Le 2013-06-13 03:55, scott a écrit :
>>> 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.
>

In my area, most seller agents will ask that the seller get all the 
paperwork for the land in order ahead of time, since they know it's a de 
facto requirement for the sale to take place (you can get the sale 
annuled if you realize afterwards that the city was about to dezone your 
land to make an interstate offramp on it).  Likewise, most buyer's agent 
will ask that their clients get "preapproved" by their bank for a 
certain amount, mostly so that they don't waste their time looking for 
houses only to see the prospective buyer get rejected by the bank at the 
last minute.

The only things that need to happen between the first handshake and the 
key exchange (sorry for sounding like an IETF RFC) are a building 
inspection (3-5 days), finalising the preapproved mortgage at the bank 
(2-3 days) and going in front of a notary to sign the legal papers.

Of course, if the land deed is ancient (or missing) and the notary has 
to dig through records in a lavatory in the city hall basement, at the 
bottom of a broken staircase, or the building inspector finds major 
issues with the house, or the bank thinks you should get rid of some of 
your exisiting liabilities before getting a new mortgage, or one of the 
parties has other conditions attached (ex: buyer needs to sell his 
exisisting property, seller's new house needs to be finished, etc...) 
this can take much longer.

> 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.
>

Luckily, in my province, by default rent leases last for 12 months and 
go from July 1st to June 30th of the following year, unless otherwise 
specified, so July 1st is traditionnally "moving day"*.  Even if you are 
moving from a house that you own to another house that you buy, someone, 
somewhere in that chain is an old person moving into an appartment, or a 
young couple moving out of an appartment.  And it's a national holiday, 
so you know your brother-in-law won't be at work, so all you need to do 
is bribe him with beer and pizza.

*It was featured on a British tv series (on ITV, I think) on weird local 
customs from around the world.
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