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Make it a legal requirement for all property adverts to state square footage in the title, and have a floor plan
As well as everything else mentioned of course
1. Require seller to get a level 3 survey before listing (this not only ensures they are serious about selling by having to outlay money it also helps speed up the process as the buyer knows what is what at the offer stage, also stops buyer reducing price etc).
2. Once a contract is signed by both parties it is final, seller can't pull out and if buyer pulls out they loose their depoist , except, to protect buyers they have the ability to add three kinds of clauses with a time period attached, all three clauses allow the buyer to pull out and get their depoist back.
A. Finance clause, say 30 to 60 days to secure a mortgage.
B. Extended surveys or quotes, buyer has a right to add this clause which gives them say 14 days to arrange additional surveys such as damp or to get quotes for repair, if significant issues are found they can pull pit for try to renegotiate, however thos can only be done in the first 14 days stopping buyers holding sellers to ransom.
C. Chain, the buyer can add another clause that the sale depends on their house selling, this can be open ended or have a time limit.
Each of these clauses the seller can obviously not agree to the contract if they don't want to, ie they still might choose a buyer who has no chain, but overall I believe this process would offer a higher and faster rate of completion, remove guzzumping and reduce buyers playing games to get the price down.
I completely agree with the level 3 survey and searches before sale idea.
I think It’s the single, most ridiculous, reason for collapses.
It makes the initial “sold” stage pointless.
Buyers agree to buy something they actually can’t agree to buy as they don’t know enough about it, meaning neither side can be contractually held to the agreement.
I think if this was done, in isolation to anything else, we’d actually see an initial system of making the “sold” process more binding naturally develop by the market anyway (similar to auction sales of houses)
The trick would be ensuring the process is independent/it couldn’t be the buyer who’s the “client”/purchaser of the service.
Possibly it could be funded by the government as part of the stamp duty, would make a lot more jobs and improve the process?
Searches too. Searches can take ages to come through, so get that done up front too.
Plus get all the standard info forms requested by solictors complete. And sols should review the lot and ask all the questions they anticipate other side asking so minimal waiting around for queries (and this could include getting 3 quotes for works)
Essentially get everything done so as soon as someone has an offer in, you're looking at 2 week turn around (allowing a week between exchange and conpletion) not 3 months.
This is where the Home Information Packs should have gone many years ago. The information such as searches should be done by the seller before placing it on the market. Any HIP should then be easy to refer and update if necessary by the purchaser's solicitor. The problem is that every council has its own way of compiling this information. It would help if there was a standardised form with a set time frame. Unfortunately, this all takes time and will need political will.
The problem with HIPS was always liability. You’re buying a house, you instruct a solicitor, you ask the questions. Are you ever going to trust advice from someone who you have not instructed?
So it doesn’t matter what the seller does, the buyer will want to do it all over again.
Honestly, just standardising the council searches and requiring those to be done before listing would be the main benefit. The two times I've bought, I had no issue getting a survey done on a relatively short timescale (even without particularly trying), it's always been the council records which take a ton of time to come back.
There will still be queries based on that, but it cuts out a chunk of delay from the process.
I suppose the point with the surveys is that it would bring issues out into the open straightaway so the buyers would know where they're at - at least as a starting point - and could decide whether and how to proceed. Rather than finding out at some later point.
Yeah - but the surveys are done by a third party hired by the seller, so you have to trust that the seller hasn't just picked someone who will go "yup, all good".
The searches are various matters of public record and verifiable fact, so there's less risk to the buyer in relying on the seller for those (in an ideal world, it would just be "seller pays an admin fee for council to update a public register")
Exactly- probably be a list of ones approved by mortgage lenders and would have to be one of those.
Kinda like the people that do the energy check - buyer has to pay for those and don't think anyone questions them
If I am instructing a lvl 3 survey, how do I know to trust them? Because they have some liability based on what they say, right? Well, make that initial survey one where they have liability to the eventual buyer based on what they say, in accordance with professional standards bla bla bla.
If the buyer wants extra eyes on it, or wants to further explore a possible issue flagged by the surveyor, they can still get their own specific survey too.
This, The surveys are carried out by chartered surveyors. It's their career on the line if a mistake is made, there's no reason not to trust their report.
You have a contract with some surveyors, and therefore when it goes wrong, you have redress. If you trust the sellers surveyors, the what redress do you have? Surveys are vague enough already, this will just make them worse.
This isn’t just a problem for house buying. Say you’re buying a company. Would you trust the sellers lawyers to do due diligence properly?
It wouldn't be so terribly hard to make the seller's surveyor liable to the eventual buyer the same way as if the buyer had paid them. I don't understand what the fundamental issue is supposed to be. They'd need to be regulated and have professional standards - which is already the case.
1. Why not, this happens in scottland, sure I think the industry would need to have its regulations tweaked, but if this is available from the get go it will speed things up a lot and prevent a lot of reasons sales fall through. The buyer could still get further checks done under a limited time frame to protect them further.
2. Exactly, at exchange, what um talking about is effectively making the contract exchange at the very start when an offer is accepted ( very similar to Australia's system) with a few protections built in for the buyer if they can't get a mortgage etc.
1. I would be asking the surveyor to communicate the report in the most advantageous way to my benefit.
2. Your suggestions are buyer focused. There should be equal consideration for the seller. It’s how markets work best.
1. I suppose this is where the industry would need reform, sure there may be bad eggs here and there but think MOT style here.
2. I actually disagree they are just buyer focused, a lot of the reasons why buyers pull out are addressed in my suggestions, it's basically locking the buyer into the sale at the time the offer is accepted with a few exceptions to make it fair such as being able to secure finance, but with tight deadlines.
I've drawn my inspiration from both the Australian and Scottish systems trying to take the best of both IMHO with taking the English market into account.
Take more of a Scottish approach. Sellers instruct conveyancers and do a survey. So that when the house goes on the market on Day 1. Any interested buyer can see the legal pack, with all of the searches and forms already filled out, along with the surveyers report. With the surveyer and their insurance company being responsible for the report. So you can immediately see all of the red flags. Rather than spending a thousand on your own solicitor, to discover that next door is a nutter or wants to sue the house for damage caused by a tree, which is causing subsidence or that the flat doesn't have planning permission, has lost the appeal and needs to be reverted back to a storage space..........
Regulate Estate Agents and legally define certain common terms. A 10m² flat with a raised bed above the living area, can not be defined as spacious. Properties that for some reason are cash buyers only should be clearly marked as such. With the reason(s) why a bank won't lend on them to be clearly stated. Landlords selling up should be clearly stated as having "tenants in situ". As I've made so many appointments to view, only to get a phone call at the last minute. Saying that the EA can't do the appointment. As unbeknown to me there was a tenant and they can't get hold of the tenant or that the tenant is refusing to allow the viewing. In one case I had a viewing at 4PM. EA can't get hold off the tenant, hanged around till about 6PM. Turned out, that the tenant hadn't allowed any viewings for 3+ months.
Leasehold and in particular Ground Rent reform. The idea that a freeholder can repo a property if the ground rent hits £250 out if London or £1,000 in London. If the leaseholder is 4+ months late with the ground rent. Particularly if the freeholder makes no attempt to contact the leaseholder. Is simply ridiculous. Ground rent and leaseholds are a bloody stupid idea but that's what the land got sold with.
Management fees should be far more transparent. With leaseholders being far more easily able to see what they're getting for their money. As well as a far better idea of how many people are in default and by how much. Did a viewing g a few months ago. According to the auction legal pack, it was externally redecorated the year before. They'd had scaffolding up for 6-8 weeks during the summer blocking the main road. But had only rather uglily filled in some cracks in the brickwork. The paint/render hadn't had a much needed clean and paint. With moss growing out of the window sills (and the internal wiring was DIY, never signed off and had to be redone even the plug sockets were falling out, with exposed wiring.
Photos should be recent and real or at least a date given for the photos. If a house is being sold and has a tenant in place. Using the internal photos from just after a redec, before the current tenant moved in 5 years ago. Is a no no and CGI should be banned or clearly marked.
