The benchmark for these things is surely not Liz Truss, but the 18th century "Long Administration" of the Earl of Bath, which lasted 48 hours, and, as one commentator of the time noted, is generally considered the wisest government this country ever had, as it never did one foolish thing, and, even more remarkably, left almost as much money in the Treasury as it found there.
Under that metric, Lecornu is 13.5 Baths. Not a bad record, especially for a Frenchman.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
Hideous news about Lewis Moody. Awful. Sympax in the extreme
This is something that actually unites NFL and rugby - they both have major problems with brain damage to players and haven’t found a way to really fix it
There is undoubtedly an issue with concussions and minor concussions in a fair number of sports. Football I think is trying to address it a bit by restricting headers in kids and in training. Rugby is doing its bit too with the efforts to ensure that tackle heights are lowered.
However, while there have been several significant ex players in rugby and football (and I am sure in NFL) that have ended up with MND we cannot be certain that it is related to the sport. A certain subset of people will get MND. We see an ex rugby player get it and we immediately assume its from the rugby, whereas it may not be. As a species we need 'Just So' stories all about why stuff happens and this is definitely an example. When I ended up with leukemia I was obsessed with the metal loop in my knee from a surgery some years before, thinking this was the cause. It almost certainly wasn't, but my head needed a reason.
Yes; I suggest we are being a few of these desperately sad stories now but has anyone done a proper review of the people who are/have been suffering with MND. Our daughter died as a result of MND and I have no recollection of her ever playing any contact sport whatsoever!
The theory is those with genes susceptible to MND are more likely to be damaged by a lot of contact sport and it can affect oxygen levels as well hence elite athletes have MND diagnoses several times the average rate. I had a friend who died sadly of MND who played a lot of rugby
Our colleague Turbotubbs has just sent me a very interesting, and persuasive, article on the subject, which strongly suggests that it isn't the physical contact that is the problem, but the fact of physical activity on infected soil. Needs a bit of careful re-reading though!
I've not seen the article, but if the problem is infected soil, then I'd expect farmers or gardeners to also suffer? Unless it's about *communal* soil; i.e. soil where lots of people do the activity.
(Again, I haven't seen the article, so might be talking out of my backside...)
No, it's a fair question and one which came to my mind, too. As I said, the article needs a careful re-read. Bearing in mind the problems with n=1 I'm trying to recall my daughter's life style. IIRC her husband was the gardener; she was the housekeeper, and ran a small accounts business.
I think it will always be a complex thing. I worry that people have become fixated on the head collision => MND model thought, certainly in the media and the campaigning charities. As ever more work to do.
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
Depends how you do it. A flat 0.7% property tax would cover both council tax and stamp duty and constitute a tax cut for a large majority of households - particularly in the Reform/Labour battlegrounds.
Labour should do it. If they also introduced right-to-buy for private tenants I think you'd find much of the housing crisis (which is really an inflated asset crisis harming the minority of people not on the housing ladder) would dissipate even without much house building.
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
One wonders if someone collected the rubbish from the bin, was moving it on an open truck and the offending article was blown off onto the roadside?
Hideous news about Lewis Moody. Awful. Sympax in the extreme
This is something that actually unites NFL and rugby - they both have major problems with brain damage to players and haven’t found a way to really fix it
There is undoubtedly an issue with concussions and minor concussions in a fair number of sports. Football I think is trying to address it a bit by restricting headers in kids and in training. Rugby is doing its bit too with the efforts to ensure that tackle heights are lowered.
However, while there have been several significant ex players in rugby and football (and I am sure in NFL) that have ended up with MND we cannot be certain that it is related to the sport. A certain subset of people will get MND. We see an ex rugby player get it and we immediately assume its from the rugby, whereas it may not be. As a species we need 'Just So' stories all about why stuff happens and this is definitely an example. When I ended up with leukemia I was obsessed with the metal loop in my knee from a surgery some years before, thinking this was the cause. It almost certainly wasn't, but my head needed a reason.
Yes; I suggest we are being a few of these desperately sad stories now but has anyone done a proper review of the people who are/have been suffering with MND. Our daughter died as a result of MND and I have no recollection of her ever playing any contact sport whatsoever!
The theory is those with genes susceptible to MND are more likely to be damaged by a lot of contact sport and it can affect oxygen levels as well hence elite athletes have MND diagnoses several times the average rate. I had a friend who died sadly of MND who played a lot of rugby
Our colleague Turbotubbs has just sent me a very interesting, and persuasive, article on the subject, which strongly suggests that it isn't the physical contact that is the problem, but the fact of physical activity on infected soil. Needs a bit of careful re-reading though!
I've not seen the article, but if the problem is infected soil, then I'd expect farmers or gardeners to also suffer? Unless it's about *communal* soil; i.e. soil where lots of people do the activity.
(Again, I haven't seen the article, so might be talking out of my backside...)
No, it's a fair question and one which came to my mind, too. As I said, the article needs a careful re-read. Bearing in mind the problems with n=1 I'm trying to recall my daughter's life style. IIRC her husband was the gardener; she was the housekeeper, and ran a small accounts business.
Or. as is often the case, it's multi-factorial: there is not one main way. but many ways that you can get this awful illness.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
We have a Standard Seller Questionnaire that legally has to be completed as part of the process, “ The seller of a property must provide answers to a range of factual questions about the property which they must answer to the best of their ability as the buyer is entitled to place reliance on the truth and accuracy of the responses.”
We do however have a different system generally where the conveyancers have to check the title on the public registry going back 40 years and conclude a physical site visit to inspect the boundaries. The contract for sale is presented by the buyer’s lawyers to the court with all the names of title owners for the last forty years included.
Transactions are registered in the Royal Court on a Friday afternoon to the Bailiff and two Jurats as part of the day’s court business so the buyer’s lawyers have to have the funds in their account by then as legally they are responsible if the transfer of property on the Friday happens and the funds don’t appear. They then pay the seller’s lawyer on the second working day after.
All parties in the transaction have to be present in court (or appoint a lawyer to appear on their behalf) and buyer receives the keys once the court enrolls the transaction.
It’s quite restrictive in one way with the formal procedure and limitation to Fridays but at least you know that every step is nailed down before that point.
I think they do trust sellers' information - if authoritative.
They don't trust Estate Agents' information, especially because of the 'Even if I am lying I am still not responsible disclaimer'.
They trust the detailed questionnaires etc, because there can be comeback.
Equally when my mum sold the family "listed" house, we had a Full Structural Survey by an MRICS to risk manage for potential purchasers, which was trusted.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
We have a Standard Seller Questionnaire that legally has to be completed as part of the process, “ The seller of a property must provide answers to a range of factual questions about the property which they must answer to the best of their ability as the buyer is entitled to place reliance on the truth and accuracy of the responses.”
We do however have a different system generally where the conveyancers have to check the title on the public registry going back 40 years and conclude a physical site visit to inspect the boundaries. The contract for sale is presented by the buyer’s lawyers to the court with all the names of title owners for the last forty years included.
Transactions are registered in the Royal Court on a Friday afternoon to the Bailiff and two Jurats as part of the day’s court business so the buyer’s lawyers have to have the funds in their account by then as legally they are responsible if the transfer of property on the Friday happens and the funds don’t appear. They then pay the seller’s lawyer on the second working day after.
All parties in the transaction have to be present in court (or appoint a lawyer to appear on their behalf) and buyer receives the keys once the court enrolls the transaction.
It’s quite restrictive in one way with the formal procedure and limitation to Fridays but at least you know that every step is nailed down before that point.
Yes and we sold our flat in Edinburgh in 1965 and it was a lot easier not least the problems and delays my daughter faced in her recent sale
My GP surgery has moved to the following method, for appointments.
- Between the hours of 8am and 4pm you can fill in a form, online to get an appointment. -There are no phone registered appointments. - The form was carefully designed by Philip Assehole (Formely commander, Spaceballs One). It consists of multiple pages of confusing questions, most of which are irrelevant to other than specific conditions. There is no general "comment" section for people whose ailments don't match the 200 fields they offer. - The site is aggressively unfriendly for those partially sighted etc
The system appears to have been designed to fuck over people with poor language skills, disabilities or the elderly.
Am I right to be annoyed by this?
I wrote a tool that fills in their bullshit - enough to get an appointment - in seconds. I am currently turning it into a phone app. So it's fine for me.
Russia doesn’t just have a black-market petrol problem, it also has a counterfeit petrol problem - stuff that looks like petrol, maybe even smells a bit like petrol, but isn’t quite petrol.
Presumably it’s home-made by boiling other hydrocarbons, and no you definitely don’t want to put it in any car, except perhaps an old Lada with carburettors.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
Depends how you do it. A flat 0.7% property tax would cover both council tax and stamp duty and constitute a tax cut for a large majority of households - particularly in the Reform/Labour battlegrounds.
Labour should do it. If they also introduced right-to-buy for private tenants I think you'd find much of the housing crisis (which is really an inflated asset crisis harming the minority of people not on the housing ladder) would dissipate even without much house building.
Right-to-Buy for private tenants would create a different housing crisis.
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
One wonders if someone collected the rubbish from the bin, was moving it on an open truck and the offending article was blown off onto the roadside?
If they had found ten black bin bags on the A55 with an envelope with her name in one of them I can see their point. Although normally any threat to prosecute the individual is used as a lever for the householder to dob-in the white van fly-tipper.
It sounds very odd to me, unless of course we are just getting convenient snippets of the story.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
My GP surgery has moved to the following method, for appointments.
