Gazump

So, we're looking at buying property in the old country. It has been an entirely eye-opening experience, leaving both Ange and I with the distinct wonder at how a house transaction ever takes place. It is certainly a case of us not knowing the system and comparing it unfairly to what we know. Nevertheless, as objectively as I can make things out, it is less efficient in the UK than in Canada.

My friend Andrew reminded me that becoming a land-over over here has a history of entitlement. I figure you're owed a certain degree of smugness for navigating the process even if you don't get the throngs of people in servitude, special voting rights, and the ability to collect taxes and hire knights to do your bidding.

Land-ownding status aside, lets take a quick walk through the process. First, do we qualify for a mortgage? It turns out we do. In fact, the banks are eager to lend us proportionally more than the Canadian banks. Not bad for being here 6 months. I suspect that must get loads of people into some real trouble. For us, we were just happy that we had the prospect of not thowing away a fortune each month in rent.

Then you find a house. They have a national website which is very good. So, you put in your maximum amount and away you go, sorting by either ascending or descending price order. I started with the lowest price at the beginning but it quickly became apparent why the lowest priced properties were the lowest prices. Now I just start with the most we can afford. This is because all sorts of things came to light that just don't register when you're searching for a house in Calgary.

In a random order of oddities, we have seen houses with wallpaper that had been painted over many times, houses with clear holes in the roof, houses with air raid shelters (I kind of liked that feature despite its questionable usefulness today), houses with no central heating, houses with 50 year old carpets, houses with no showers (only baths), houses with out-buildings to store your coal (if you don't have coal? It's a very sooty place to store your bicycle), houses with no place to park within 500m, and houses with known structural problems that you could get a 'deal' on.

Then the issue of school catchment came up. What? There is a particularly good school in Caversham and you pay a premium to buy a piece of property in the catchment of that school. One street over, pay less and send your kid to... private school?

As if negotiating all these things as a newbie didn't have its pitfalls, there is nothing binding about either putting in an offer or accepting an offer. So, even though we have made an offer on a house, they can refrain from really feeding anything back. A state of limbo develops and... you put in an offer on another house. The same thing happens. And, before you know it, you have 5 non-binding offers on 5 different houses. Should one of them accept, they might then change their mind. And they might change their mind 3 months down the road. Or, if they're in what is called "an onward chain" and something goes wrong with a sale of a house some five people down the chain... too bad, your deal is off.

This all drags out the process horribly. And because of this process that takes so long, all you have is a non-binding, gentlemanly agreement to spend a not-so-small fortune on a run down 125 year old house while the housing prices go up and up. So, if the seller is cheeky and a bit unethical, he might take an offer from someone else for more money down the road and you're "Gazumped". Its a funny word. But, I think a painful one to experience. I hope never to experience it. If I do, I will call the person gazumping me all sort of nasty things and publish their name on this blog for you to write him/her and do the same.

So, where does this all leave us? I'm not entirely sure to be honest. We might be buying a house tomorrow. We might not. We might see if there is a record for outstanding offers on houses in the Guinness Book and go for that claim-to-fame. We have put a time limit on our little experiment. If we're not moving in by Christmas, we will shake our fists and shout with indignance. And probably complain on this blog. And then continue to pay rent, somewhat comforted by the fact it might actually be harder to sell than to buy over here.