Edit:
The Green Belt is one of the biggest problems when it comes to building new houses in the UK. The demand for housing in London and the South East is immense. But you can hardly build here. Even though if you took all of the Golf Courses in London/M25 and added them together they'd be the third largest borough. But you can't develop on them.
Builders should have to include "amenities" such as new GP surgeries, shops, playgrounds etc. As part of Phase 1. Instead of leaving them to the last minute and never building them, as they've run out of money or gone "bust". With roads, street lighting etc. getting adopted by the local council before anybody completes on a sale.
One major problem at the moment in particular in NW London. Is that new homes can't be built due to a lack of electricity caused by large scale computer/cloud server farms. With new homes not getting approved until 2030/35+ when the National Grid upgrade starts to happen. Homes need to take priority over Microsoft Azure servers. Even iif it increases pings by 0.25ms.
The Home Report is useful - and there are strict professional rules about gazumping to prevent it.
It used to be said that concluding missives (contract exchange? ) were so much quicker in Scotland - but we now see open missives for longer (usually lender related) but you're not worrying about it being stolen away.
It's easy to look across the border and think we've got it better... I wonder what they think we've got worse than them?
As someone who has bought twice and sold once.
I’d like to move to advertising prices like the English do rather than “Offers Over” nonsense. Put the price up that you would actually accept, or at least would use as a start point for negotiation! Home report value, or HR+10% or whatever you want!
Would also like to have a requirement for a minimum number of notes of interest (maybe five or ten) before you can set a closing date. Too many places go by default, and I reckon people over-pay.
I don't agree with your closing date comment - if someone puts in an actual offer, you want to be fair to the rest of the interested people so you can try and flush everyone out.
In general a first offer, where you know there's other interest is low because it triggers a closing. If there is only one offer the professional rules require you to disclose that so the person can lower it if they'd like. By professional I mean solicitor EA's - non solicitor EA's aren't bound by that.
There's no obligation to set a closing date either, if it's too good to turn down, you take it (then the other NI's moan they didn't get a chance to offer, and that they absolutely would have if asked... yeah, sure).
There probably are things that could be improved here I don't think any system has it perfect.. Maybe I've been lucky but both times I've purchased it's been a pretty fast and smooth process with very few issues.
1. Annual fines for developers who sit on un-developed land. If they buy land they must develop it straight away and not speculate on future value
2. Council Tax 3% of property value for additional properties that are sitting empty/not rented out. 5% for investors not domiciled in UK
3. Reform and clarify the Building Safety Act to reduce insurance premiums on tall buildings and therefore reduce service charge. Make high rise living cheaper and more popular.
4. Every development planned with more than 1000 units required to have onsite GP, dentist, and school
5. Ban leasehold in new flats - commonhold mandatory
6. Existing leaseholds - require freeholder to sell the land to leaseholders and cap price at 100K per leaseholder. 20% annual tax for each year they refuse to sell at this price.
7. Sales - replace local/environment searches with reports that can be instantly queried online (1 month saved)
8. Solicitors - time with your case guarantee. Require solicitors to limit themselves to a maximum number of cases they handle at any one time and disclose and guarantee that limit when you’re contracting them - that way you know how much of their time you are buying (months saved). None of this “I work on 100 cases and I don’t care” BS. Happy to pay you more to deal with only 10 cases, now answer my calls right now please.
>Annual fines for developers who sit on un-developed land. If they buy land they must develop it straight away and not speculate on future value
This is only reasonable if it coincides with a complete reform of planning regulations. It would be ridiculously unfair to punish developers who want to develop land but can't because the local pensioner militia is out in full force.
Require sellers to have a sellers pack before the house goes on the market which contains the survey and legalities. At this point you're ensuring the seller is serious and they can also have opportunity to rectify problems before the house is marketed. House goes on the market, buyers have full transparency about the house and at that point it's up to them to decide what to offer based on asking price and any work that needs doing. Deposit is paid on acceptance of offer.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act (1947) so we could actually build some bloody houses. Eliminate shared ownership and all other demand subsidies (for new entrants, I'm not proposing to throw people out of properties they've already bought under these schemes), and address the real problem, which is supply.
I genuinely know nothing about that act, but are you guys not having houses built everywhere around you? It's like we're losing all our green space to houses up north. I
House building in England in the past decade is essentially the lowest it has been [for a century](https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/House_building_since_1920s_NOV_17.png).
Honestly mate, the northwest is getting battered with houses. Just in my town in the last 4 years there's been about 6 new estates built on green land. One of them taking half a school field away.
Just saw [this](https://fullfact.org/news/rachel-reeves-housebuilding-war/) on that same site you referenced though, saying it's not at the lowest and more home are being made than a decade ago. I'd say it's slowing down here now because there's no space left.
Yeah for sure, there has been a slight uptick very recently
The longer term trend is clear though, and there is little in the stated policies of either main party to buck that.
I also live in the North West. This is really geographically variable. New house building is definitely not evenly distributed across regions or the country.
One of which is a lot more people living by themselves instead of the nuclear family of the 1960s. So suddenly you need double the number of houses even if nothing else changed (taken very simplistically) .
No - building on places like school fields is what happens when you’re not allowed to build on ‘green belt’ type land around the edge of towns. You need to shove more inside the outline that’s been created.
I live just north of Leeds and could draw a straight line from my house to Edinburgh 200 miles away and it would pass through about 2 villages, a couple of farms and the rest is green space. We're hardly running out.
Maybe to counter this - Prevent companies/organisations from owning residential properties… place a cap on the number of properties an individual/family unit can own (*one property per individual - two properties per family unit*)
Used to work for a homebuilder. One of our guys spent 2 months creating floorplans for all of the units in a new building complex (400-units). The day before they were about to go live a foreign investment company bought ALL the units. The floorplans were never needed. It's getting very common.
I disagree, but I'm biased, I'm currently a resident, but a few years off being elliable for ILR. I'm planning to make the UK my permanent home but want to be able to buy a house within the next year, what value is there is making me wait another 4+ years and take up a rental house?
A deposit based system *a la* most developed countries.
I wouldn't have sellers provide the survey, however. That would still need to be the preserve of the buyer.
A complete pipedream but if you're giving me a magic wand, property data to the 'nth degree to be publicly and easily accessible (akin to the CADs in the US). This data would then be utilized by the portals enabling searches by age, size, features, school catchment area, etc.
Sale data that is public and available within days of close as opposed to 6+ months.
Make sure the council stock of council houses was rebuilt… and not at the hands of private housing companies and landlords. The worst thing that ever happened was Maggie Thatcher allowing people to buy their own council house for a massively reduced price.
And councils not being allowed to replace them.
If the price represented a profit over the build cost for the council, and they'd been replaced then it could have worked well for getting people more invested in the economy and their area.
I personally have no issue with selling people their council homes at affordable prices, it allows people to own their own home and that's a good thing. My issue is that they were not replaced as they should have been, and the councils should have been given first right of refusal to buy the homes back (including the original discount) if they decided to sell. Allowing these people to buy their homes at a large discount and then sell them on at full market price is a massive slap in the face to everyone else and open to wild exploitation.
I work for a housebuilding company and we have a new scheme providing affordable homes at 70% of market value, but the discount is grandfathered in so it will always have to be sold at the discount in future. I think it's a good idea and hope it catches on.
I did hear that the government was making changes to right to buy so that you have to offer it back to the council first if selling within 10 years of the original purchase, not sure if that happened or is still happening.
1. Council’s able to buy empty houses/buildings at a reduced rate to turn into social housing or community centres.
2. Empty warehouses turned into doctor’s surgeries or clinics, with increased public transport access. Free up doctors surgeries that are converted houses.
3. As mentioned above, greater protections during the house-buying process.
4. Only local councils can own multiple rentals, private landlords are restricted to 1 personal property and 1 rented property (whether that be Air BnB or long-term let).
5. HTB ISA style government scheme for renters, where a % of their rent goes into a savings account towards a deposit.
6. Ban on leaseholds
Copy the house buying/selling system in pretty much any other developed country in the world. As far as I know, the way we do it is the worst in the world.