- Between the hours of 8am and 4pm you can fill in a form, online to get an appointment. -There are no phone registered appointments. - The form was carefully designed by Philip Assehole (Formely commander, Spaceballs One). It consists of multiple pages of confusing questions, most of which are irrelevant to other than specific conditions. There is no general "comment" section for people whose ailments don't match the 200 fields they offer. - The site is aggressively unfriendly for those partially sighted etc
The system appears to have been designed to fuck over people with poor language skills, disabilities or the elderly.
Am I right to be annoyed by this?
I wrote a tool that fills in their bullshit - enough to get an appointment - in seconds. I am currently turning it into a phone app. So it's fine for me.
My GP surgery has moved to the following method, for appointments.
- Between the hours of 8am and 4pm you can fill in a form, online to get an appointment. -There are no phone registered appointments. - The form was carefully designed by Philip Assehole (Formely commander, Spaceballs One). It consists of multiple pages of confusing questions, most of which are irrelevant to other than specific conditions. There is no general "comment" section for people whose ailments don't match the 200 fields they offer. - The site is aggressively unfriendly for those partially sighted etc
The system appears to have been designed to fuck over people with poor language skills, disabilities or the elderly.
Am I right to be annoyed by this?
I wrote a tool that fills in their bullshit - enough to get an appointment - in seconds. I am currently turning it into a phone app. So it's fine for me.
Mine has been using an online system for ages but much less tortuous than this - just an explain your symptoms field and whether you need a same day or not. I was a cynic when I first had to use it but I’ve been offered appointments very quickly after filling it in, so it seems to be quite efficient (and avoids the phone call of doom/pleading with a receptionist, a process for which I have a particular loathing).
But that system works because it is simple. When people move processes online but try to cover off all eventualities regarding data capture (without stopping to think of the end user), you end up with Kafkaesque systems like this.
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
No discretion, humanity or anything else.
If directed to round up the Immigrants/Jew/Muslims/People With Offensive Wives the people involved will apply exactly the same amount of zeal.
I suppose we will be grateful, if that happens, that something may happen about bike thieves. Thick winter socks might be government provided?
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
Depends how you do it. A flat 0.7% property tax would cover both council tax and stamp duty and constitute a tax cut for a large majority of households - particularly in the Reform/Labour battlegrounds.
Labour should do it. If they also introduced right-to-buy for private tenants I think you'd find much of the housing crisis (which is really an inflated asset crisis harming the minority of people not on the housing ladder) would dissipate even without much house building.
Right-to-Buy for private tenants would create a different housing crisis.
As a landlord I'd be open to the idea. Would need some conditions like 2+ years tenancy, both parties have to agree to valuation or tenancy continues or similar. Would also require the same kind of protections we have on eviction as we do in Scotland.
Overall, I'd expect it to move the market to a more socially optimal outcome in terms of tenure proportions. Haven't fully thought it through but it's at least interesting.
I'm joining the exodus to the Greens. Only a threat of Farage winning in a constituency I was voting in and a vote for Labour preventing it would change my mind. Mahmood is indistinguishable from Badenoch and Starmer has reverted to the unthinking Zionist of a year ago. This is no longer a recognisable Labour Party. If Labour sleep with the Angels God help the Angels!
I'm going to start donating today in case I weaken.
ZACK's MY MAN!
Have a strong coffee, take a long walk and shake off the hangover.
Surely you are too old for student politics?
Of course you're right but when your Party breaks two or three of your absolute shibboleths then you either give up your interest in politics or spend your day angry ......or you do something else.
I can hardly stand the sight of Mahmood and Starmer.
If Zack's a dreamer at least he's an eloquent one. Don't you just long for your party to do the right thing? After calling Farage the racist he is and announcing support for a Palestinian State I was optimistic and then up pops Mahmood and the realisation hits...... his heart is ACTUALLY in the wrong place.
Russia doesn’t just have a black-market petrol problem, it also has a counterfeit petrol problem - stuff that looks like petrol, maybe even smells a bit like petrol, but isn’t quite petrol.
Presumably it’s home-made by boiling other hydrocarbons, and no you definitely don’t want to put it in any car, except perhaps an old Lada with carburettors.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Oh, I agree that would be better. The current system makes moving for a job an extremely expensive proposition. Reduction in the mobility of labour have an economic cost. Any reduction in revenue has to take that into account but we just ignore it because HMG is desperately short of the readdies.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Anything is better than now and
My daughters survey cost £520 for a £300,000 home
Yeah and I bet she had almost no recourse against the surveyor due to exclusions for pretty much everything that wasn’t immediately obvious to the surveyor in an hour.
I'm joining the exodus to the Greens. Only a threat of Farage winning in a constituency I was voting in and a vote for Labour preventing it would change my mind. Mahmood is indistinguishable from Badenoch and Starmer has reverted to the unthinking Zionist of a year ago. This is no longer a recognisable Labour Party. If Labour sleep with the Angels God help the Angels!
I'm going to start donating today in case I weaken.
ZACK's MY MAN!
Have a strong coffee, take a long walk and shake off the hangover.
Surely you are too old for student politics?
Of course you're right but when your Party breaks two or three of your absolute shibboleths then you either give up your interest in politics or spend your day angry ......or you do something else.
I can hardly stand the sight of Mahmood and Starmer.
If Zack's a dreamer at least he's an eloquent one. Don't you just long for your party to do the right thing? After calling Farage the racist he is and announcing support for a Palestinian State I was optimistic and then up pops Mahmood and the realisation hits...... his heart is ACTUALLY in the wrong place.
The Labour Party hasn't been my Party for a while. Certainly not through the Corbyn years. Polanski is a schoolboy dreamer. I am always mindful that left wing dreamers lead to one thing, very right wing Conservative Governments.
My GP surgery has moved to the following method, for appointments.
- Between the hours of 8am and 4pm you can fill in a form, online to get an appointment. -There are no phone registered appointments. - The form was carefully designed by Philip Assehole (Formely commander, Spaceballs One). It consists of multiple pages of confusing questions, most of which are irrelevant to other than specific conditions. There is no general "comment" section for people whose ailments don't match the 200 fields they offer. - The site is aggressively unfriendly for those partially sighted etc
The system appears to have been designed to fuck over people with poor language skills, disabilities or the elderly.
Am I right to be annoyed by this?
I wrote a tool that fills in their bullshit - enough to get an appointment - in seconds. I am currently turning it into a phone app. So it's fine for me.
It's appalling.
What if you aren't able to do online stuff?
Don't you understand? Everybody has a phone! Everybody can do apps! Everybody can see perfectly!
(I once had a er, 'robust' discussion with a German statistician who insisted that non-respondents in a poll could be ignored because everybody had a phone. I hate it when dumb people have more money than me)
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
I found it stressful.
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
I briefly (though not briefly enough) rented a room from a mad old lady who had a room in her house filled with tetrapak containers that she was hoarding for a future where they could be recycled.
I therefore started to dispose of the refuse I generated in the public litter bins, to avoid the indignity of her going through my rubbish. Technically this was illegal, because household waste should not be disposed of in public litter bins. This is one reason why many public litter bins are now designed with tiny openings that make them difficult to use (and impossible to put a bin bag into).
We have a collective problem with waste, and getting too much of it. The solutions we have chosen to apply are to make disposing of waste more difficult, but this tends to result in people finding other ways to dispose of their waste, which is why there is such a problem with fly-tipping.
It would be more effective to address the problem at source, and to create incentives that would reduce the quantity of waste generated.
Russia doesn’t just have a black-market petrol problem, it also has a counterfeit petrol problem - stuff that looks like petrol, maybe even smells a bit like petrol, but isn’t quite petrol.
Presumably it’s home-made by boiling other hydrocarbons, and no you definitely don’t want to put it in any car, except perhaps an old Lada with carburettors.
Ha
Bet Toluene/Benzene combinations are in fashion.
You can probably take a guess that it was something people did back in the ‘90s, and the same people doing it now - except that 2020s cars in Russia are very different from ‘90s cars in Russia!
Putting random fuel in most modern cars will likely screw the engine very quickly!
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
I found it stressful.
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
Well it’s not supposed to be your call whether she has her deposit back, it’s supposed to be the call of the deposit protection scheme acting as an arbitrator.
My GP surgery has moved to the following method, for appointments.
- Between the hours of 8am and 4pm you can fill in a form, online to get an appointment. -There are no phone registered appointments. - The form was carefully designed by Philip Assehole (Formely commander, Spaceballs One). It consists of multiple pages of confusing questions, most of which are irrelevant to other than specific conditions. There is no general "comment" section for people whose ailments don't match the 200 fields they offer. - The site is aggressively unfriendly for those partially sighted etc
The system appears to have been designed to fuck over people with poor language skills, disabilities or the elderly.
Am I right to be annoyed by this?
I wrote a tool that fills in their bullshit - enough to get an appointment - in seconds. I am currently turning it into a phone app. So it's fine for me.
90% of GP time is taken by 10% of the patients (may not be exact). One of hardest challenges known to man is how the 90% of patients who rarely need the GP but are likely to have something they need to see the GP about can do so without spontaneously combusting at how fecking difficult access is.
TBF our surgery is easy enough to get to see a nurse, or paramedic for things such as chest infections, with the proviso that you get to a GP if needed.
I wish they wouldn't keep referring to Camilla as "Queen".
Yes, she legally is (now) but she's also really not.
I mean she is the wife of the King, so she is the Queen. Though I do think they should go with “Queen Camilla” rather than The Queen because it is still rather jarring.
The one that annoys me more are articles referring to The King as “King Charles III”. Again, strictly correct but how many other King Charles’s are there around at the moment?
Russia doesn’t just have a black-market petrol problem, it also has a counterfeit petrol problem - stuff that looks like petrol, maybe even smells a bit like petrol, but isn’t quite petrol.
