From the editor…
There is nothing quite like experiencing homebuying for yourself to truly understand what everyone is on about...
I’m back, you’ll be thrilled to hear, with more gripes about my homebuying experience. These rants are becoming so common I’m tempted to collate them into some kind of Dickensian serial. Those of you following along will likely already be raising an eyebrow at the fact we are now reaching a length of transaction time that even our drawn-out system should be ashamed of.
I am not about to start ranting about service level agreements or conveyancers, however. In fact, our lawyers have been incredible – on the ball both with our transaction and my personal descent into madness. And our lender, well they’ve delayed only as much as one might expect, but nothing to write home (or to you) about.
No, the real delays have been caused by – you guessed it – the constant discovery of yet more issues, structural problems, potential costly repairs, and risks as time has gone on. This has infuriated the seller, whose perspective is that we should just ignore the fact that the roof is falling in because they spent quite a lot on the kind of fancy Japanese toilets that do your taxes while you drop the kids off at the pool.
They see us getting a surveyor in for a standard inspection as a cosmic betrayal, because it (we now discover) means unexpected renegotiation, delays while we cost repairs, and even more questions from our solicitors. They believe we should have just trusted them that the house was perfect, bought it sight unseen, and left it at that, with our Japanese toilets to huddle around for comfort as the walls crumbled around us.
I sometimes wonder how the whole process – so stressful that the estate agent recently called me in tears because she was so sick of dealing with it – would have changed if this kind of information was just part of the process, upfront and expected. We would not be seen as ‘problematic’ for wanting to know if we were buying a house or an overturned tugboat with a bad paint job, and the seller would have come to market with a much more realistic understanding of what their property was actually worth.
At a recent mental health retreat (pub trip) my husband – who has no involvement in this industry beyond patiently listening to me – said “I don’t understand why this doesn’t get done as standard, earlier, shared with all parties upfront, and with equal if not heavier onus on the seller to organise.” I, of course, snorted into my wine. From the mouths of aircraft engineers…
Many experts, much less belligerent than I, weigh in on this issue in our pages this month. Reading their comments about how impending changes could revolutionise home buying has been bittersweet. I so desperately want the system to change, I just wish it could have started sooner.
In the meantime, pray I get through this one avoiding a total breakdown. More next month, I’m sure…
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