Stir crazy

Little tip: don't move houses if you work from home. You drive yourself insane sitting there waiting for your buyers to get off their backsides and actually do something. I'm sick of all this uncertainty, the fact that things haven't moved in a month. That our buyers only make token efforts to kick their financial advisor up the backside. That they don't follow things up. That we're not kept informed.

These are people who questioned whether we were serious about accepting their offer after less than a week, by which time we'd already had a mortgage offer in place and had an offer accepted on a house on the other side of the country. Within three weeks we'd had a mortgage offer finalised and a survey done. They meanwhile hadn't even instructed a financial advisor or handed money over to their solicitor.

Let's be generous. They clearly know little about the house buying process. Neither do I for that matter, but at least I make the effort to learn about it. As we live in a world where it's someone else's fault (as evidenced by our buyers' keeness to blame their financial advisor for all the problems without actually offering to do anything constructive about it), perhaps it's time we introduced a step-by-step guide to the buying and selling process. It would go something like this...

1. Prospective buyer requiring a mortgage approaches mortgage company and gets an agreement in principle after basic credit checks are carried out.
2. Person places offer on property. Offer is vetted, to verify mortgage promise exists if applicable If offer is accepted, the seller is told how much of the house's cost will be made up in "cash" and how much is being funded by the mortgage. They are also given details of the bank the buyer will be using.
3. Sellers agree to immediately look for property or confirm that they will be willing to vacate the property on completion if they're not buying on straight away. Buyers are now required to process their mortgage application immediately, subject to the survey taking place. Estate agent is given access to mortgage application for purposes of keeping an eye on its progress on behalf of the seller.
4. Seller moves to step 1 of the process with regards to buying another property if applicable.
5. Once the chain is complete, buyers must instruct their surveys and solicitors within two weeks.
6. Rest of purchase goes ahead as planned.

This has benefits for all parties. The seller knows very quickly if there is going to be a problem with their prospective buyer from a financial point of view. The buyer doesn't actually commit any money until the chain is complete. If you wanted even more protection, how about inserting a step 5a, whereby a "pre-exchange" is carried out, tying all parties to the move subject to legal considerations.

Sounds like common sense to me - bound to be flaws, but they can be ironed out. Sadly, the very fact it sounds like common sense means this Labour government will never act upon it. Oh well, back to thumbs twiddling...

[Listening to: Carrie Anne - The Hollies]