Presumably it’s home-made by boiling other hydrocarbons, and no you definitely don’t want to put it in any car, except perhaps an old Lada with carburettors.
Whenever Britain has had a short-lived fuel crisis there have always been a small number of people who have done stupid things, like hoarding fuel in a garden shed.
I don't doubt that there are people in Russia who are doing stupid things in response to their longer-lasting fuel crisis.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Oh, I agree that would be better. The current system makes moving for a job an extremely expensive proposition. Reduction in the mobility of labour have an economic cost. Any reduction in revenue has to take that into account but we just ignore it because HMG is desperately short of the readdies.
The number of transactions in Scotland has halved compared with pre-2008. It's an economic disaster and an important symptom and cause of the housing crisis (think the causality runs both ways).
The trouble is LBTT is highly progressive - eye-watering rate on expensive properties. So persuading the SNP to drop it is going to difficult, particularly when freezing council tax is their favourite policy.
OT. The gathering in Manchester mourning the killing of the two people last week was presided over by Sharren Haskel Israel's deputy Foreign Minister. Indeed Manchester City centre was full of Israeli flags. On that same day in Gaza Israel killed 53 people by bombing high rise blocks. That was the day Mahmood told people not to demonstrate against the genocide out of respect for the Jewish community. This was the interview carried out by Sky of one of the Board of Deputies explaining how Israel has nothing to do with them. Bizarre doesn't begin to explain it
I was discussing this with my wife over the weekend. I can understand why Mahmood said that the protests should be delayed. We have no desire for these conflicts to be played out in our streets. But if I was of Palestinian origin I would find this consternation about the death of 2 people, one shot dead by the police, in the context of an ongoing genocide morally outrageous and infuriating.
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
What's the alleged offence? is this Flintshire Council, since iirc Wales is all unitaries.
It was a litter bin, not a recycling container.
Reforming the regulation of waste collection looks like low-hanging fruit for Mr Starmer (though this is Wales so I assume it is devolved).
It could be unprivatised from the middlemen who fly tip by providing a better Council service.
I wish they wouldn't keep referring to Camilla as "Queen".
Yes, she legally is (now) but she's also really not.
I mean she is the wife of the King, so she is the Queen. Though I do think they should go with “Queen Camilla” rather than The Queen because it is still rather jarring.
The one that annoys me more are articles referring to The King as “King Charles III”. Again, strictly correct but how many other King Charles’s are there around at the moment?
They should've stuck with Queen Consort as they did in the first few months.
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
I found it stressful.
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
Well it’s not supposed to be your call whether she has her deposit back, it’s supposed to be the call of the deposit protection scheme acting as an arbitrator.
With dogs, accidents will happen. I'm sure she never allowed it on purpose. When we rented, we were charged a double deposit because we had dogs. We expected not to get it all back. We lost a third because they had to recarpet, the living room, but it was after 6 years. Our landlords were very understanding. You have to be if you allow pets.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Anything is better than now and
My daughters survey cost £520 for a £300,000 home
Yeah and I bet she had almost no recourse against the surveyor due to exclusions for pretty much everything that wasn’t immediately obvious to the surveyor in an hour.
It was an RICS report and extensive but then if you cannot depend on an RICS report then what is the point
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
This is the problem. A 22 year old should be able to afford their own home.
They should be able to do so from their own wages, without help from Mum and Dad, or grandparents, or an inheritance from the death of their parents which hopefully would be many decades away.
What you wish will happen won't buck the market, especially with two income couples also adding to house prices
If supply exceeds demand then prices come down.
Second incomes should be able to go on luxuries like holidays, not adding to house prices. If the supply of housing weren't artificially constrained, that'd be the case.
Well Labour is already increasing the number of new homes as are some Tory councils. That alone is not enough.
Immigration needs to be slashed too, hence Reform growing in the polls with a policy to do that and deport illegals. Banks should lend no more than four times salary. Divorce should be discouraged and earlier marriage encouraged as well to reduce the number of homes needed for single people and the unmarried
Snake oil meets first contact with reality down in Kent:
"Diane Morton, Reform’s cabinet member for adult social care on Kent county council, told the Financial Times that services in Kent were already “down to the bare bones”.
“We’ve got more demand than ever before and it’s growing,” she said, stressing she did not believe access to those services should be limited. “We just want more money.” "
Guardian Live blog
The problem is too many old people. There are no easy solutions. I don't know why politicians can't focus on this problem rather than constantly casting around for some bogeyman - the EU, immigrants etc - to blame for our ills. It's getting so boring.
Too many young spongers and not enough older people to pay for everything the lazy gits want for nothing , bunch of scroungers with their poor me I have anxiety about actually doing a day's work the state must keep me and give me a free house and and and
With respect, Malcolm, you are completely wrong.
Far too many that think everything should be handed to them on a plate, nobody is entitled to anything , if you want it then you need to get off your butt and earn it.
Russia doesn’t just have a black-market petrol problem, it also has a counterfeit petrol problem - stuff that looks like petrol, maybe even smells a bit like petrol, but isn’t quite petrol.
Presumably it’s home-made by boiling other hydrocarbons, and no you definitely don’t want to put it in any car, except perhaps an old Lada with carburettors.
Whenever Britain has had a short-lived fuel crisis there have always been a small number of people who have done stupid things, like hoarding fuel in a garden shed.
I don't doubt that there are people in Russia who are doing stupid things in response to their longer-lasting fuel crisis.
These are probably the same guys who make their own vodka, when the supermarket sells it for about $3 a bottle.
Rural Russia is full of some very crazy people with a lot of free time and too much imagination.
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
I found it stressful.
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
The last f***** we had even took the external key safe which I had fitted and was late in his final payment so left before he paid and paid what he owed less the bond. I found all three of our tenants though be lying, cheating bastards, each in their own unique ways.
OT. The gathering in Manchester mourning the killing of the two people last week was presided over by Sharren Haskel Israel's deputy Foreign Minister. Indeed Manchester City centre was full of Israeli flags. On that same day in Gaza Israel killed 53 people by bombing high rise blocks. That was the day Mahmood told people not to demonstrate against the genocide out of respect for the Jewish community. This was the interview carried out by Sky of one of the Board of Deputies explaining how Israel has nothing to do with them. Bizarre doesn't begin to explain it
I was discussing this with my wife over the weekend. I can understand why Mahmood said that the protests should be delayed. We have no desire for these conflicts to be played out in our streets. But if I was of Palestinian origin I would find this consternation about the death of 2 people, one shot dead by the police, in the context of an ongoing genocide morally outrageous and infuriating.
There is something in this but I would also hope that there might be a few more "Down with Hamas' posters on some of the marches. Never seem to be.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
We have it in Scotland , it is not a survey and they take no responsibility , just a guide and a valuation for mortgage and a fat fee to the surveyor, paid by the seller.
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
I found it stressful.
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
Well it’s not supposed to be your call whether she has her deposit back, it’s supposed to be the call of the deposit protection scheme acting as an arbitrator.
With dogs, accidents will happen. I'm sure she never allowed it on purpose. When we rented, we were charged a double deposit because we had dogs. We expected not to get it all back. We lost a third because they had to recarpet, the living room, but it was after 6 years. Our landlords were very understanding. You have to be if you allow pets.
Hmm. Old story from Coventry. I had a friend who used to drive GP's around out of hours. Some of the properties were utterly disgusting. Dog mess all over the house, not cleaned up etc. Upshot is that some people are weird and have very different standards to the norm.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
We have it in Scotland , it is not a survey and they take no responsibility , just a guide and a valuation for mortgage and a fat fee to the surveyor, paid by the seller.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
Like myself BigG. our children and grandchildren will be fine when we shuffle off our mortal coils, particularly if "repeal all inheritance tax laws" HYUFD is in Government.
The majority of potential young home buyers will take years to scrape a 5% deposit let alone have the ability to put down a 50% inherited lump sum when a relative falls off the perch.
That's a ridiculous attitude, when you shuffle off your mortal coils your children and grandchildren could be by then at or approaching pension age themselves. So it would be far too late to be "fine".
I'm in my mid-40s now and still have living grandparents. My parents are pensioners and have living parents. The idea inheritance solves anything is preposterous given that people need houses to live in from their 20s, not from their 60s or 70s when their parents die.
Did you read, or just fail to comprehend what I was writing.
I was not advocating for an inheritance bonus, quite the opposite. My point was a tiny percentage of our children/ grandchildren will benefit from a bung when granny dies, whilst most people struggle to get going on the housing ladder.
HYUFD has stated today that the way to set the Tories after Reform is to dispense with inheritance tax. I suggest if you do the opposite the redistribution bonus could be used to help the majority rather than the few onto the housing ladder.
The average property in London and the South and even parts of the North and Midlands and Scotland and Wales is now liable for inheritance tax. Hence inheritance tax is one of the most unpopular taxes there is.
Even after the Osborne inheritance tax exemption for the first £1 million value of the family home many homes in Tory seats and target seats in West London and the Home Counties are still hit by inheritance tax
Just shy of a tax free million pound Brucie bonus for those people whose parents bought a house in Solihull for £5,000 in 1960 is an utter disgrace when working people, WORKING PEOPLE, are reliant on Universal Credit.
And Labour bungs them even more benefits as Starmer chickened out of any welfare cuts even to those out of work and able to work.
Tax cuts for Tory voters and potential Tory voters ie especially wealthy homeowners and their heirs is what Kemi has to do to get back in the game. Osborne knew how to get their votes, does she and Mel?
