FYI the Registers of Scotland (Can't remember the website - I'm sure a quick google would find it) will do a property search for about £5. This provides the actual selling price of all properties on a post code for the last six months. Covers quite a wide area in a town. Great if you are butying or even if just curious.
p> Well - move to Scotland, yes - but only buy FIXED-PRICE.....
Well, that is like saying `buy from someone deseprate to sell and get in quick'', yes it is good if you can do it anywhere, under any system, but it's luck more than anything. (I did buy fixed price in Edinburgh hahahahha!).
p> A friend of mine has been - for 6 months - trying to buy a flat in and p> around Edinburgh.
That is unrelated to the system. The housing market in Edinburgh is just very very active.
p> The system in Scotland is positively Kafkaesque in its design.
Dead simple. Make an offer, top offer wins.
Compare that to the English system where wheter you get the property depends on comples political manouvering by all the agents, sellers and buyers involved in a chain.
p> 2. There are no rules or guides - solicitors have been hopeless - p> their advice has been largely based on rule no. 1 - see above.
Get a better solicitor. Mine managed to give reasonably good predictions of the selling price of the couple fo properties I put bids in for before I got this one (in both cases I bid below the prediction on the off chance, so wasn't supprised I didn't get them).
p> 3. After nearly twenty flats - she, and all her family - would give p> anything to have the English system with gazumping, chains etc
Why? They would still be looking at flats, but putting in bids, doing all the followup work and _then_ not getting it. The advantage to the closed bids system is that the decision is simple and quick.
Actually the big advantage of the Scottish market is that solicitors are by nature cooperative, where estate agents by nature fight like ferrets in a sack. The result is that in each scottish city there is one place you can go and look at almost all of the property for sale in the entire region, and one publication with all those details in. I can't believe anyone manages to find a home in England where each estate agent keeps their litle list to themselves, it must be a full time job just finidng out what properties are up for sale.
"Richard Caley" wrote | p> The system in Scotland is positively Kafkaesque in its design. | Dead simple. Make an offer, top offer wins.
It's worth talking to the vendor about date of entry before offering; I've known (I once worked in an estate agency office) an offer that had the date of entry the vendor wanted be accepted in preference to a higher one that was less convenient.
| I can't believe anyone manages to find a home in England where each | estate agent keeps their litle list to themselves, it must be a full | time job just finidng out what properties are up for sale.
I was looking at a Mid-Wales estate agent's website recently and couldn't believe how little information they gave; not even the full address of the property, and certainly no schedules downloadable as PDF, no online mapping, etc. I wonder what they actually do to justify their commission, when I think you can get a listing on espc.com from £99.
Owain
Oh, that surprises me. I always thought that the "offers over" and sealed bids system was the only legal way of buying property in Scotland.
MM
This kind of bears out what I surmised about it being a lottery and a bit of a scam. For those buyers at £100k were really scammed by having to pin the tail on the donkey blindfold. I don't think the system is fair at all. Sure, they secured their property at 100k, but it would tend to push all the prices up. Therefore, not only is the system unfair it is also inflationary.
MM
Not now:)
Ophelia
Of course. (It was a company move, so not my money :-)) The obvious next question of course is, what did the valuer say ? I can't honestly remember. This was in 1990 just as prices were coming off the boil. I think most parties were trying to talk the house up. We could have lost it, but as it was the first one we'd decided to make an offer on, it wouldn't have been the end of the world.
What was particularly noticeable was the size of house and plot that was being built in the 70s in fairly middle-of-the-road areas in Scotland, compared to England. By the 90s, it was the typical Barratt boxes 3 feet apart and 20 to the acre, sadly.
Sealed bids are for properties that have more than one person interested. There is also nothing stopping a person making an offer on a property when it's offers over, and sometimes people (like me that were running out of time before we were due to move!) will take the offer rather than go to closing (when bids are asked for). Normally if a seller hasn't had any notes of interest after a few weeks (or really needs to shift their property) they will put it on at a fixed price.
Have a look at
It's always worth remembering also that these things are negociable to a certain degree. Place we just bought we had a 3 month move in date (to give us time to sell our place) and seller was happy with it (though property been empty for 2 1/2 months now). I think with these things the seller would come back and say you won the bid, however could you move in blah date instead, and a bit of negociation ensues.
£190 for edinburgh one currently (for 6months if you need it)lr> This looks like a handy site (esp for buyers outwith the ediburgh area), lr> though for the edinburgh / lothians / fife area the ESPC's database is far lr> more up to date,
In other areas of Scotland, the other SPCs are the best source for the same reason.
Also, the SPC databases will contain more details of the properties, so making it easier to estimate how each relates to the one you are interested in.
Try French agents, even less information, particularly regarding where the property is.
o> I was looking at a Mid-Wales estate agent's website recently and couldn't o> believe how little information they gave; not even the full address of the o> property, and certainly no schedules downloadable as PDF, no online mapping, o> etc. I wonder what they actually do to justify their commission, when I o> think you can get a listing on espc.com from £99.
From working indirectly with EAs in England, Wales and NI, my impression is that their primary aim in life is to get you into their office so they can sell you something. Hence giving you information is a Bad Thing, all they want to give you is a tease to get you to talk to them.
Property handling solicitors in Scotland are happy to get the information in front of you (of course, presented to the sellers advantage). That's especially true in Edinburgh with the, I think, unique open-house viewing system which means that there is no one attempting to sell you the property at all. Very pleasent.
d> The Scottish system can be improved very simply by shooting all the d> estate agents.
There are relatively few estate agents in Scotland, so hardly any fun is to be gained by shooting them.
d> Given that we all know that estate egents are scum, you simply cannot d> believe anything they tell you about a property you want to buy.
Which is why you should have a solicitor on your side. Solicitors may be in some ways as dodgy as estate agents, but at least they gain or lose reputation by how well they act _for_ you.
You get this same from this site for only £2
No - this is £1 per property with £2 minimum. The Registers of Scotland gives _all_properties in the post code area for the last 6 months. So it depends on whether you are interested in a particular property or an idea of the prices in an area.
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