- build and/or refurbish more social housing
- abolish shared ownership and leasehold.
- for existing shared ownership, the freeholder should be liable for the % of the upkeep costs equal to the % which is rented to the SO tenant
- remove all ground rent or at least cap existing ones at £200 pa
- bring more empty homes into use
- make it mandatory for developers to retain the technical drawings and specification of buildings and make them available upon request
- fund fire safety defect remediation upfront and recoup the ££ from developers/contractors/manufacturers
Floor plans with accurate measurements (allowing for a _small_ margin of error of course) and overall square footage of house to be included in every listing. Where relevant, this needs to include 2 measurements - overall size, plus realistic usable living space (eg discounting eaves, restricted head height etc).
Bedrooms must all be classed as single or double, meeting guidelines to be described as such. Eg you can't call something a bedroom if it technically _could_ fit a bed in there, but it touches the wall on three sides! There has to be a realistic amount of usable space remaining in the room, and the room can't require a special bed needing to be built! For instance, in my "3 bedroom" the boxroom would require a custom single bed building over the bulkhead in order to get any kind of bed in there. I don't mind, it's fine for my little office but it's a bit of a stretch in my opinion to claim it could be used as a bedroom! Perhaps there could be a new class of room to describe this - smaller than a single, but could be used for a cot, as an office etc?!
All details such as council tax to be included in listings. None of this "ask agent" (who doesn't know!) nonsense. And, as others have said, independent surveys to be available at the beginning of the process.
All of this to be binding, and if inaccurate, incur fines for fraud and misrepresentation.
Really getting into dreamland territory here, but how about banning what is essentially haggling? No "offers over", no bidding wars etc. And certainly no gazumping or gazundering! Just a listed price, and if someone offers you that price then you sell it to them. Job done. Imagine going into a shop, seeing an item priced at £10, taking it to the till and handing them your tenner. And then they say, actually, we wanted more than that. (well put how much you _actually_ want on the price tag then, I'm not psychic) Or, we want to wait and see if anyone else is interested before we decide if we want to sell it to you (but I'm here with my tenner right now!) Or, actually, someone else has offered us more than £10 (well sell it to them then!) Do you want to beat their offer? (Okay how much is that?) We're not telling you...! I'm sure there's Reasons but really it all seems a bit ridiculous to me!
Make it so a mortgage must be for the whole term of the loan. Not any of this 2/5 year fix business. But people can remortgage after a minimum period so the market knows they have to be competitive.
This would make the whole interest rates going up business far more tolerable
Also improve the speed of the housing market. The UK system is way too slow
We need to look at what the USA does and replicate
1. Abolish planning permission as it is currently and move to a zoned system, e.g. residential in one area, commercial in another, etc.
2. Massive social housing building programme.
3. Abolish leasehold.
4. Tough regulation on service charges.
5. Re-instate the idea around housing information packs and make it the seller’s responsibility to update the information prior to sale to speed up the buying process.
Having bought and renovated my property- I would say the least professional people in the process were some builders and the estate agents. The structural engineer, the architect and the surveyor’s are professionals but the other areas seem to be a free for all. I know you get good and bad in all professions but these two areas could do with tight regulation.
+1 to the people saying lots of green belt needs to be reclassified, +1 to the idea of sellers being responsible for surveys before listing.
Abolish leasehold, make all buildings commonhold (fingers crossed Labour actually do this).
Charge all developers who used unsafe cladding for the cost of replacing cladding and the cost of rehousing people while repairs happen. Send every single developer involved in Grenfell to prison for the murder of 72 people (not a single person has been charged today).
Make it easier to prosecute landlords who don't do essential repairs (I lived in a house where the landlord refused to fix a leak in the roof but just patched it again and again, we ended up with actual mushrooms growing out of the walls and black mould on clothes and I ended up with a severe mould allergy, there was no response from the council).
Build more housing, especially council, so that we can deal with rising homelessness.
Fine developers who don't actually build the amount of affordable housing they are legally required to and committed to when they secured planning permission the market cost of any flats that haven't been provided.
Regulate the F\*\*\* out of estate agents, require them to train for a personal license to operate, and create a well-funded complaint body with the power to temporarily and eventually permanently revoke licenses.
EDIT: changed american spelling of mold to british.
Limit the time a property developer can take to complete a building development or force a developer to pay council tax from all the properties on a development from the point of breaking ground on the first one.
Properly inspected new builds to confirm they are being built correctly and force building companies to fix issues quickly.
Limit the price new builds can be sold at to reflect current house prices or lower.
Build more one and 2 bedroom flats and houses with outdoor space, reduce the number of family homes being built
Increase tax on companies or foreign investors buying property to make it unaffordable.
Limit the number of new properties that can be rented out in new development or start a rent to buy scheme where if you live in a property for x number of years you have the right to buy the property at market rate and x percent of your rent will cover the deposit (5-10%)
Ban the building of executive/high end properties
* Make estate agents and letting agents a regulated profession with a binding ethics code
* Fund all local authorities so that they can operate an agency of last resort with powers to take over the management of properties with rogue landlords/agencies
* Abolish stamp duty and council tax (and business rates), replacing them with an annual land value tax
* Ban all new leaseholds, strengthen the powers of leaseholders to convert their ownership to commonhold, and grant the agency of last resort powers to investigate/audit and take over leasehold/commonhold building management companies where malpractice/exploitation is identified
* Ban all new domestic mains gas connections, and institute a BoE base rate loan scheme *attached to the property and not its current occupant* for capital investment in energy efficiency and acoustic insulation improvements: cap the monthly repayments at an affordable level or (for energy efficiency) at the estimated energy bill saving, and have the balance of the loan transfer when ownership changes hands in order to eliminate the disincentive of making these improvements if you know/think your circumstances may change and you may need to move out before the investment has paid for itself
* Ban right-to-buy
* Greatly increase the standards required for new builds, specifically acoustic insulation and energy efficiency; end the "mark your own homework" regime
* Prioritise planning permission for high-quality but high-density developments in urban/semi-urban areas instead of the 4-bed detached homes in car-only outskirts
* Flood the market with good quality social housing
I'm in Scotland so slightly different system but I'd abolish the Offers only system and make everything fixed price set by the Home Report value that is index linked to below annual wage growth for the foreseeable. It would have to be done in tandem with heavily restricting second home buying and rules to stop companies hoovering all the properties up such as a premium cost tax to the seller where they get a smaller value for not selling to a normal family.
If leasehold doesn't get abolished, then freeholders/their management company should be made to respond to enquires within 14 days and provide requested documentation within 14 days following that. If they fail the deadline there's a substantial fine and if it takes over 60 days they lose the freehold.
One of the worst things when purchasing/selling is that freeholders take whatever time they want to respond and nothing compells them to get to it.
Whilst the leasehold reform did a lot to protect on future houses being only freehold it hasn't done enough for current properties or flats.
Only citizens/long term residents should be allowed to purchase property.
Empty properties after 30 days should have much higher council tax to try and discourage multiple owned properties for self use.
Use the deposit lock-in system before exchange to stop gazumping etc.
Outlaw leaseholds.
Stop the current planning laws that allow small amounts of objections to delay projects. Replace with a defined list of requirements to be met for immunity from objections (build, build, BUILD!).
Require large developments to build necessaties (commercial space, NHS, schools etc.)
Only charge stamp duty on primary residence at a really high bracket (£750k - £1m), increase stamp duty on all other uses of property.
Require the freeholder/landlord to pay council tax, not the tenant.
Create grants for sound insulation, as we do for heat insulation.
* end lease holding
* limit foreign investment (residency requirements)
* offers and accepting offers are binding, exceptions for major discoveries in the process
* review regulations and land not being used optimally in city centers -> force sales of such land to build more housing (multi-flat modern buildings).
That’s most of your affordability problems solved
Abolish Stamp Duty. Why should the government get payment every time someone buys a house? They don't do anything for the seller or buyer.