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Anything is better than now and
My daughters survey cost £520 for a £300,000 home
Yeah and I bet she had almost no recourse against the surveyor due to exclusions for pretty much everything that wasn’t immediately obvious to the surveyor in an hour.
It was an RICS report and extensive but then if you cannot depend on an RICS report then what is the point
As so often one looks spouth across the border and thinks WTF? given that this happens already in Scotland - RICS survey, comments on work possibly needed, EPC, formal valuation. Further survey work for the buyer permissible by mutual agreement.
When selling my dad's house, I found the pack wqas sufficient to attract several offers above asking price (whjich was slightly below valuation) - the winner did ask for a further check of the roof but that was OK with us and didn't cause any issues.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Anything is better than now and
My daughters survey cost £520 for a £300,000 home
Yeah and I bet she had almost no recourse against the surveyor due to exclusions for pretty much everything that wasn’t immediately obvious to the surveyor in an hour.
It was an RICS report and extensive but then if you cannot depend on an RICS report then what is the point
As so often one looks spouth across the border and thinks WTF? given that this happens already in Scotland - RICS survey, comments on work possibly needed, EPC, formal valuation. Further survey work for the buyer permissible by mutual agreement.
When selling my dad's house, I found the pack wqas sufficient to attract several offers above asking price (whjich was slightly below valuation) - the winner did ask for a further check of the roof but that was OK with us and didn't cause any issues.
That doesn’t do away with caveat emptor entirely. You would still be a fool not to do your own survey etc.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Anything is better than now and
My daughters survey cost £520 for a £300,000 home
Yeah and I bet she had almost no recourse against the surveyor due to exclusions for pretty much everything that wasn’t immediately obvious to the surveyor in an hour.
It was an RICS report and extensive but then if you cannot depend on an RICS report then what is the point
As so often one looks spouth across the border and thinks WTF? given that this happens already in Scotland - RICS survey, comments on work possibly needed, EPC, formal valuation. Further survey work for the buyer permissible by mutual agreement.
When selling my dad's house, I found the pack wqas sufficient to attract several offers above asking price (whjich was slightly below valuation) - the winner did ask for a further check of the roof but that was OK with us and didn't cause any issues.
England and Wales should have adopted the Scottish system decades ago
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
What's the alleged offence? is this Flintshire Council, since iirc Wales is all unitaries.
It was a litter bin, not a recycling container.
Reforming the regulation of waste collection looks like low-hanging fruit for Mr Starmer (though this is Wales so I assume it is devolved).
It could be unprivatised from the middlemen who fly tip by providing a better Council service.
You are not supposed to put municipal household waste into a public litter bin.
So if your dog takes a dump on the pavement you should bag it, pick it up, and place it in the public bin. If your dog takes a dump at home you are supposed to put it in your own black bin and not the bin in the park over the road.
One would have thought cash strapped councils have better things to do with their time.
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
I found it stressful.
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
Well it’s not supposed to be your call whether she has her deposit back, it’s supposed to be the call of the deposit protection scheme acting as an arbitrator.
With dogs, accidents will happen. I'm sure she never allowed it on purpose. When we rented, we were charged a double deposit because we had dogs. We expected not to get it all back. We lost a third because they had to recarpet, the living room, but it was after 6 years. Our landlords were very understanding. You have to be if you allow pets.
Charging that level of pet deposit became a criminal offence in the last round of "Reforms to Improve the Lives of Tenants."
Now all they can do is charge you an increased level of rent right through.
The one thing you can rely on politicians listening to lobbyists to do is to fuck.up.the.lives.of.tenants.every.fucking.single.time .
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
This is the problem. A 22 year old should be able to afford their own home.
They should be able to do so from their own wages, without help from Mum and Dad, or grandparents, or an inheritance from the death of their parents which hopefully would be many decades away.
What you wish will happen won't buck the market, especially with two income couples also adding to house prices
If supply exceeds demand then prices come down.
Second incomes should be able to go on luxuries like holidays, not adding to house prices. If the supply of housing weren't artificially constrained, that'd be the case.
Well Labour is already increasing the number of new homes as are some Tory councils. That alone is not enough.
Immigration needs to be slashed too, hence Reform growing in the polls with a policy to do that and deport illegals. Banks should lend no more than four times salary. Divorce should be discouraged and earlier marriage encouraged as well to reduce the number of homes needed for single people and the unmarried
My Dad lives in a smallish close in a nice rural village. Yesterday he went through all the houses were the couple were either separated or divorced - it was most of them. I can't help thinking thats partly as the close is full of people in the their late forties through their sixties - the classic middle class divorce when the kids have left.
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
What's the alleged offence? is this Flintshire Council, since iirc Wales is all unitaries.
It was a litter bin, not a recycling container.
Reforming the regulation of waste collection looks like low-hanging fruit for Mr Starmer (though this is Wales so I assume it is devolved).
It could be unprivatised from the middlemen who fly tip by providing a better Council service.
You are not supposed to put municipal household waste into a public litter bin.
So if your dog takes a dump on the pavement you should bag it, pick it up, and place it in the public bin. If your dog takes a dump at home you are supposed to put it in your own black bin and not the bin in the park over the road.
One would have thought cash strapped councils have better things to do with their time.
ISTM that if she unwraps it at the depot it is not domestic waste.
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
I found it stressful.
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
Well it’s not supposed to be your call whether she has her deposit back, it’s supposed to be the call of the deposit protection scheme acting as an arbitrator.
With dogs, accidents will happen. I'm sure she never allowed it on purpose. When we rented, we were charged a double deposit because we had dogs. We expected not to get it all back. We lost a third because they had to recarpet, the living room, but it was after 6 years. Our landlords were very understanding. You have to be if you allow pets.
Hmm. Old story from Coventry. I had a friend who used to drive GP's around out of hours. Some of the properties were utterly disgusting. Dog mess all over the house, not cleaned up etc. Upshot is that some people are weird and have very different standards to the norm.
That I agree happens. Some people are very weird. I would never rent out a house myself. We rented near where we worked, out of necessity, but we did keep it as clean as we could and followed their rules. We had professional cleaners in at the end of the tenancy. No bills outstanding poll tax paid in full, and as I said we paid a decent chunk for a new carpet.
We never rented out our house we owned as it was full of our stuff etc.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
We have it in Scotland , it is not a survey and they take no responsibility , just a guide and a valuation for mortgage and a fat fee to the surveyor, paid by the seller.
So who does a proper survey in Scotland? Nobody?
Assume some will but would doubt it is many unless really old and dodgy looking
OT. The gathering in Manchester mourning the killing of the two people last week was presided over by Sharren Haskel Israel's deputy Foreign Minister. Indeed Manchester City centre was full of Israeli flags. On that same day in Gaza Israel killed 53 people by bombing high rise blocks. That was the day Mahmood told people not to demonstrate against the genocide out of respect for the Jewish community. This was the interview carried out by Sky of one of the Board of Deputies explaining how Israel has nothing to do with them. Bizarre doesn't begin to explain it
I was discussing this with my wife over the weekend. I can understand why Mahmood said that the protests should be delayed. We have no desire for these conflicts to be played out in our streets. But if I was of Palestinian origin I would find this consternation about the death of 2 people, one shot dead by the police, in the context of an ongoing genocide morally outrageous and infuriating.
If I was a Palestinian, I’m sure I’d want to stick it to the Jews, the same way if I’d been brought up on the Falls Road, I’d likely have supported the IRA.
Since, I’m not, I see the determination to protest, right after the murders, as a poke in the eye.
I wish they wouldn't keep referring to Camilla as "Queen".
Yes, she legally is (now) but she's also really not.
I mean she is the wife of the King, so she is the Queen. Though I do think they should go with “Queen Camilla” rather than The Queen because it is still rather jarring.
The one that annoys me more are articles referring to The King as “King Charles III”. Again, strictly correct but how many other King Charles’s are there around at the moment?
They should've stuck with Queen Consort as they did in the first few months.
Why? Was (to us) the Queen Mother referred to as The Queen Consort or Queen Elizabeth during her husband’s reign? Queen Alexandra?
She was referred to as Queen Consort for first few months as it’s official styling until the coronation and I agree she should be referred to as Queen Camilla not “the queen” as “The Queen” will always be Elizabeth II to anyone alive for her reign but to refer to her as Queen Consort seems like a bit of a dig and an attempt to lessen her.
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
I found it stressful.
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
Well it’s not supposed to be your call whether she has her deposit back, it’s supposed to be the call of the deposit protection scheme acting as an arbitrator.
With dogs, accidents will happen. I'm sure she never allowed it on purpose. When we rented, we were charged a double deposit because we had dogs. We expected not to get it all back. We lost a third because they had to recarpet, the living room, but it was after 6 years. Our landlords were very understanding. You have to be if you allow pets.
Hmm. Old story from Coventry. I had a friend who used to drive GP's around out of hours. Some of the properties were utterly disgusting. Dog mess all over the house, not cleaned up etc. Upshot is that some people are weird and have very different standards to the norm.
That I agree happens. Some people are very weird. I would never rent out a house myself. We rented near where we worked, out of necessity, but we did keep it as clean as we could and followed their rules. We had professional cleaners in at the end of the tenancy. No bills outstanding poll tax paid in full, and as I said we paid a decent chunk for a new carpet.
We never rented out our house we owned as it was full of our stuff etc.
As I was a student, then post grad then post doc I lived in my share of rented places. I will never forget leaving one in Leeds and the Estate Agent attending to agree that all was good and he said 'that fridge looks a bit dirty'. He actually made me clean the fridge (which wasn't really dirty). I'm sure he was proving some sort of point.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
Like myself BigG. our children and grandchildren will be fine when we shuffle off our mortal coils, particularly if "repeal all inheritance tax laws" HYUFD is in Government.
