Back in June, right after my first year of exams for my masters, we started looking at flats for sale. Since I came back from Madagascar in April, we had been living in a pretty small flat with a friend from university. She was very gracious to let me move in unexpectedly, but I think we were all looking forward to having a bit more space and being able to live alone with our partners. We saw five or six properties, but from the time I saw our flat listed, I knew it was the one. We rushed out to see it, and on the drive home put in an offer. It was exciting! It was terrifying! Would they accept?? Was it a mistake? Buying property is a huge and scary financial commitment! The next day we were asked to up it a bit, and then it was official! We were in the process of buying a flat!
What I quickly learned is that buying in the UK is very different from the US in a few ways. Mainly, there is nothing quick about it. We were in a bit of a race to close before Gareth officially inherited his mom’s house, because here you pay something called stamp duty, which is a tax on all property bought. It goes up based on the cost of the property and it goes up significantly if it’s a second property.
Another big difference is that being under offer is not binding. Either side can pull out at any moment and there’s no consequence. In the US, being under offer is a bit of a reassurance – it’s unlikely it will fall through and you can feel okay about spending time and money on a solicitor to handle the purchase, do the inspection, etc. Here, someone could come in at any point in the process and put in an offer above yours – this is called “gazumping” and is really common. Our offer was contingent on the flat being removed from all the websites.
The last major difference is that here you buy property in a “chain.” In the US, you buy a property and sell your property independent of each other. Here, we weren’t selling, but our sellers were buying a new place, putting us in a chain of three. Us, our sellers, and their sellers. We all had to exchange contracts on the same day. So though our sale was ready to go through, we had another week of delay because there was a problem with the sale between our sellers and their new property.
On average the whole process takes about four months, and the fact that anyone can pull out at any time, someone could be gazumped, or an issue further down the chain could disrupt the entire process means that about one in three sales falls through in the UK.
Knowing this made it so. hard. to. wait. We really wanted this place, and after a few months we definitely didn’t want to have to start over or to have to pay for any of the many costs that go into buying a place again.
Luckily, we came in right at the average! It took us about four months, and we closed November 4th.