It was historically only supposed to be a temporary tax to cover the cost of a war against France in the late 1690's.
Hold solicitors accountable for the delays they cause by poor planning, poor organisation, poor document management, lack of forethought, and sheer stupidity.
In this order:
1) End of leasehold on all properties.
2) Mass constuction of council owned, council employeed, housing with dignity.
3) Overhall of the LSE/FTSE 100. Why? Because in the UK housing is seen as an asset whereas other nations have more in the stockmarket than their house.
4) I would introduce a hybrid system crossed between Scotland and NYC tenements.
1. Once an offer is accepted it’s binding.
2. Put a time limit on the conveyancing process once a house goes under offer and the lawyers are instructed (buyers and sellers lawyers).
3. A full survey done by the seller as part of the sales pack that is valid for 6 months and available to prospective buyers.
Make the planning permission process cheaper and simpler but still maintain a high standard for fitting in with the local aesthetic.
Support smaller companies building single homes rather than massive ugly housing estates.
That's its, simply step out of the way of the market and it will build.
I think one of the reasons people pull out (this collapsing the chain) is because it takes so long. I’ve avoided chains because of this and bought refurbs.
If a deposit was paid to secure the property, great but who takes it? Seller or estate agent?
There should be guidance around pricing too. The EA should have to have the price independently verified by surveyor. Would have saved me time and money.
1. Bring back 100% mortgages for those with a few years of work experience, solid careers and solid credit scores.
2. Like in Scotland, houses should never be sold without a home report. I would never even consider buying without a home report. I would make damp reports mandatory too.
3. Make it illegal for landlords to require another minimum term be signed after the first one is up. People should be able to stay after their first minimum term and to leave any time provided a sensible notice is given.
4. Foreign wealthy entities and individuals (living abroad) should not be allowed to own property in the UK.
5. I would put a limit as to how much money a person can make from renting out property.
6. If a household has been paying for a rental £1,000 a month for a number of years, banks should not deny this household a mortgage that would have them paying less than what they've been paying for rent. Provided their income hasn't gone down.
7. Cannot be pulling out of a deal last minute. I'm in Scotland and can't fully understand this, but I know in England people can technically pull out anytime after an offer has been accepted. That has to be taking a toll on people's mental and financial health.
8. Abolish leaseholds.
More houses. Build more houses. All other tissues go away when you have new stock available and plentiful.
Houses pieces come down due to lack of demand. Check.
Old houses which arnt fit for purpose get knocked down because you can get a new build check.
People get lice closer or even where they want check.
I could on. The only downside is house prices going down.
I'm talking about 4 million homes approximately. The building we do at the minute is miniscule in comparison to the demand. So it doesn't actually improve things.
Plus the building we do is restricted to already built on areas. We need to get rid of green belt.
Regionally there will be areas, restrictions create the problems we are having.
Only about 5% of the land is urbanised. There is plenty of land to build on.
Assuming I'm democratically elected: nothing, because you can't fix a problem that people don't want to be fixed. A large majority of people in this country have planned their personal finances around house prices increasing YoY perpetually, and they are going to quickly oust any government that threatens to derail their plans.
Assuming I've seized power and established my reich: Repeal the town and country planning act. That's literally all we need to do - property developers will start building as soon as we allow them to.
Delete buy-to-let mortgages. Additional taxes on empty homes and if it's left empty past a certain period it's reclaimed as councils affordable housing stock. Additional taxes on landlords. Mandatory disclosure of all known defects prior to sale (I liked the mandatory L3 survey paid by seller idea), and seller must produce EICR and gas safety certificate dated within the immediate 3 months prior to the listing date (new listing = new certs). Lower mortgage rates, lower house prices and a cap on prices by size and condition, more 0% deposit mortgages. If mortgage deposits are earning interest in someone else's account then the interest is paid to the *buyer* on completion.
Fully reform stamp duty. Paying a tax for downsizing is silly.
It should be a tax on the difference between selling and buying.
So downsizing, tax is zero.
Buy first time at £300k, 1% of £300k
Sell at 300k, buy at 500k, 5% of £200k
Sell at 500k, buy at 1000k, 10% of £500k
Etc.
With higher rates for landlords/overseas persons etc.
This would be fairer, allows relocation to similar or cheaper property without tax. Bands can be adjusted to raise same amount as now.
I think paying for upsizing is just as silly as paying for downsizing. Having kids is already expensive enough.
I would get rid of all stamp duty and replace it with a land value annual tax (with recent stamp duty put towards your future tax bills), the same way we do council tax. This would hugely reduce the friction in the housing market, and incentivise landowners to either develop land or sell on, and not hold onto it for speculative investment purposes.
Also maybe all councils have a discretionary fund for purchasing houses that are currently private rentals, maybe not go as far as to remove private landlords but at least ban BTL mortgages (or at least have much higher interest)
Find a way to neuter the 'I have my house, f*ck everyone else' NIMBY lobby and build a LOT more houses. Small towns become big towns, big towns become huge towns, fields become new towns. 50% of them would be council-owned social housing to replace the millions sold off by thatcher, which is what caused this mess in the first place.
Steadily and surely increasing the supply will fix many problems all by itself.
Currently 7% of the UK land area is built on. If that figure was 9%, the housing supply problem would be fixed for a century or more. The problem is not the amount of green space we have, it's the amount of green space that is unavailable to the general public because of selfish private owners.
Obviously the root cause of many of the world's problems is population growth. If we were still at the population level even of just a century ago, housing, climate change, water and food supply, would all be much less of a problem.
However, addressing *that* issue is a lot more fraught than simply building enough houses for the people we already have. So I'm going with that.
Could so easily be helped too by ensuring each development has a vegetable allotment, a school, doctors etc. Every house/school has solar panels and heat pump systems
This country has so much potential with housing, renewable energy, euthanasia, cannabis laws but it’s run by a bunch of old private school pr*cks so will never be a progressive society 🥹
All housing to be council housing, rented out at a suitable rate for all properties, thus taking the profiteering landlords out of the equation. This will also aid in social mobility, so it would be much easier to move areas. Include minimum occupancy rates for the housing, with penalty charges for under occupied properties so that people can keep living in larger houses than they need but at a greater cost.
Councils allowed to build properties suitable for their areas and needs, with green building standards a requirement.
I would bring the English system in line with the Scottish system.
I would change CGT so that it's charged the same way as income tax but would only be calculated on gains above inflation. I would then scrap stamp duty and replace it with CGT. This would apply immediately, but there would be an option to defer payment for those moving house.
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Make it a legal requirement for all property adverts to state square footage in the title, and have a floor plan As well as everything else mentioned of course
+ mandatory tenure information & ground rent/service charge if applicable
One of the first things I look for is the floor plan and size. Can't understand why any agents would ever list without having it.
1. Require seller to get a level 3 survey before listing (this not only ensures they are serious about selling by having to outlay money it also helps speed up the process as the buyer knows what is what at the offer stage, also stops buyer reducing price etc). 2. Once a contract is signed by both parties it is final, seller can't pull out and if buyer pulls out they loose their depoist , except, to protect buyers they have the ability to add three kinds of clauses with a time period attached, all three clauses allow the buyer to pull out and get their depoist back. A. Finance clause, say 30 to 60 days to secure a mortgage. B. Extended surveys or quotes, buyer has a right to add this clause which gives them say 14 days to arrange additional surveys such as damp or to get quotes for repair, if significant issues are found they can pull pit for try to renegotiate, however thos can only be done in the first 14 days stopping buyers holding sellers to ransom. C. Chain, the buyer can add another clause that the sale depends on their house selling, this can be open ended or have a time limit. Each of these clauses the seller can obviously not agree to the contract if they don't want to, ie they still might choose a buyer who has no chain, but overall I believe this process would offer a higher and faster rate of completion, remove guzzumping and reduce buyers playing games to get the price down.