The majority of potential young home buyers will take years to scrape a 5% deposit let alone have the ability to put down a 50% inherited lump sum when a relative falls off the perch.
That's a ridiculous attitude, when you shuffle off your mortal coils your children and grandchildren could be by then at or approaching pension age themselves. So it would be far too late to be "fine".
I'm in my mid-40s now and still have living grandparents. My parents are pensioners and have living parents. The idea inheritance solves anything is preposterous given that people need houses to live in from their 20s, not from their 60s or 70s when their parents die.
Did you read, or just fail to comprehend what I was writing.
I was not advocating for an inheritance bonus, quite the opposite. My point was a tiny percentage of our children/ grandchildren will benefit from a bung when granny dies, whilst most people struggle to get going on the housing ladder.
HYUFD has stated today that the way to set the Tories after Reform is to dispense with inheritance tax. I suggest if you do the opposite the redistribution bonus could be used to help the majority rather than the few onto the housing ladder.
The average property in London and the South and even parts of the North and Midlands and Scotland and Wales is now liable for inheritance tax. Hence inheritance tax is one of the most unpopular taxes there is.
Even after the Osborne inheritance tax exemption for the first £1 million value of the family home many homes in Tory seats and target seats in West London and the Home Counties are still hit by inheritance tax
Just shy of a tax free million pound Brucie bonus for those people whose parents bought a house in Solihull for £5,000 in 1960 is an utter disgrace when working people, WORKING PEOPLE, are reliant on Universal Credit.
And Labour bungs them even more benefits as Starmer chickened out of any welfare cuts even to those out of work and able to work.
Tax cuts for Tory voters and potential Tory voters ie especially wealthy homeowners and their heirs is what Kemi has to do to get back in the game. Osborne knew how to get their votes, does she and Mel?
You have just made a compelling case for wealth and inheritance taxes.
Edit. And your Party was the Party of burgeoning welfare benefit payments particularly under your Superstar Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
I wish they wouldn't keep referring to Camilla as "Queen".
Yes, she legally is (now) but she's also really not.
I mean she is the wife of the King, so she is the Queen. Though I do think they should go with “Queen Camilla” rather than The Queen because it is still rather jarring.
The one that annoys me more are articles referring to The King as “King Charles III”. Again, strictly correct but how many other King Charles’s are there around at the moment?
They should've stuck with Queen Consort as they did in the first few months.
Why? Was (to us) the Queen Mother referred to as The Queen Consort or Queen Elizabeth during her husband’s reign? Queen Alexandra?
She was referred to as Queen Consort for first few months as it’s official styling until the coronation and I agree she should be referred to as Queen Camilla not “the queen” as “The Queen” will always be Elizabeth II to anyone alive for her reign but to refer to her as Queen Consort seems like a bit of a dig and an attempt to lessen her.
We are suffering from the dreaded normalcy bias. To us, the Queen is the monarch, as she was for most of our loves. To previous generations (bar a couple of outliers) the Queen was the wife of the monarch. For most all of us, this isn't going to change.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Anything is better than now and
My daughters survey cost £520 for a £300,000 home
Yeah and I bet she had almost no recourse against the surveyor due to exclusions for pretty much everything that wasn’t immediately obvious to the surveyor in an hour.
It was an RICS report and extensive but then if you cannot depend on an RICS report then what is the point
As so often one looks spouth across the border and thinks WTF? given that this happens already in Scotland - RICS survey, comments on work possibly needed, EPC, formal valuation. Further survey work for the buyer permissible by mutual agreement.
When selling my dad's house, I found the pack wqas sufficient to attract several offers above asking price (whjich was slightly below valuation) - the winner did ask for a further check of the roof but that was OK with us and didn't cause any issues.
That doesn’t do away with caveat emptor entirely. You would still be a fool not to do your own survey etc.
To my mind, requiring the seller to do a survey creates an obvious conflict of interest.
In my experience, most delays are caused by mortgage lenders.
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
I found it stressful.
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
Well it’s not supposed to be your call whether she has her deposit back, it’s supposed to be the call of the deposit protection scheme acting as an arbitrator.
With dogs, accidents will happen. I'm sure she never allowed it on purpose. When we rented, we were charged a double deposit because we had dogs. We expected not to get it all back. We lost a third because they had to recarpet, the living room, but it was after 6 years. Our landlords were very understanding. You have to be if you allow pets.
Charging that level of pet deposit became a criminal offence in the last round of "Reforms to Improve the Lives of Tenants."
Now all they can do is charge you an increased level of rent right through.
The one thing you can rely on politicians listening to lobbyists to do is to fuck.up.the.lives.of.tenants.every.fucking.single.time .
I didn't know that. I'm not sure I agree with that either as an increased rent instead would be taxable for the landlords. It would only result in more "no pet" rules sadly.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Anything is better than now and
My daughters survey cost £520 for a £300,000 home
Yeah and I bet she had almost no recourse against the surveyor due to exclusions for pretty much everything that wasn’t immediately obvious to the surveyor in an hour.
It was an RICS report and extensive but then if you cannot depend on an RICS report then what is the point
As so often one looks spouth across the border and thinks WTF? given that this happens already in Scotland - RICS survey, comments on work possibly needed, EPC, formal valuation. Further survey work for the buyer permissible by mutual agreement.
When selling my dad's house, I found the pack wqas sufficient to attract several offers above asking price (whjich was slightly below valuation) - the winner did ask for a further check of the roof but that was OK with us and didn't cause any issues.
That doesn’t do away with caveat emptor entirely. You would still be a fool not to do your own survey etc.
It works in Scotland and we sold our Edinburgh flat under that system which is streets ahead and caveat emptor should be consigned to the bin
My daughter first property purchase this year had a dreadful survey and she withdrew because of it
The next buyer's approached my daughter through the agent to buy her report but she wisely refused
You do seem to be questioning an RICS report when there is no other option for a seller or buyer to find out the state of a property
Am I right in thinking that all Trump’s demented gabbling about peace in Gaza needing to be sorted asap is due to the imminent announcement of who is to be awarded the Nobel peace prize? I think you're onto plums, Donny.
Ashok Kumar | 🇵🇸 @broseph_stalin · 8m Since Trump told Israel to stop bombing Gaza two days ago, Israel has dropped 131 bombs on Gaza, killing 125 civilians.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Anything is better than now and
My daughters survey cost £520 for a £300,000 home
Yeah and I bet she had almost no recourse against the surveyor due to exclusions for pretty much everything that wasn’t immediately obvious to the surveyor in an hour.
It was an RICS report and extensive but then if you cannot depend on an RICS report then what is the point
As so often one looks spouth across the border and thinks WTF? given that this happens already in Scotland - RICS survey, comments on work possibly needed, EPC, formal valuation. Further survey work for the buyer permissible by mutual agreement.
When selling my dad's house, I found the pack wqas sufficient to attract several offers above asking price (whjich was slightly below valuation) - the winner did ask for a further check of the roof but that was OK with us and didn't cause any issues.
England and Wales should have adopted the Scottish system decades ago
A further point. The standardised repoirt also includes a thorough questionnaire for the seller on such things as known asbestos, flood risks, remaining valid guarantees for appliuances or work on the house, any neighbour disputes or outstanding planning applications in area, whether light bulbs and curtains and garden plants included, etc. etc. Very useful in zipping through things with the solicitor/conveyancer/estate agent (all one thing in Scotland usually).
Obvs some I didn't know or couldn't tell so just said 'not known to me either way'.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
I think this misses a point. To a government and senior politicians and some lawyers making the home owner responsible (ie liable) for information provided resolves a problem.
It doesn't to the average, normal cautious buyer. What the normal buyer wants to minimise is twofold: she wants to minimise the chance of a practical disaster like the roof falling off, and she wants to minimise even more the chance of having to go to law, eg on the allegation of false seller information.
Avoiding litigation of any description is a very powerful force for most normal people.
I would never let out residential property, because of the difficulty and expense of evicting a defaulting tenant.
I found it stressful.
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
Well it’s not supposed to be your call whether she has her deposit back, it’s supposed to be the call of the deposit protection scheme acting as an arbitrator.
With dogs, accidents will happen. I'm sure she never allowed it on purpose. When we rented, we were charged a double deposit because we had dogs. We expected not to get it all back. We lost a third because they had to recarpet, the living room, but it was after 6 years. Our landlords were very understanding. You have to be if you allow pets.
Hmm. Old story from Coventry. I had a friend who used to drive GP's around out of hours. Some of the properties were utterly disgusting. Dog mess all over the house, not cleaned up etc. Upshot is that some people are weird and have very different standards to the norm.
That I agree happens. Some people are very weird. I would never rent out a house myself. We rented near where we worked, out of necessity, but we did keep it as clean as we could and followed their rules. We had professional cleaners in at the end of the tenancy. No bills outstanding poll tax paid in full, and as I said we paid a decent chunk for a new carpet.
We never rented out our house we owned as it was full of our stuff etc.
I’ve always done that too, move out a few days early and get professional cleaners and decorators in. No excuses for the landlord to keep a penny of the deposit!
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
We have it in Scotland , it is not a survey and they take no responsibility , just a guide and a valuation for mortgage and a fat fee to the surveyor, paid by the seller.
So who does a proper survey in Scotland? Nobody?
Depends on the property. If its relatively new and standard people tend to just use the Home buyers report and the mortgage lenders are happy with that. If things are more complicated, for example there has been an unauthorised alteration or there is a possibility of rot, then purchasers can and do instruct their own valuation. Its not that common though. Most just rely on the Home Buyers report.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
Like myself BigG. our children and grandchildren will be fine when we shuffle off our mortal coils, particularly if "repeal all inheritance tax laws" HYUFD is in Government.
