>> Nobody ever said that buying a house is a quick or easy process. Or
>> cheap...
>
> That's certainly true.  Though right now in our neighborhood, the average
> sale time for a house is about 17 days (we're doing some work on our
> place to get ready to sell it).

Is that the time from when it is placed on the market to finding a 
buyer? The problem in the UK is that even once you find a buyer (which, 
as with anything, can range from hours to years depending on the price 
you are happy to accept) the process after that until you legally own 
the house can take forever.

A standard simple sale with no chain or anything complicated to look up 
or check about the house could probably be done in a minimum of 4-6 
weeks (probably even less if you don't need to borrow from the bank), 
that's about how long it took when I bought my first house. I was lucky 
because obviously I had no house to sell at the same time and the 
sellers already owned another place they were moving into.

However usually many other things complicate and slow down this process. 
Most people need to borrow money from a bank to fund the purchase, and 
banks will not give out the money until they are satisfied the house is 
not going to fall down, sink into the ground, get blown away, flooded, 
become radioactive or have a motorway built through it in the next 20 
years. Hence there is a mountain of paperwork that needs to be collected 
regarding the house before the bank will release the money and the deal 
can be closed. This often involves government agencies which are 
typically slow to respond.

Now bear in mind that often you need to sell a place to fund the 
purchase of your new place, the people selling the house you are about 
to buy are also trying to buy another house, so as you can imagine you 
can easily end up in a chain of 5 or 10 people who are all looking to 
sell and buy at the same time. Chances are there *will* be someone in 
the chain that messes things up because they are looking to buy an 18th 
century house in the middle of a field that is about to collapse, has no 
drainage and the previous owners have died and lost all the paperwork 
etc. Or often people simply change their mind about moving house and 
then someone in the chain needs to find a new buyer which can add weeks 
or months onto the process. Then other people simply give up because 
it's taking too long and find another property. People even will try and 
screw their buyers right near the end by saying "actually we want £10k 
more now for our house else we're pulling out". All sorts of s#!t goes on.

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