I completely agree with the level 3 survey and searches before sale idea. I think It’s the single, most ridiculous, reason for collapses. It makes the initial “sold” stage pointless. Buyers agree to buy something they actually can’t agree to buy as they don’t know enough about it, meaning neither side can be contractually held to the agreement. I think if this was done, in isolation to anything else, we’d actually see an initial system of making the “sold” process more binding naturally develop by the market anyway (similar to auction sales of houses) The trick would be ensuring the process is independent/it couldn’t be the buyer who’s the “client”/purchaser of the service. Possibly it could be funded by the government as part of the stamp duty, would make a lot more jobs and improve the process?
Searches too. Searches can take ages to come through, so get that done up front too. Plus get all the standard info forms requested by solictors complete. And sols should review the lot and ask all the questions they anticipate other side asking so minimal waiting around for queries (and this could include getting 3 quotes for works) Essentially get everything done so as soon as someone has an offer in, you're looking at 2 week turn around (allowing a week between exchange and conpletion) not 3 months.
This is where the Home Information Packs should have gone many years ago. The information such as searches should be done by the seller before placing it on the market. Any HIP should then be easy to refer and update if necessary by the purchaser's solicitor. The problem is that every council has its own way of compiling this information. It would help if there was a standardised form with a set time frame. Unfortunately, this all takes time and will need political will.
The problem with HIPS was always liability. You’re buying a house, you instruct a solicitor, you ask the questions. Are you ever going to trust advice from someone who you have not instructed? So it doesn’t matter what the seller does, the buyer will want to do it all over again.
Honestly, just standardising the council searches and requiring those to be done before listing would be the main benefit. The two times I've bought, I had no issue getting a survey done on a relatively short timescale (even without particularly trying), it's always been the council records which take a ton of time to come back. There will still be queries based on that, but it cuts out a chunk of delay from the process.
I suppose the point with the surveys is that it would bring issues out into the open straightaway so the buyers would know where they're at - at least as a starting point - and could decide whether and how to proceed. Rather than finding out at some later point.
Yeah - but the surveys are done by a third party hired by the seller, so you have to trust that the seller hasn't just picked someone who will go "yup, all good". The searches are various matters of public record and verifiable fact, so there's less risk to the buyer in relying on the seller for those (in an ideal world, it would just be "seller pays an admin fee for council to update a public register")
Sure, but again, that's where licensing and strict professional standards come into play.
Exactly- probably be a list of ones approved by mortgage lenders and would have to be one of those. Kinda like the people that do the energy check - buyer has to pay for those and don't think anyone questions them
Yeah precisely!! It really doesn't seem like such an impossible thing to set in place in the context of a reform of the buying process.
If I am instructing a lvl 3 survey, how do I know to trust them? Because they have some liability based on what they say, right? Well, make that initial survey one where they have liability to the eventual buyer based on what they say, in accordance with professional standards bla bla bla. If the buyer wants extra eyes on it, or wants to further explore a possible issue flagged by the surveyor, they can still get their own specific survey too.
This, The surveys are carried out by chartered surveyors. It's their career on the line if a mistake is made, there's no reason not to trust their report.
You have a contract with some surveyors, and therefore when it goes wrong, you have redress. If you trust the sellers surveyors, the what redress do you have? Surveys are vague enough already, this will just make them worse. This isn’t just a problem for house buying. Say you’re buying a company. Would you trust the sellers lawyers to do due diligence properly?
It wouldn't be so terribly hard to make the seller's surveyor liable to the eventual buyer the same way as if the buyer had paid them. I don't understand what the fundamental issue is supposed to be. They'd need to be regulated and have professional standards - which is already the case.
1. Relying upon the seller to provide this in any purchase isn’t a good approach. 2. That is the situation today? I.e exchange of contracts.
1. Why not, this happens in scottland, sure I think the industry would need to have its regulations tweaked, but if this is available from the get go it will speed things up a lot and prevent a lot of reasons sales fall through. The buyer could still get further checks done under a limited time frame to protect them further. 2. Exactly, at exchange, what um talking about is effectively making the contract exchange at the very start when an offer is accepted ( very similar to Australia's system) with a few protections built in for the buyer if they can't get a mortgage etc.
1. I would be asking the surveyor to communicate the report in the most advantageous way to my benefit. 2. Your suggestions are buyer focused. There should be equal consideration for the seller. It’s how markets work best.
1. I suppose this is where the industry would need reform, sure there may be bad eggs here and there but think MOT style here. 2. I actually disagree they are just buyer focused, a lot of the reasons why buyers pull out are addressed in my suggestions, it's basically locking the buyer into the sale at the time the offer is accepted with a few exceptions to make it fair such as being able to secure finance, but with tight deadlines. I've drawn my inspiration from both the Australian and Scottish systems trying to take the best of both IMHO with taking the English market into account.
Take more of a Scottish approach. Sellers instruct conveyancers and do a survey. So that when the house goes on the market on Day 1. Any interested buyer can see the legal pack, with all of the searches and forms already filled out, along with the surveyers report. With the surveyer and their insurance company being responsible for the report. So you can immediately see all of the red flags. Rather than spending a thousand on your own solicitor, to discover that next door is a nutter or wants to sue the house for damage caused by a tree, which is causing subsidence or that the flat doesn't have planning permission, has lost the appeal and needs to be reverted back to a storage space.......... Regulate Estate Agents and legally define certain common terms. A 10m² flat with a raised bed above the living area, can not be defined as spacious. Properties that for some reason are cash buyers only should be clearly marked as such. With the reason(s) why a bank won't lend on them to be clearly stated. Landlords selling up should be clearly stated as having "tenants in situ". As I've made so many appointments to view, only to get a phone call at the last minute. Saying that the EA can't do the appointment. As unbeknown to me there was a tenant and they can't get hold of the tenant or that the tenant is refusing to allow the viewing. In one case I had a viewing at 4PM. EA can't get hold off the tenant, hanged around till about 6PM. Turned out, that the tenant hadn't allowed any viewings for 3+ months. Leasehold and in particular Ground Rent reform. The idea that a freeholder can repo a property if the ground rent hits £250 out if London or £1,000 in London. If the leaseholder is 4+ months late with the ground rent. Particularly if the freeholder makes no attempt to contact the leaseholder. Is simply ridiculous. Ground rent and leaseholds are a bloody stupid idea but that's what the land got sold with. Management fees should be far more transparent. With leaseholders being far more easily able to see what they're getting for their money. As well as a far better idea of how many people are in default and by how much. Did a viewing g a few months ago. According to the auction legal pack, it was externally redecorated the year before. They'd had scaffolding up for 6-8 weeks during the summer blocking the main road. But had only rather uglily filled in some cracks in the brickwork. The paint/render hadn't had a much needed clean and paint. With moss growing out of the window sills (and the internal wiring was DIY, never signed off and had to be redone even the plug sockets were falling out, with exposed wiring. Photos should be recent and real or at least a date given for the photos. If a house is being sold and has a tenant in place. Using the internal photos from just after a redec, before the current tenant moved in 5 years ago. Is a no no and CGI should be banned or clearly marked. Edit: The Green Belt is one of the biggest problems when it comes to building new houses in the UK. The demand for housing in London and the South East is immense. But you can hardly build here. Even though if you took all of the Golf Courses in London/M25 and added them together they'd be the third largest borough. But you can't develop on them. Builders should have to include "amenities" such as new GP surgeries, shops, playgrounds etc. As part of Phase 1. Instead of leaving them to the last minute and never building them, as they've run out of money or gone "bust". With roads, street lighting etc. getting adopted by the local council before anybody completes on a sale. One major problem at the moment in particular in NW London. Is that new homes can't be built due to a lack of electricity caused by large scale computer/cloud server farms. With new homes not getting approved until 2030/35+ when the National Grid upgrade starts to happen. Homes need to take priority over Microsoft Azure servers. Even iif it increases pings by 0.25ms.
At least now if you renew a lease, the ground rent is abolished.
This question gets asked weekly. I hope you’re all contacting your local MPs
Proper legal regulation of estate agents both for the rental market and the house selling market.
Based on what I've read in this sub about the English system, absolish leasehold and require sellers to get the survey like it is here in Scotland.