The majority of potential young home buyers will take years to scrape a 5% deposit let alone have the ability to put down a 50% inherited lump sum when a relative falls off the perch.
That's a ridiculous attitude, when you shuffle off your mortal coils your children and grandchildren could be by then at or approaching pension age themselves. So it would be far too late to be "fine".
I'm in my mid-40s now and still have living grandparents. My parents are pensioners and have living parents. The idea inheritance solves anything is preposterous given that people need houses to live in from their 20s, not from their 60s or 70s when their parents die.
Did you read, or just fail to comprehend what I was writing.
I was not advocating for an inheritance bonus, quite the opposite. My point was a tiny percentage of our children/ grandchildren will benefit from a bung when granny dies, whilst most people struggle to get going on the housing ladder.
HYUFD has stated today that the way to set the Tories after Reform is to dispense with inheritance tax. I suggest if you do the opposite the redistribution bonus could be used to help the majority rather than the few onto the housing ladder.
The average property in London and the South and even parts of the North and Midlands and Scotland and Wales is now liable for inheritance tax. Hence inheritance tax is one of the most unpopular taxes there is.
Even after the Osborne inheritance tax exemption for the first £1 million value of the family home many homes in Tory seats and target seats in West London and the Home Counties are still hit by inheritance tax
Just shy of a tax free million pound Brucie bonus for those people whose parents bought a house in Solihull for £5,000 in 1960 is an utter disgrace when working people, WORKING PEOPLE, are reliant on Universal Credit.
And Labour bungs them even more benefits as Starmer chickened out of any welfare cuts even to those out of work and able to work.
Tax cuts for Tory voters and potential Tory voters ie especially wealthy homeowners and their heirs is what Kemi has to do to get back in the game. Osborne knew how to get their votes, does she and Mel?
You have just made a compelling case for wealth and inheritance taxes.
Edit. And your Party was the Party of burgeoning welfare benefit payments particularly under your Superstar Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Agreed. I’d rather be growing the pie than just grabbing spoils for my supporters.
Osborne sought to enrich pensioners, to the benefit of the Conservatives in the short term, but to the detriment of them, and the nation, in the longer term.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
The surveyor will be legally responsible as he already is anyway
To whom? The buyer would have no contractual link to them and as a seller I am expected to take litigation risk, i.e to pay the buyer money I don’t have and try to recover it from the surveyor?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Anything is better than now and
My daughters survey cost £520 for a £300,000 home
Yeah and I bet she had almost no recourse against the surveyor due to exclusions for pretty much everything that wasn’t immediately obvious to the surveyor in an hour.
It was an RICS report and extensive but then if you cannot depend on an RICS report then what is the point
As so often one looks spouth across the border and thinks WTF? given that this happens already in Scotland - RICS survey, comments on work possibly needed, EPC, formal valuation. Further survey work for the buyer permissible by mutual agreement.
When selling my dad's house, I found the pack wqas sufficient to attract several offers above asking price (whjich was slightly below valuation) - the winner did ask for a further check of the roof but that was OK with us and didn't cause any issues.
That doesn’t do away with caveat emptor entirely. You would still be a fool not to do your own survey etc.
It works in Scotland and we sold our Edinburgh flat under that system which is streets ahead and caveat emptor should be consigned to the bin
My daughter first property purchase this year had a dreadful survey and she withdrew because of it
The next buyer's approached my daughter through the agent to buy her report but she wisely refused
You do seem to be questioning an RICS report when there is no other option for a seller or buyer to find out the state of a property
I am a construction solicitor - I know first hand what can go wrong with construction!
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
We have it in Scotland , it is not a survey and they take no responsibility , just a guide and a valuation for mortgage and a fat fee to the surveyor, paid by the seller.
So who does a proper survey in Scotland? Nobody?
Depends on the property. If its relatively new and standard people tend to just use the Home buyers report and the mortgage lenders are happy with that. If things are more complicated, for example there has been an unauthorised alteration or there is a possibility of rot, then purchasers can and do instruct their own valuation. Its not that common though. Most just rely on the Home Buyers report.
Agreed from experience. My father's house is an old one (c. 120 yrs) and the roof was needing some renewal fairly soon, so the buyer got a specialist to go and have a look at her expense.
It does save on having to commission a survey for every house one is seriously interested as a buyer - it's a useful first filter.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
Depends how you do it. A flat 0.7% property tax would cover both council tax and stamp duty and constitute a tax cut for a large majority of households - particularly in the Reform/Labour battlegrounds.
Labour should do it. If they also introduced right-to-buy for private tenants I think you'd find much of the housing crisis (which is really an inflated asset crisis harming the minority of people not on the housing ladder) would dissipate even without much house building.
Right-to-Buy for private tenants would create a different housing crisis.
As a landlord I'd be open to the idea. Would need some conditions like 2+ years tenancy, both parties have to agree to valuation or tenancy continues or similar. Would also require the same kind of protections we have on eviction as we do in Scotland.
Overall, I'd expect it to move the market to a more socially optimal outcome in terms of tenure proportions. Haven't fully thought it through but it's at least interesting.
It deters serious investment and high quality housing, though.
Who is going to spend the £30-60k to do a decent deep renovation on an unsaleable house untouched for 30 years due to a single owner who died in situ, or empty for say 3 years, which requires at least 10 years to make a return, when it can be carpet-bagged after 2 years?
And that 30-60k would require very effective management of the project, as an experienced private renovator can get things done for at least 1/3 less by knowing good workmen, and doing the stuff that needs doing not the expensive fluff.
Deep renovators are rare amongst house buyers, especially FTBs. They have no nouse.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
So if I sell my house and the RICS surveyor is negligent I am responsible for compensating the buyer?
We have it in Scotland , it is not a survey and they take no responsibility , just a guide and a valuation for mortgage and a fat fee to the surveyor, paid by the seller.
So who does a proper survey in Scotland? Nobody?
Depends on the property. If its relatively new and standard people tend to just use the Home buyers report and the mortgage lenders are happy with that. If things are more complicated, for example there has been an unauthorised alteration or there is a possibility of rot, then purchasers can and do instruct their own valuation. Its not that common though. Most just rely on the Home Buyers report.
As the owner since construction of a now 8 year old property, I would be keen to properly survey even a new or newish build seeing how limiting NHBC or similar is.
In English law a binding contract can be made at whatever point in transactions that both parties are willing to be bound by the contract. There is no magic involved. (Human nature says that both parties want the other one bound but not yourself. Gosh. That's not how it works.)
On the whole the changes needed are not systemic but procedural. It is routine for there to be late faffing, last minute crises, urgent last minute stuff about the practicalities of finance, solicitors and others not getting their act together in a timely and ordered manner. This is nothing to do with law, and all to do with pragmatic competence and timely action.
Actually this is a subject I know quite well, not least as I was involved in discussions with Yvette Cooper's department over HIPS and sadly she did not listen to industry advice and it's failure was no surprise
However, the government are correct on this, and the requirement for written pre contract declarations by a seller, plus a bona fide survey report, all presented in a legally binding sale pack is highly desirable and I would expect supported by the industry
Also reducing the time and modernising the conveyancing process is very desirable
Of course this will change the market fundamentally, finally abolishing 'caveat emptor' though of course it will be a problem for many home owners whose property has structural or location issues
As properties sell, and the faults are recified it will make future sales easier and of couse will save the buyer costs though if they are a seller as well they will face the upfront cost of the pre sale pack
I note they are looking at the Scottish system as well, and that is a far better way of selling than in England and Wales
I hope a pre sale legally binding contract pack becomes law, though I expect it will be a while away
I wouldn’t want to rely upon a report/survey undertaken by a dodgy surveyor in a sales pack. I would want to commission my own in addition.
The packs need to require an RICS member or similar and any other survey would be unnecessary
They would only unnecessary if there is a sufficient remedy for negligence.
How long will a seller have to wait for a RICS member to undertake such a report? How much would it cost?
EPCs are a legal requirement and they are almost worthless.
The proposals are for a legally produced pre-sale pack and survey that may even include a valuation though I am not sure on that
I expect the packs to cost the seller £500-£1,000 but then that is much the cost the buyer pays today
The whole process is to make the home owner (or their solicitor) responsible for the information provided
I think this misses a point. To a government and senior politicians and some lawyers making the home owner responsible (ie liable) for information provided resolves a problem.
It doesn't to the average, normal cautious buyer. What the normal buyer wants to minimise is twofold: she wants to minimise the chance of a practical disaster like the roof falling off, and she wants to minimise even more the chance of having to go to law, eg on the allegation of false seller information.
Avoiding litigation of any description is a very powerful force for most normal people.
A legally binding pre sale pack with survey does precisely that and before the process starts
I wish they wouldn't keep referring to Camilla as "Queen".
Yes, she legally is (now) but she's also really not.
I mean she is the wife of the King, so she is the Queen. Though I do think they should go with “Queen Camilla” rather than The Queen because it is still rather jarring.
The one that annoys me more are articles referring to The King as “King Charles III”. Again, strictly correct but how many other King Charles’s are there around at the moment?
They should've stuck with Queen Consort as they did in the first few months.
Why? Was (to us) the Queen Mother referred to as The Queen Consort or Queen Elizabeth during her husband’s reign? Queen Alexandra?
She was referred to as Queen Consort for first few months as it’s official styling until the coronation and I agree she should be referred to as Queen Camilla not “the queen” as “The Queen” will always be Elizabeth II to anyone alive for her reign but to refer to her as Queen Consort seems like a bit of a dig and an attempt to lessen her.
