Why are English estate agents, surveyors and solicitors such useless, greedy, lying scum?

In England

When I returned to the UK about 10 years ago, I bought a home. Immediately after the purchase, I found that the surveyor, who was supposed to be working for me, had deliberately covered up some faults with the property. I threatened to sue him and he quickly handed over £2,500. Moreover, the conveyancing solicitors, who were supposed to be working for me, also tried a few tricks to make sure I bought the property. I did sue them and they gave me around £4,500 and another £10,000 to the ‘no win no fee’ lawyer I used to go after them.

I suppose the problem is that in any town or area of a city, all the estate agents, surveyors and conveyancing solicitors know each other, have worked together on many property sales and so are more interested in colluding to ensure properties are sold than in actually representing the interests of those who pay them.

I am/was in the process of buying a new house. Except that I have to pull out. The estate agent and the vendor’s solicitors have tried to hide from me the fact that the house has a ‘pre-emption certificate’ on it. A ‘pre-emption certificate’ gives the estate company, which formerly owned much of the land around here two things. Firstly, it gives the estate company an option to buy the property at ‘market value’ should it ever be put on sale. That means that the property doesn’t have ‘clear title’ and makes it very difficult for any potential buyer to obtain a mortgage.

However, the option to buy isn’t the real deal breaker. Also within the ‘pre-emption certificate’ is an ‘option period’. This gives the estate company the right to buy the property at market value any time between 1 September 2029 and 28 February 2030. This means that anyone buying the house can be thrown out after living there for just thirteen years. Nobody in their right mind is going to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy a house they can only live in for thirteen years. The house is virtually unsaleable.

So, it’s not surprising that the estate agents selling the house and the solicitors working for the vendor tried to conceal the existence of the ‘pre-emption certificate’ from me as long as they could. Liars, thieves and crooks!

The English way of selling homes is hugely biased against purchasers and open to corruption and fraud by estate agents, surveyors and solicitors. As about one in five home sales falls through, the English system also creates lots of well-paid work for surveyors and solicitors at the expense of purchasers.

In Denmark

Let me explain how home sales are done in Denmark:

Firstly, in Denmark the seller commissions a survey which is provided to all potential purchasers. So you don’t have several potential purchasers all having to commission a survey. This hugely simplifies the sales process.

Now you might think that a survey commissioned by the seller would be biased in favour of the seller. But the Danish system has a way of avoiding this. When a home is sold, the seller and buyer share the cost of an “ejerskifteforsikring” – that’s an insurance policy that insures both seller and buyer for any faults with the property not identified by the survey. So, if a surveyor was biased in favour of the seller and hid faults, insurance companies would soon find that claims were being made on properties surveyed by that surveyor and refuse to insure properties surveyed by that surveyor. This keeps surveyors honest as biased surveys would soon lead to them losing their jobs.

Conclusion

The clarity and checks and balances in the Danish system for selling homes shows how the English system of selling homes is just one more example of how those in power have rigged things to their benefit and against the interests of ordinary people.

And if you’re wondering why the much simpler and clearer Danish system isn’t adopted in England – well it would mean an awful lot less well-paid work for English surveyors and solicitors. So the surveyors’ and solicitors’ professional bodies would never agree to a simplification of the English system of home purchasing.

As far as I can see, most English estate agents, surveyors and conveyancing solicitors are lying, greedy, thieving scum!