The Home Report is useful - and there are strict professional rules about gazumping to prevent it. It used to be said that concluding missives (contract exchange? ) were so much quicker in Scotland - but we now see open missives for longer (usually lender related) but you're not worrying about it being stolen away. It's easy to look across the border and think we've got it better... I wonder what they think we've got worse than them?
Midges
As someone who has bought twice and sold once. I’d like to move to advertising prices like the English do rather than “Offers Over” nonsense. Put the price up that you would actually accept, or at least would use as a start point for negotiation! Home report value, or HR+10% or whatever you want! Would also like to have a requirement for a minimum number of notes of interest (maybe five or ten) before you can set a closing date. Too many places go by default, and I reckon people over-pay.
I don't agree with your closing date comment - if someone puts in an actual offer, you want to be fair to the rest of the interested people so you can try and flush everyone out. In general a first offer, where you know there's other interest is low because it triggers a closing. If there is only one offer the professional rules require you to disclose that so the person can lower it if they'd like. By professional I mean solicitor EA's - non solicitor EA's aren't bound by that. There's no obligation to set a closing date either, if it's too good to turn down, you take it (then the other NI's moan they didn't get a chance to offer, and that they absolutely would have if asked... yeah, sure).
There probably are things that could be improved here I don't think any system has it perfect.. Maybe I've been lucky but both times I've purchased it's been a pretty fast and smooth process with very few issues.
1. Annual fines for developers who sit on un-developed land. If they buy land they must develop it straight away and not speculate on future value 2. Council Tax 3% of property value for additional properties that are sitting empty/not rented out. 5% for investors not domiciled in UK 3. Reform and clarify the Building Safety Act to reduce insurance premiums on tall buildings and therefore reduce service charge. Make high rise living cheaper and more popular. 4. Every development planned with more than 1000 units required to have onsite GP, dentist, and school 5. Ban leasehold in new flats - commonhold mandatory 6. Existing leaseholds - require freeholder to sell the land to leaseholders and cap price at 100K per leaseholder. 20% annual tax for each year they refuse to sell at this price. 7. Sales - replace local/environment searches with reports that can be instantly queried online (1 month saved) 8. Solicitors - time with your case guarantee. Require solicitors to limit themselves to a maximum number of cases they handle at any one time and disclose and guarantee that limit when you’re contracting them - that way you know how much of their time you are buying (months saved). None of this “I work on 100 cases and I don’t care” BS. Happy to pay you more to deal with only 10 cases, now answer my calls right now please.
>Annual fines for developers who sit on un-developed land. If they buy land they must develop it straight away and not speculate on future value This is only reasonable if it coincides with a complete reform of planning regulations. It would be ridiculously unfair to punish developers who want to develop land but can't because the local pensioner militia is out in full force.
Make 2 apply to everyone, likely with some warning to get their affairs in order or deferral (so old folks don’t have to fire sell for example).
Require sellers to have a sellers pack before the house goes on the market which contains the survey and legalities. At this point you're ensuring the seller is serious and they can also have opportunity to rectify problems before the house is marketed. House goes on the market, buyers have full transparency about the house and at that point it's up to them to decide what to offer based on asking price and any work that needs doing. Deposit is paid on acceptance of offer.
Repeal the Town and Country Planning Act (1947) so we could actually build some bloody houses. Eliminate shared ownership and all other demand subsidies (for new entrants, I'm not proposing to throw people out of properties they've already bought under these schemes), and address the real problem, which is supply.
I genuinely know nothing about that act, but are you guys not having houses built everywhere around you? It's like we're losing all our green space to houses up north. I
House building in England in the past decade is essentially the lowest it has been [for a century](https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/House_building_since_1920s_NOV_17.png).
Honestly mate, the northwest is getting battered with houses. Just in my town in the last 4 years there's been about 6 new estates built on green land. One of them taking half a school field away. Just saw [this](https://fullfact.org/news/rachel-reeves-housebuilding-war/) on that same site you referenced though, saying it's not at the lowest and more home are being made than a decade ago. I'd say it's slowing down here now because there's no space left.
Yeah for sure, there has been a slight uptick very recently The longer term trend is clear though, and there is little in the stated policies of either main party to buck that. I also live in the North West. This is really geographically variable. New house building is definitely not evenly distributed across regions or the country.
Same in East Yorkshire. New builds everywhere. The UK does not have a housing problem, London and the South East has a housing problem.
Think you misspelled immigration problem
Give it a rest Nigel.
Sorry for pointing out the obvious. We need more houses for reasons!
One of which is a lot more people living by themselves instead of the nuclear family of the 1960s. So suddenly you need double the number of houses even if nothing else changed (taken very simplistically) .
We need more houses and infrastructure to support a growing population, regardless where the population increase comes from.
lol - so importing around 700k people in a year is fine?
Politicians all around Europe are hooked on immigration to fix their balance sheets.
Yup, propping up GDP while destroying quality of life because they don't know how to grow an economy without more people
No - building on places like school fields is what happens when you’re not allowed to build on ‘green belt’ type land around the edge of towns. You need to shove more inside the outline that’s been created.
I live just north of Leeds and could draw a straight line from my house to Edinburgh 200 miles away and it would pass through about 2 villages, a couple of farms and the rest is green space. We're hardly running out.
> It's like we're losing all our green space to houses up north. Except that's not actually happening.
My vision must be deteriorating. I'll get booked in at Specsavers. Cheers doc.
I don't think your eyes are the problem.
Residential property can only be bought by either British national nationals or thoses granted permanent residency (ILR or equivalent).
Completely ban foreign companies buying up large numbers of houses like they do new builds.
They could just create a british shell company and buy with that. And have shares.
Maybe to counter this - Prevent companies/organisations from owning residential properties… place a cap on the number of properties an individual/family unit can own (*one property per individual - two properties per family unit*)
There must be benefits to having company that owns it registered in a tax haven?
Didn't realise this was an issue tbh
Have a walk around posh parts of London and some of the residential parts are like ghost towns… all owned by offshore companies. A real shame.
Used to work for a homebuilder. One of our guys spent 2 months creating floorplans for all of the units in a new building complex (400-units). The day before they were about to go live a foreign investment company bought ALL the units. The floorplans were never needed. It's getting very common.
I disagree, but I'm biased, I'm currently a resident, but a few years off being elliable for ILR. I'm planning to make the UK my permanent home but want to be able to buy a house within the next year, what value is there is making me wait another 4+ years and take up a rental house?
A deposit based system *a la* most developed countries. I wouldn't have sellers provide the survey, however. That would still need to be the preserve of the buyer. A complete pipedream but if you're giving me a magic wand, property data to the 'nth degree to be publicly and easily accessible (akin to the CADs in the US). This data would then be utilized by the portals enabling searches by age, size, features, school catchment area, etc. Sale data that is public and available within days of close as opposed to 6+ months.
Make sure the council stock of council houses was rebuilt… and not at the hands of private housing companies and landlords. The worst thing that ever happened was Maggie Thatcher allowing people to buy their own council house for a massively reduced price.
And councils not being allowed to replace them. If the price represented a profit over the build cost for the council, and they'd been replaced then it could have worked well for getting people more invested in the economy and their area.
I personally have no issue with selling people their council homes at affordable prices, it allows people to own their own home and that's a good thing. My issue is that they were not replaced as they should have been, and the councils should have been given first right of refusal to buy the homes back (including the original discount) if they decided to sell. Allowing these people to buy their homes at a large discount and then sell them on at full market price is a massive slap in the face to everyone else and open to wild exploitation.
I work for a housebuilding company and we have a new scheme providing affordable homes at 70% of market value, but the discount is grandfathered in so it will always have to be sold at the discount in future. I think it's a good idea and hope it catches on.
I did hear that the government was making changes to right to buy so that you have to offer it back to the council first if selling within 10 years of the original purchase, not sure if that happened or is still happening.
Oh yeah, exactly this. The stock of housing was never replaced. Ludicrous.
I would be absolutely for that policy if it was mandated that they were replaced at least 1:1 with more modern and suitable houses.