That's a weird argument - I'd argue it's male consorts who are hard done by with their titles. It's not even a given they will be a "prince", Philip was a special case and required the Queen to make him one.
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
Like myself BigG. our children and grandchildren will be fine when we shuffle off our mortal coils, particularly if "repeal all inheritance tax laws" HYUFD is in Government.
The majority of potential young home buyers will take years to scrape a 5% deposit let alone have the ability to put down a 50% inherited lump sum when a relative falls off the perch.
That's a ridiculous attitude, when you shuffle off your mortal coils your children and grandchildren could be by then at or approaching pension age themselves. So it would be far too late to be "fine".
I'm in my mid-40s now and still have living grandparents. My parents are pensioners and have living parents. The idea inheritance solves anything is preposterous given that people need houses to live in from their 20s, not from their 60s or 70s when their parents die.
Did you read, or just fail to comprehend what I was writing.
I was not advocating for an inheritance bonus, quite the opposite. My point was a tiny percentage of our children/ grandchildren will benefit from a bung when granny dies, whilst most people struggle to get going on the housing ladder.
HYUFD has stated today that the way to set the Tories after Reform is to dispense with inheritance tax. I suggest if you do the opposite the redistribution bonus could be used to help the majority rather than the few onto the housing ladder.
The average property in London and the South and even parts of the North and Midlands and Scotland and Wales is now liable for inheritance tax. Hence inheritance tax is one of the most unpopular taxes there is.
Even after the Osborne inheritance tax exemption for the first £1 million value of the family home many homes in Tory seats and target seats in West London and the Home Counties are still hit by inheritance tax
Just shy of a tax free million pound Brucie bonus for those people whose parents bought a house in Solihull for £5,000 in 1960 is an utter disgrace when working people, WORKING PEOPLE, are reliant on Universal Credit.
And Labour bungs them even more benefits as Starmer chickened out of any welfare cuts even to those out of work and able to work.
Tax cuts for Tory voters and potential Tory voters ie especially wealthy homeowners and their heirs is what Kemi has to do to get back in the game. Osborne knew how to get their votes, does she and Mel?
You have just made a compelling case for wealth and inheritance taxes.
Edit. And your Party was the Party of burgeoning welfare benefit payments particularly under your Superstar Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Agreed. I’d rather be growing the pie than just grabbing spoils for my supporters.
Osborne sought to enrich pensioners, to the benefit of the Conservatives in the short term, but to the detriment of them, and the nation, in the longer term.
Osborne did though help the Conservatives win the 2015 general election
And in other news. The Conservative Party Conference hasn't made the news bulletin at the start of WATO. Oh I lied, it was story 6. After Mme Pelicot and before Gilly Cooper. Tax cuts for everyone from a half empty conference hall is the analysis.
I wish they wouldn't keep referring to Camilla as "Queen".
Yes, she legally is (now) but she's also really not.
I mean she is the wife of the King, so she is the Queen. Though I do think they should go with “Queen Camilla” rather than The Queen because it is still rather jarring.
The one that annoys me more are articles referring to The King as “King Charles III”. Again, strictly correct but how many other King Charles’s are there around at the moment?
They should've stuck with Queen Consort as they did in the first few months.
Why? Was (to us) the Queen Mother referred to as The Queen Consort or Queen Elizabeth during her husband’s reign? Queen Alexandra?
She was referred to as Queen Consort for first few months as it’s official styling until the coronation and I agree she should be referred to as Queen Camilla not “the queen” as “The Queen” will always be Elizabeth II to anyone alive for her reign but to refer to her as Queen Consort seems like a bit of a dig and an attempt to lessen her.
We are suffering from the dreaded normalcy bias. To us, the Queen is the monarch, as she was for most of our loves. To previous generations (bar a couple of outliers) the Queen was the wife of the monarch. For most all of us, this isn't going to change.
Oddly enough, youtube pointed me at this just last night :
Just going to leave PB with this before I go about my day:
Completely ignoring demographic changes which mean that there are far more people alive today in the family home they brought their kids up in, but sans kids. 🤦♂️
We need massively more houses than we've got.
Like us, who have no intention of leaving our family home of nearly 50 years until it is our time to meet our maker, or need dementia care which at 81 and 85 is thankfully not a problem for us
Indeed and there's nothing wrong with that, good luck to you, but not just your kids but likely your grandkids and before long potentially great grandkids need a home of their own too.
Whereas once you'd have had kids living with you.
This is why we have a huge housing shortage.
Our three children who are now 59, 54 and 51 all own their own homes with a mortgage and have done so for over 20 years
Precisely the point, over 20 years ago the housing market was much, much better than it is today and the demographics were different to today.
The issue isn't your kids, its what about your grandkids?
Presumably many of them will now be adults and should own their own homes too. Do they all? Its a massive failure that too many don't nationwide.
The eldest is 22 and presently living with her Mum
I agree it is a real problem for our grandchildren
Like myself BigG. our children and grandchildren will be fine when we shuffle off our mortal coils, particularly if "repeal all inheritance tax laws" HYUFD is in Government.
The majority of potential young home buyers will take years to scrape a 5% deposit let alone have the ability to put down a 50% inherited lump sum when a relative falls off the perch.
That's a ridiculous attitude, when you shuffle off your mortal coils your children and grandchildren could be by then at or approaching pension age themselves. So it would be far too late to be "fine".
I'm in my mid-40s now and still have living grandparents. My parents are pensioners and have living parents. The idea inheritance solves anything is preposterous given that people need houses to live in from their 20s, not from their 60s or 70s when their parents die.
Did you read, or just fail to comprehend what I was writing.
I was not advocating for an inheritance bonus, quite the opposite. My point was a tiny percentage of our children/ grandchildren will benefit from a bung when granny dies, whilst most people struggle to get going on the housing ladder.
HYUFD has stated today that the way to set the Tories after Reform is to dispense with inheritance tax. I suggest if you do the opposite the redistribution bonus could be used to help the majority rather than the few onto the housing ladder.
The average property in London and the South and even parts of the North and Midlands and Scotland and Wales is now liable for inheritance tax. Hence inheritance tax is one of the most unpopular taxes there is.
Even after the Osborne inheritance tax exemption for the first £1 million value of the family home many homes in Tory seats and target seats in West London and the Home Counties are still hit by inheritance tax
Just shy of a tax free million pound Brucie bonus for those people whose parents bought a house in Solihull for £5,000 in 1960 is an utter disgrace when working people, WORKING PEOPLE, are reliant on Universal Credit.
And Labour bungs them even more benefits as Starmer chickened out of any welfare cuts even to those out of work and able to work.
Tax cuts for Tory voters and potential Tory voters ie especially wealthy homeowners and their heirs is what Kemi has to do to get back in the game. Osborne knew how to get their votes, does she and Mel?
You have just made a compelling case for wealth and inheritance taxes.
Edit. And your Party was the Party of burgeoning welfare benefit payments particularly under your Superstar Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Further to my lament earlier this morning about the refusal of our political class to come to terms with our predicament we had the interview with Mel Stride this morning. God, it was embarrassing.
So, why didn't you support Starmer and Reece's cuts? "Well, err, the wrong kind of cuts, all last minute etc". Complete garbage.
No benefits for those on ILR. So, what is going to happen to these people? "Well, some of them might go home..."
Funding £5K for those starting work and buying their first home.. Supposedly funded by cuts in public spending amounting to £42bn over the Parliament. I repeat "over the Parliament". This for a country borrowing £150bn a year. And this is supposedly responsible! It doesn't even touch the sides of our issues. By the end I was nearly banging my head off the steering wheel.
Also: like the housing market needs additional measures to stimulate demand...
Indeed. What we need on housing is to reduce the costs of purchase by transferring the costs to the seller who will normally be sitting on a sizeable untaxed capital gain. But you wouldn't want to upset the wrinklies who are downsizing would you?
That just leads to the sellers passing on the cost to the buyers and also reduces the incentive to downsize.
What we need is to reduce the costs of purchase by minimising transaction costs altogether. Neither the seller nor the purchaser should be paying any more than is strictly necessary.
We should be abolishing taxes on transactions and instead taxing the holding of property annually instead of on transactions so that someone who downsizes doesn't see a huge lump sum bill, they see a tax cut instead. Someone staying in a home much bigger than they need is welcome to do that, but can pay for it.
Also, taking tax little and often is likely to be less unpopular than in large chunks. Replacing stamp duty with an annual charge should result in less hissing from the goose as it is plucked.
A similar argument might also justify a modest wealth tax as a replacement for inheritance tax.
Disagree.
The problem with rolling stamp duty into council tax, is that c.90% of people don’t move in any given year. So 90% of people see their bill go up.
Even worse, the 10% don’t really see theirs go down much, as many lenders will roll at least a proportion of SDLT into a mortgage.
Depends how you do it. A flat 0.7% property tax would cover both council tax and stamp duty and constitute a tax cut for a large majority of households - particularly in the Reform/Labour battlegrounds.
Labour should do it. If they also introduced right-to-buy for private tenants I think you'd find much of the housing crisis (which is really an inflated asset crisis harming the minority of people not on the housing ladder) would dissipate even without much house building.
Right-to-Buy for private tenants would create a different housing crisis.
As a landlord I'd be open to the idea. Would need some conditions like 2+ years tenancy, both parties have to agree to valuation or tenancy continues or similar. Would also require the same kind of protections we have on eviction as we do in Scotland.
Overall, I'd expect it to move the market to a more socially optimal outcome in terms of tenure proportions. Haven't fully thought it through but it's at least interesting.
It deters serious investment and high quality housing, though.
