Getting The Right Selling Price
What are seller's packs?
The seller's pack lies at the heart of Government plans to overhaul the UK's laborious house-selling system. The packs will contain all the legal and technical information that a buyer needs when purchasing a new home.
Most of the information is already gathered by the buyer as part of the house buying process, but under the proposed scheme, it will be gathered by the seller before the house has even been put on the market.
This, the Government hopes, will speed up the house buying process and eliminate gazumping. It's also hoped that if a deal falls through, the seller won't be left with a bill for searches and surveys that they don't need.
Estimates suggest the cost of the packs to the seller will be around £600.
Will the packs work?
Evidence from Scotland, which already has a similar system, suggests the packs will work. There, 'concluding missives' are drawn up once an offer is accepted, and the finer details of the purchase have been ironed out. They constitute a binding contract from which neither party can withdraw, eliminating the possibility of 'gazumping'.
Figures have shown that there are much fewer abortive sales in Scotland, compared with England and Wales.
Meanwhile, a test of sellers packs carried out in Bristol in 2001 returned a favourable response, with fewer sales falling through.
Despite this evidence, sellers' packs have received a lukewarm reception from the principle governing bodies of the English and Welsh property world.
They point out that in the Bristol trial, the sellers packs were free - will sellers be as positive when they have to pay for them?
Criticism has also focused on the proposed measures to deal with those who fail to complete a seller's pack. The Government had originally planned to make this a criminal offence. But following lobbying by a pressure group formed by estate agents, the Government has downgraded the offence to a civil offence; there are no details of the associated sanctions but a fine is likely.
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