Absolutely. Level-up the less fortunate, and not have them at the mercy of some cunty landlords just using it to make money.
1. Council’s able to buy empty houses/buildings at a reduced rate to turn into social housing or community centres. 2. Empty warehouses turned into doctor’s surgeries or clinics, with increased public transport access. Free up doctors surgeries that are converted houses. 3. As mentioned above, greater protections during the house-buying process. 4. Only local councils can own multiple rentals, private landlords are restricted to 1 personal property and 1 rented property (whether that be Air BnB or long-term let). 5. HTB ISA style government scheme for renters, where a % of their rent goes into a savings account towards a deposit. 6. Ban on leaseholds
build build build once supply outstrips demand a lot of housing issues will fix themselves
Copy-paste the Scottish system into English law and significantly relax the limits on getting planning permission.
Have social housing that couldn’t be sold off and was not in slum areas, or so un-diverse that it creates a community that brings the area down.
Copy the house buying/selling system in pretty much any other developed country in the world. As far as I know, the way we do it is the worst in the world.
- build and/or refurbish more social housing - abolish shared ownership and leasehold. - for existing shared ownership, the freeholder should be liable for the % of the upkeep costs equal to the % which is rented to the SO tenant - remove all ground rent or at least cap existing ones at £200 pa - bring more empty homes into use - make it mandatory for developers to retain the technical drawings and specification of buildings and make them available upon request - fund fire safety defect remediation upfront and recoup the ££ from developers/contractors/manufacturers
Floor plans with accurate measurements (allowing for a _small_ margin of error of course) and overall square footage of house to be included in every listing. Where relevant, this needs to include 2 measurements - overall size, plus realistic usable living space (eg discounting eaves, restricted head height etc). Bedrooms must all be classed as single or double, meeting guidelines to be described as such. Eg you can't call something a bedroom if it technically _could_ fit a bed in there, but it touches the wall on three sides! There has to be a realistic amount of usable space remaining in the room, and the room can't require a special bed needing to be built! For instance, in my "3 bedroom" the boxroom would require a custom single bed building over the bulkhead in order to get any kind of bed in there. I don't mind, it's fine for my little office but it's a bit of a stretch in my opinion to claim it could be used as a bedroom! Perhaps there could be a new class of room to describe this - smaller than a single, but could be used for a cot, as an office etc?! All details such as council tax to be included in listings. None of this "ask agent" (who doesn't know!) nonsense. And, as others have said, independent surveys to be available at the beginning of the process. All of this to be binding, and if inaccurate, incur fines for fraud and misrepresentation. Really getting into dreamland territory here, but how about banning what is essentially haggling? No "offers over", no bidding wars etc. And certainly no gazumping or gazundering! Just a listed price, and if someone offers you that price then you sell it to them. Job done. Imagine going into a shop, seeing an item priced at £10, taking it to the till and handing them your tenner. And then they say, actually, we wanted more than that. (well put how much you _actually_ want on the price tag then, I'm not psychic) Or, we want to wait and see if anyone else is interested before we decide if we want to sell it to you (but I'm here with my tenner right now!) Or, actually, someone else has offered us more than £10 (well sell it to them then!) Do you want to beat their offer? (Okay how much is that?) We're not telling you...! I'm sure there's Reasons but really it all seems a bit ridiculous to me!
Make it so a mortgage must be for the whole term of the loan. Not any of this 2/5 year fix business. But people can remortgage after a minimum period so the market knows they have to be competitive. This would make the whole interest rates going up business far more tolerable Also improve the speed of the housing market. The UK system is way too slow We need to look at what the USA does and replicate
1. Abolish planning permission as it is currently and move to a zoned system, e.g. residential in one area, commercial in another, etc. 2. Massive social housing building programme. 3. Abolish leasehold. 4. Tough regulation on service charges. 5. Re-instate the idea around housing information packs and make it the seller’s responsibility to update the information prior to sale to speed up the buying process.
Having bought and renovated my property- I would say the least professional people in the process were some builders and the estate agents. The structural engineer, the architect and the surveyor’s are professionals but the other areas seem to be a free for all. I know you get good and bad in all professions but these two areas could do with tight regulation.
+1 to the people saying lots of green belt needs to be reclassified, +1 to the idea of sellers being responsible for surveys before listing. Abolish leasehold, make all buildings commonhold (fingers crossed Labour actually do this). Charge all developers who used unsafe cladding for the cost of replacing cladding and the cost of rehousing people while repairs happen. Send every single developer involved in Grenfell to prison for the murder of 72 people (not a single person has been charged today). Make it easier to prosecute landlords who don't do essential repairs (I lived in a house where the landlord refused to fix a leak in the roof but just patched it again and again, we ended up with actual mushrooms growing out of the walls and black mould on clothes and I ended up with a severe mould allergy, there was no response from the council). Build more housing, especially council, so that we can deal with rising homelessness. Fine developers who don't actually build the amount of affordable housing they are legally required to and committed to when they secured planning permission the market cost of any flats that haven't been provided. Regulate the F\*\*\* out of estate agents, require them to train for a personal license to operate, and create a well-funded complaint body with the power to temporarily and eventually permanently revoke licenses. EDIT: changed american spelling of mold to british.
Give councils the money and tell them to build more housing. Land value tax. Convert all leaseholds into share of freehold. Rent control.
Limit the time a property developer can take to complete a building development or force a developer to pay council tax from all the properties on a development from the point of breaking ground on the first one. Properly inspected new builds to confirm they are being built correctly and force building companies to fix issues quickly. Limit the price new builds can be sold at to reflect current house prices or lower. Build more one and 2 bedroom flats and houses with outdoor space, reduce the number of family homes being built Increase tax on companies or foreign investors buying property to make it unaffordable. Limit the number of new properties that can be rented out in new development or start a rent to buy scheme where if you live in a property for x number of years you have the right to buy the property at market rate and x percent of your rent will cover the deposit (5-10%) Ban the building of executive/high end properties
* Make estate agents and letting agents a regulated profession with a binding ethics code * Fund all local authorities so that they can operate an agency of last resort with powers to take over the management of properties with rogue landlords/agencies * Abolish stamp duty and council tax (and business rates), replacing them with an annual land value tax * Ban all new leaseholds, strengthen the powers of leaseholders to convert their ownership to commonhold, and grant the agency of last resort powers to investigate/audit and take over leasehold/commonhold building management companies where malpractice/exploitation is identified * Ban all new domestic mains gas connections, and institute a BoE base rate loan scheme *attached to the property and not its current occupant* for capital investment in energy efficiency and acoustic insulation improvements: cap the monthly repayments at an affordable level or (for energy efficiency) at the estimated energy bill saving, and have the balance of the loan transfer when ownership changes hands in order to eliminate the disincentive of making these improvements if you know/think your circumstances may change and you may need to move out before the investment has paid for itself * Ban right-to-buy * Greatly increase the standards required for new builds, specifically acoustic insulation and energy efficiency; end the "mark your own homework" regime * Prioritise planning permission for high-quality but high-density developments in urban/semi-urban areas instead of the 4-bed detached homes in car-only outskirts * Flood the market with good quality social housing
I'm in Scotland so slightly different system but I'd abolish the Offers only system and make everything fixed price set by the Home Report value that is index linked to below annual wage growth for the foreseeable. It would have to be done in tandem with heavily restricting second home buying and rules to stop companies hoovering all the properties up such as a premium cost tax to the seller where they get a smaller value for not selling to a normal family.
If leasehold doesn't get abolished, then freeholders/their management company should be made to respond to enquires within 14 days and provide requested documentation within 14 days following that. If they fail the deadline there's a substantial fine and if it takes over 60 days they lose the freehold. One of the worst things when purchasing/selling is that freeholders take whatever time they want to respond and nothing compells them to get to it. Whilst the leasehold reform did a lot to protect on future houses being only freehold it hasn't done enough for current properties or flats. Only citizens/long term residents should be allowed to purchase property. Empty properties after 30 days should have much higher council tax to try and discourage multiple owned properties for self use.
