In This Guide
choosing an agent
Conveyancing
Holding viewings
Negotiation
Planning your sale
Prepare your home
Seller's Packs
1. A brief history
2. What they will contain
3. Key benefits
4. What the critics say
5. Winners and losers
Selling at auction
Selling in Scotland
Selling privately
Selling your home
Using estate agents
Seller's Packs
Winners and losers
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There are winners and losers in most things in life. The seller's pack introduction will also impact different social groups in a variety of ways:
First time buyers will do particularly well out of the introduction
of the packs. The costs of buying a house will be reduced by hundreds
of pounds, as the seller foots the bill for the survey or conditional
report and local searches. When taken in conjunction with increased
efficiency in land registry processes and e-conveyancing, the
costs of other aspects of the purchase should also end up falling.
However, most buyers are also selling their home, so they will only see the benefits of efficiency-led cost savings.
Sellers will have to take on a large amount of extra work that
will only add to the hassle of selling your home. However, this
is work that many of them would have had to carry out when buying
a home, so again, they should enjoy a net benefit as a result
of the procedural and process improvements.
For both buyers and sellers, the effects will largely be dependent on just how successful the packs are at reducing the time taken to carry out the sale and at reducing the risks of gazumping and gazundering.
The effect of seller's packs on small and independent estate agents
could be devastating. While the bank-owned and insurance backed
agencies will be able to cover the costs of surveys and may eventually
end up offering the packs for free, this will simply not be a
viable option for many. The precedent has already been set by
the increasing number of lenders offering to meet the costs of
a survey and provide a contribution towards legal expenses.
Consumers will be no doubt be more than ready to take up the offer of free packs, increasing the market share of the well backed agents and starving many independent agencies in the process. This could eventually force many of them out of business.
A side effect of the seller's pack will be the massive increase
in demand for conditional reports. Those surveyors that can meet
this demand will see a surge in business and should enjoy a period
of unprecedented growth.
However, the UK is experiencing a shortage of qualified surveyors, which is a situation unlikely to be alleviated by thousands more requests for work each year.
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