Who is going to spend the £30-60k to do a decent deep renovation on an unsaleable house untouched for 30 years due to a single owner who died in situ, or empty for say 3 years, which requires at least 10 years to make a return, when it can be carpet-bagged after 2 years?
And that 30-60k would require very effective management of the project, as an experienced private renovator can get things done for at least 1/3 less by knowing good workmen, and doing the stuff that needs doing not the expensive fluff.
Deep renovators are rare amongst house buyers, especially FTBs. They have no nouse.
I can't follow this argument. If the tenant bought it I'd expect it to be sold at it close to the market rate, so you'd make your money back from the renovation. It's right-to-buy, not right-to-steal.
If you're renovating a house that you can't sell at a profit then it's an inefficient use of resources.
Comments
Under that metric, Lecornu is 13.5 Baths. Not a bad record, especially for a Frenchman.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
Labour should do it. If they also introduced right-to-buy for private tenants I think you'd find much of the housing crisis (which is really an inflated asset crisis harming the minority of people not on the housing ladder) would dissipate even without much house building.
They don't trust Estate Agents' information, especially because of the 'Even if I am lying I am still not responsible disclaimer'.
They trust the detailed questionnaires etc, because there can be comeback.
Equally when my mum sold the family "listed" house, we had a Full Structural Survey by an MRICS to risk manage for potential purchasers, which was trusted.
- Between the hours of 8am and 4pm you can fill in a form, online to get an appointment.
-There are no phone registered appointments.
- The form was carefully designed by Philip Assehole (Formely commander, Spaceballs One). It consists of multiple pages of confusing questions, most of which are irrelevant to other than specific conditions. There is no general "comment" section for people whose ailments don't match the 200 fields they offer.
- The site is aggressively unfriendly for those partially sighted etc
The system appears to have been designed to fuck over people with poor language skills, disabilities or the elderly.
Am I right to be annoyed by this?
I wrote a tool that fills in their bullshit - enough to get an appointment - in seconds. I am currently turning it into a phone app. So it's fine for me.
Russia doesn’t just have a black-market petrol problem, it also has a counterfeit petrol problem - stuff that looks like petrol, maybe even smells a bit like petrol, but isn’t quite petrol.
https://x.com/stratcomcentre/status/1975085178193387605
Presumably it’s home-made by boiling other hydrocarbons, and no you definitely don’t want to put it in any car, except perhaps an old Lada with carburettors.
It sounds very odd to me, unless of course we are just getting convenient snippets of the story.
Looks like crumble every evening for a while.
What if you aren't able to do online stuff?
But that system works because it is simple. When people move processes online but try to cover off all eventualities regarding data capture (without stopping to think of the end user), you end up with Kafkaesque systems like this.
If directed to round up the Immigrants/Jew/Muslims/People With Offensive Wives the people involved will apply exactly the same amount of zeal.
I suppose we will be grateful, if that happens, that something may happen about bike thieves. Thick winter socks might be government provided?
Surveyors already put so many exclusions in their T&Cs that they are almost worthless.
The only winner here is insurers as everyone will need to insure themselves to the hilt and in any event I doubt these surveys will cost as little as £1,000. The RICS surveyors will have a monopoly.
Overall, I'd expect it to move the market to a more socially optimal outcome in terms of tenure proportions. Haven't fully thought it through but it's at least interesting.
I can hardly stand the sight of Mahmood and Starmer.
If Zack's a dreamer at least he's an eloquent one. Don't you just long for your party to do the right thing? After calling Farage the racist he is and announcing support for a Palestinian State I was optimistic and then up pops Mahmood and the realisation hits...... his heart is ACTUALLY in the wrong place.
Bet Toluene/Benzene combinations are in fashion.
My daughters survey cost £520 for a £300,000 home
Yes, she legally is (now) but she's also really not.
(I once had a er, 'robust' discussion with a German statistician who insisted that non-respondents in a poll could be ignored because everybody had a phone. I hate it when dumb people have more money than me)
I had one tenant who let her dog piss all over the carpet, and had split ash all over it - despite it being a non-smoking property - and then acted with incredulity when I refused to let her have her deposit back.
I therefore started to dispose of the refuse I generated in the public litter bins, to avoid the indignity of her going through my rubbish. Technically this was illegal, because household waste should not be disposed of in public litter bins. This is one reason why many public litter bins are now designed with tiny openings that make them difficult to use (and impossible to put a bin bag into).
We have a collective problem with waste, and getting too much of it. The solutions we have chosen to apply are to make disposing of waste more difficult, but this tends to result in people finding other ways to dispose of their waste, which is why there is such a problem with fly-tipping.
It would be more effective to address the problem at source, and to create incentives that would reduce the quantity of waste generated.
Putting random fuel in most modern cars will likely screw the engine very quickly!
TBF our surgery is easy enough to get to see a nurse, or paramedic for things such as chest infections, with the proviso that you get to a GP if needed.
The one that annoys me more are articles referring to The King as “King Charles III”. Again, strictly correct but how many other King Charles’s are there around at the moment?
I don't doubt that there are people in Russia who are doing stupid things in response to their longer-lasting fuel crisis.
The trouble is LBTT is highly progressive - eye-watering rate on expensive properties. So persuading the SNP to drop it is going to difficult, particularly when freezing council tax is their favourite policy.
It was a litter bin, not a recycling container.
Reforming the regulation of waste collection looks like low-hanging fruit for Mr Starmer (though this is Wales so I assume it is devolved).
It could be unprivatised from the middlemen who fly tip by providing a better Council service.
As I recall after 9/11, Trump's response was to brag that after the collapse of the World Trade Centre he now has the tallest building in New York.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/darts/articles/ckgew816k67o
I bet the atmosphere will be electric!
Immigration needs to be slashed too, hence Reform growing in the polls with a policy to do that and deport illegals. Banks should lend no more than four times salary. Divorce should be discouraged and earlier marriage encouraged as well to reduce the number of homes needed for single people and the unmarried
Rural Russia is full of some very crazy people with a lot of free time and too much imagination.
NOT time.
"Fat belly, you require 3 triple bacardis."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqxXNZcIdwM
(Would this work in the USA with burgers, sponsored by Burger King?")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnj07mDP8y0
This was Fallon Sherrock becoming the first woman to throw a 9-darter on TV. Not exactly Ally Pally.
Tax cuts for Tory voters and potential Tory voters ie especially wealthy homeowners and their heirs is what Kemi has to do to get back in the game. Osborne knew how to get their votes, does she and Mel?
When selling my dad's house, I found the pack wqas sufficient to attract several offers above asking price (whjich was slightly below valuation) - the winner did ask for a further check of the roof but that was OK with us and didn't cause any issues.
So if your dog takes a dump on the pavement you should bag it, pick it up, and place it in the public bin. If your dog takes a dump at home you are supposed to put it in your own black bin and not the bin in the park over the road.
One would have thought cash strapped councils have better things to do with their time.
Now all they can do is charge you an increased level of rent right through.
The one thing you can rely on politicians listening to lobbyists to do is to fuck.up.the.lives.of.tenants.every.fucking.single.time .
We never rented out our house we owned as it was full of our stuff etc.
Since, I’m not, I see the determination to protest, right after the murders, as a poke in the eye.
Trump is senile, and confabulating.
(That's if confabulating is the right word for mixing up a very old lie you used to tell with stuff that's going on now.)
She was referred to as Queen Consort for first few months as it’s official styling until the coronation and I agree she should be referred to as Queen Camilla not “the queen” as “The Queen” will always be Elizabeth II to anyone alive for her reign but to refer to her as Queen Consort seems like a bit of a dig and an attempt to lessen her.
Edit. And your Party was the Party of burgeoning welfare benefit payments particularly under your Superstar Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
In my experience, most delays are caused by mortgage lenders.
My daughter first property purchase this year had a dreadful survey and she withdrew because of it
The next buyer's approached my daughter through the agent to buy her report but she wisely refused
You do seem to be questioning an RICS report when there is no other option for a seller or buyer to find out the state of a property
Ashok Kumar | 🇵🇸
@broseph_stalin
·
8m
Since Trump told Israel to stop bombing Gaza two days ago, Israel has dropped 131 bombs on Gaza, killing 125 civilians.
https://x.com/broseph_stalin/status/1975167244851159450?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Obvs some I didn't know or couldn't tell so just said 'not known to me either way'.
It doesn't to the average, normal cautious buyer. What the normal buyer wants to minimise is twofold: she wants to minimise the chance of a practical disaster like the roof falling off, and she wants to minimise even more the chance of having to go to law, eg on the allegation of false seller information.
Avoiding litigation of any description is a very powerful force for most normal people.
Osborne sought to enrich pensioners, to the benefit of the Conservatives in the short term, but to the detriment of them, and the nation, in the longer term.
(C) Vic and Bob.
It does save on having to commission a survey for every house one is seriously interested as a buyer - it's a useful first filter.
Who is going to spend the £30-60k to do a decent deep renovation on an unsaleable house untouched for 30 years due to a single owner who died in situ, or empty for say 3 years, which requires at least 10 years to make a return, when it can be carpet-bagged after 2 years?
And that 30-60k would require very effective management of the project, as an experienced private renovator can get things done for at least 1/3 less by knowing good workmen, and doing the stuff that needs doing not the expensive fluff.
Deep renovators are rare amongst house buyers, especially FTBs. They have no nouse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTRntQUhipc
"Seven Men - Quentin Crisp (1970) [full World in Action programme]"
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25519578.murdo-fraser-calls-no-buddhists-rangers/
(The last manager was a vegan follower of the Eightfold Path. But even so that seems harsh.)
If you're renovating a house that you can't sell at a profit then it's an inefficient use of resources.