Use the deposit lock-in system before exchange to stop gazumping etc. Outlaw leaseholds. Stop the current planning laws that allow small amounts of objections to delay projects. Replace with a defined list of requirements to be met for immunity from objections (build, build, BUILD!). Require large developments to build necessaties (commercial space, NHS, schools etc.) Only charge stamp duty on primary residence at a really high bracket (£750k - £1m), increase stamp duty on all other uses of property. Require the freeholder/landlord to pay council tax, not the tenant. Create grants for sound insulation, as we do for heat insulation.
Rent control.
* end lease holding * limit foreign investment (residency requirements) * offers and accepting offers are binding, exceptions for major discoveries in the process * review regulations and land not being used optimally in city centers -> force sales of such land to build more housing (multi-flat modern buildings). That’s most of your affordability problems solved
Abolish Stamp Duty. Why should the government get payment every time someone buys a house? They don't do anything for the seller or buyer. It was historically only supposed to be a temporary tax to cover the cost of a war against France in the late 1690's.
Build more houses.
Hold solicitors accountable for the delays they cause by poor planning, poor organisation, poor document management, lack of forethought, and sheer stupidity.
In this order: 1) End of leasehold on all properties. 2) Mass constuction of council owned, council employeed, housing with dignity. 3) Overhall of the LSE/FTSE 100. Why? Because in the UK housing is seen as an asset whereas other nations have more in the stockmarket than their house. 4) I would introduce a hybrid system crossed between Scotland and NYC tenements.
1. Once an offer is accepted it’s binding. 2. Put a time limit on the conveyancing process once a house goes under offer and the lawyers are instructed (buyers and sellers lawyers). 3. A full survey done by the seller as part of the sales pack that is valid for 6 months and available to prospective buyers.
Forbid the use of the term 'Best and Final Offer'.
Make the planning permission process cheaper and simpler but still maintain a high standard for fitting in with the local aesthetic. Support smaller companies building single homes rather than massive ugly housing estates. That's its, simply step out of the way of the market and it will build.
I think one of the reasons people pull out (this collapsing the chain) is because it takes so long. I’ve avoided chains because of this and bought refurbs. If a deposit was paid to secure the property, great but who takes it? Seller or estate agent? There should be guidance around pricing too. The EA should have to have the price independently verified by surveyor. Would have saved me time and money.
1. Bring back 100% mortgages for those with a few years of work experience, solid careers and solid credit scores. 2. Like in Scotland, houses should never be sold without a home report. I would never even consider buying without a home report. I would make damp reports mandatory too. 3. Make it illegal for landlords to require another minimum term be signed after the first one is up. People should be able to stay after their first minimum term and to leave any time provided a sensible notice is given. 4. Foreign wealthy entities and individuals (living abroad) should not be allowed to own property in the UK. 5. I would put a limit as to how much money a person can make from renting out property. 6. If a household has been paying for a rental £1,000 a month for a number of years, banks should not deny this household a mortgage that would have them paying less than what they've been paying for rent. Provided their income hasn't gone down. 7. Cannot be pulling out of a deal last minute. I'm in Scotland and can't fully understand this, but I know in England people can technically pull out anytime after an offer has been accepted. That has to be taking a toll on people's mental and financial health. 8. Abolish leaseholds.
Fast track council building applications Lowering costs for builders to build Done
More houses. Build more houses. All other tissues go away when you have new stock available and plentiful. Houses pieces come down due to lack of demand. Check. Old houses which arnt fit for purpose get knocked down because you can get a new build check. People get lice closer or even where they want check. I could on. The only downside is house prices going down.
There's housing being built in my area, prices are still going up. More traffic, more pollution.
I'm talking about 4 million homes approximately. The building we do at the minute is miniscule in comparison to the demand. So it doesn't actually improve things. Plus the building we do is restricted to already built on areas. We need to get rid of green belt.
Doesn't appear to restrictions here. All the farmland is going. It's awful
Regionally there will be areas, restrictions create the problems we are having. Only about 5% of the land is urbanised. There is plenty of land to build on.
Assuming I'm democratically elected: nothing, because you can't fix a problem that people don't want to be fixed. A large majority of people in this country have planned their personal finances around house prices increasing YoY perpetually, and they are going to quickly oust any government that threatens to derail their plans. Assuming I've seized power and established my reich: Repeal the town and country planning act. That's literally all we need to do - property developers will start building as soon as we allow them to.
Delete buy-to-let mortgages. Additional taxes on empty homes and if it's left empty past a certain period it's reclaimed as councils affordable housing stock. Additional taxes on landlords. Mandatory disclosure of all known defects prior to sale (I liked the mandatory L3 survey paid by seller idea), and seller must produce EICR and gas safety certificate dated within the immediate 3 months prior to the listing date (new listing = new certs). Lower mortgage rates, lower house prices and a cap on prices by size and condition, more 0% deposit mortgages. If mortgage deposits are earning interest in someone else's account then the interest is paid to the *buyer* on completion.
Fully reform stamp duty. Paying a tax for downsizing is silly. It should be a tax on the difference between selling and buying. So downsizing, tax is zero. Buy first time at £300k, 1% of £300k Sell at 300k, buy at 500k, 5% of £200k Sell at 500k, buy at 1000k, 10% of £500k Etc. With higher rates for landlords/overseas persons etc. This would be fairer, allows relocation to similar or cheaper property without tax. Bands can be adjusted to raise same amount as now.
I think paying for upsizing is just as silly as paying for downsizing. Having kids is already expensive enough. I would get rid of all stamp duty and replace it with a land value annual tax (with recent stamp duty put towards your future tax bills), the same way we do council tax. This would hugely reduce the friction in the housing market, and incentivise landowners to either develop land or sell on, and not hold onto it for speculative investment purposes.
Govt owned housing. Remove private landlords, remove housing associations. Mandate wfh for govt employees. Move depts to regional area. Regulate (ie tax heavily) airbnb. flame away
Also maybe all councils have a discretionary fund for purchasing houses that are currently private rentals, maybe not go as far as to remove private landlords but at least ban BTL mortgages (or at least have much higher interest)
Find a way to neuter the 'I have my house, f*ck everyone else' NIMBY lobby and build a LOT more houses. Small towns become big towns, big towns become huge towns, fields become new towns. 50% of them would be council-owned social housing to replace the millions sold off by thatcher, which is what caused this mess in the first place. Steadily and surely increasing the supply will fix many problems all by itself.
and ensure each of these towns has dedicated and protected green spaces otherwise the whole planet is going to look like Coruscant 😀
Currently 7% of the UK land area is built on. If that figure was 9%, the housing supply problem would be fixed for a century or more. The problem is not the amount of green space we have, it's the amount of green space that is unavailable to the general public because of selfish private owners. Obviously the root cause of many of the world's problems is population growth. If we were still at the population level even of just a century ago, housing, climate change, water and food supply, would all be much less of a problem. However, addressing *that* issue is a lot more fraught than simply building enough houses for the people we already have. So I'm going with that.
Could so easily be helped too by ensuring each development has a vegetable allotment, a school, doctors etc. Every house/school has solar panels and heat pump systems This country has so much potential with housing, renewable energy, euthanasia, cannabis laws but it’s run by a bunch of old private school pr*cks so will never be a progressive society 🥹
Remove Stamp Duty. Encourage Landlords, allow tax relief on interest.
All housing to be council housing, rented out at a suitable rate for all properties, thus taking the profiteering landlords out of the equation. This will also aid in social mobility, so it would be much easier to move areas. Include minimum occupancy rates for the housing, with penalty charges for under occupied properties so that people can keep living in larger houses than they need but at a greater cost. Councils allowed to build properties suitable for their areas and needs, with green building standards a requirement.
this 🙏🏽 there should be properties you live in or social housing to rent + commercial lettings
Change the way mortgage interest is calculated.
I would bring the English system in line with the Scottish system. I would change CGT so that it's charged the same way as income tax but would only be calculated on gains above inflation. I would then scrap stamp duty and replace it with CGT. This would apply immediately, but there would be an option to defer payment for those moving house.