, and not very willing to speak about the process along the way. On completion (not a term used here) only the seller signs contracts which we found strange. Our estate agent was very good and answered many questions regarding both sale and purchase.

We're settled and happy in our new home, our final home after so many moves.

 

I am glad you are now settled and happy, @Sheal, but goodness so many hoops to jump through. I felt my heart rate go up just reading it. I think the only answer is to win the lottery and then move at leisure...

 

It does depend on the type of property and the area you're in. Selling where I am just now is easy, but the last house wasn't that simple, due to fewer likely viewers, plus the eventual buyer being a crook. I won't elaborate on all of that, as it's a very long story!
When we were buying a flat earlier this year for my daughter, we wanted to go back and take a 2nd look, for measuring windows etc. This was after our offer was accepted, and it didn't happen. The seller was doing it through one of those small agents, and the woman dealing with it was incompetent. Due to the hold ups, it was getting close to the mark with the handover, and she then contacted my daughter to ask when it was all happening etc. My daughter knew enough to tell her politely to eff off and that she should be contacting the solicitor, not her, about any of that. I think our solicitor told her in no uncertain terms what the protocol was.
Most properties are offers over, and around 10% over is the norm, but you've no idea of what else has been offered until the closing date, unless yours is the only offer.

The home report introduction has helped in many ways with buying/selling, because it's valued on the current condition, and there's no 'well the kitchen needs done so I'm offering X amount less than the asking price' but a lot depends on your own situation, and it can still be a lottery with what you should offer. When we bought the house round the corner from here, I was very, very pregnant, and had just sold my flat, and we were staying with my parents. There was another party interested, but the seller told her agent that she wanted the 'nice young couple ' [] to have it, and if we just matched the offer of the other party, she'd rather we had the house. It's harder nowadays because it's often the agents that show people round houses, rather than the owners, so there isn't that personal touch.

 

Buying and selling is just a way for other people to make money.

 

That is good about the introduction of the home report, @fairygirl . I am not sure about having the owners show the prospective buyers around their home. It can be a bit too personal and embarrassing, if you know what I mean. It depends on the relationship between prospective seller and buyer, I suppose. Glad it worked out for your daughter, eventually.

 

Personally I wouldn’t dream of letting anybody else show my house. Who better to know the good and the bad!
Where I currently live is absolutely lovely ( been here 23years and my avatar is the view at the end of my road). The bricks and mortar are not the best but we have improved them a bit since moving here. When we came to see here the house was being sold through Saville’s…….this is NOT a mansion with 400 acres and the sellers should not have used them as a selling agent. All the agents seem to have at least double barrelled if not triple and are called the likes of Torquil or Sebastian. Anyway, by using the wrong agents the house was not advertised to highlight what a beautiful and tranquil spot it is here with no immediate neighbours. Consequently we bought the house for a very very good price.
Yes showing prospective buyers around can be a bit trying but better that than leaving it to others to make a cock up of it.

 

I think it depends on your personal situation at the time @hailbopp. It was an emotional/forced move for me, as my health isn't what it was and I could no longer look after the place properly. To show people around the home I didn't want to leave would have been very difficult. On the second day of marketing our estate agent showed six couples round it and two more the following day. Within three days there were three offers put forward. One was rejected due to the bad attitude of the viewer, the other two were identical. Our agent asked them to put in further offers and we accepted the higher of the two. Not just because it was higher, but because they were in a better position to buy as they were renting. We could have left our home on the market and probably gone to a closing date, but the final offer was very good and we didn't see the point of creating further stress for us or those who wanted to buy it.

 

I agree @Sheal. It always comes down to personal circumstances, the likely amount of viewers - and that often depends on location as much as anything else, and what you need/want from the sale. Sometimes it has to be quick, so a fixed price helps, but that approach seems to be dwindling.
If you have a more remote property, and it's less likely to attract loads of punters, it can certainly be an advantage to show them round yourself, and make a connection with prospective buyers, but it also depends on what time you have too. Sometimes, you get a lot of time wasters, and that's infuriating when you've spent ages taking them round. Just going out and leaving it to an estate agent can often be much easier though, especially if there's likely to be plenty of viewers.
Certainly, the estate agent also has a huge influence - the other similar one to Savills up here is Rettie, who also do a lot of farm estates, and similar properties. Corum always try and push for more money, but I wouldn't recommend them. I remember when a property of my ex was being sold, and the flash guy that arrived thought his 'wonky' fireplace pic was brilliant. It wasn't - it just looked bl**dy stupid.
That's a bugbear of mine when looking at properties online - twenty pix of the same room, but no one thought of putting the laundry basket or ironing board etc. out of sight before taking the photos.

 

It all depends on the agent @fairygirl. We knew our agent's track record having used them previously and I can't praise them enough. The chap we dealt with was spot on and hid those things away that I had forgotten. The same agent is also home to our solicitor.

 

It's common sense though, isn't it @Sheal? Why take photos that won't show the property in it's best light when you're trying to get a client the best offers?
It seems to be much more common now though. Perhaps more small, individual agents, with less experienced staff etc.
Like you, there are agents I'd use for selling, and ones I definitely wouldn't.

I can remember when buying my first property [flat] that whole streets were linked to specific building societies, so you were basically forced to take your mortgage with them. One side of the road could be with one firm, and the other with a different one. Completely different nowadays.

 

Viewing different properties means dealing with different agents, and the attitude of many of them in this area leaves a lot to be desired @fairygirl. Downright rude and unhelpful. They want your fees but don't want to earn them.