Oh the disappointment - the problem with selling houses in the UK and my experience with Strike

The way we sell houses has changed over the years, with some improvements. But I think we are still at a point where other improvements should be made. I was going to write this post once we had sold our property and were ready to move, to fill that gap when we were relocating .....but, oh how things change.

The sale of my house fell through this week. 15 weeks of pushing and answering questions for nothing. I had thought it would be happening in the next week or two and it would be Barbados here we come! As you can imagine, I'm feeling rather disappointed. We wanted to be in Barbados by this month and now we have to start the whole process again.

Selling in the UK

With the changes to estate agents in recent years, and having fully online agents, the process of selling has become cheaper. Purple bricks were the first company that I become aware of that was doing something different, and I remember thinking how revolutionary they were. They have local agents, but no bricks and mortar shops, so they could charge greatly reduced fees. I expected more companies to follow their example, but I didn't really hear of any more until I wanted to sell my property.

When it was time to sell my property I researched how much it would be to sell through Purple Bricks, and it was nearly £1000. A friend of a friend then told me about a company called Strike, that will act as your agent for free. There has to be a catch I thought. I headed to their website to begin the process of finding it.

My first thought was maybe you have to do everything yourself. The website shows what they provide as part of their free service, and then shows what you can pay for in addition to this if you want to. The items below are all part of the free service:

• Valuation

• Photos and floorplans for your eye-catching add

• Get on the market in 24h

• Adverts on Rightmove, Zoopla and other sites

• Seamless approval of your advert in the Strike app

• Dedicated team help from the negotiations through to the completion

• Always available to keep you updated.

This looked like a really good deal, and they would be a professional company to work with. I spoke to an agent to double-check some details, and decided to go for it.

On the next day, I had a call arranged to 'show' the house to the account manager. A quick tour via video call and a discussion of the house specifics, and we were nearly ready to go live. I had decided to take my own photos, to save some time, so they gave me some advice on how to get the best shots and they asked me to draw a simple floor plan which they would then make look professional for me. By the end of the next day the advert was live! At no point did I feel pressured into adding any of Strike's additional paid-for services, so all this was completely free.

The Strike app is great. You get all of your viewing requests through this and you can actually have direct contact with the potential buyers throughout the whole process. I found this especially useful when my sale started to stagnate. Sending a quick message to the buyer helped us to figure out what was delaying things. The app also has all the contact details for the person looking after you at each point in the sale. You are passed from person to person depending on where you are, but every person I dealt with has been helpful and knowledgeable. The sale didn't go through, so I'm back at the beginning of the process, but our Barbados dream will start as soon as possible.

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What do I think needs to be changed?

Deposits! Buyers of houses don't have to pay anything to secure the purchase. Can you think of any other large purchase that you don't have to pay a deposit on? Cars, furniture, holidays? On all of those you usually pay a deposit. Yet with a house, the buyer can pull out at any time without any financial implications. It just seems so wrong. Yes, the 'buyer' might have paid for their solicitor's time or searches, but the seller has fully committed to the sale and suddenly has to start all over again. The seller has most likely lined up somewhere to buy with a chain of other people involved, all of whom lose out when your buyer decides not to buy. Many other countries have a deposit system, where the deposit amount is forfeited to the seller if you back out after a set cooling-off period. This would ensure the buyer has everything in place before putting in an offer. As a double fail-safe, some countries will also penalise a seller for withdrawing from a sale, making them pay back double the deposit to the buyer. These buyer and seller deposit amounts focus both sides entering into a property transaction, and it really does stop any flaky behaviour. For someone to decide not to buy your property after 15 weeks, with no repercussions just feels wrong. In my opinion, a change is long overdue. If anyone reading this knows anyone in the government, please have a word, would you?

Searches! I think these should be done by the seller upfront. This shows that they are committed to the sale in the same way a deposit does for the buyer. Currently, it can be weeks or even a couple of months for searches to come back. If they were done up front, with an easy option to update if the sale goes beyond a certain number of months, the process would be a lot shorter, helping both sides.

Solicitors! I have an absolute star of a conveyancing solicitor! She knows each of her cases inside out, and if she has a day off, I know someone in the office will also have knowledge of where I am in the process and will be able to help until she is back in. Some other conveyancing solicitors are not so good though. I have had weeks of waiting in the failed sale, due to the other side's solicitors not communicating or being off without any cover. The other side's solicitor had 2 unplanned time off periods during which nothing happened, as apparently nobody else in their office could take over the case. There was at least a 6 weeks delay in my 15-week 'sale' because of this. What The Floof?!?! Had it not been for these delays the sale could have already gone through a few weeks ago, or in the worst-case scenario, which is now my reality, I would have been able to restart the sale some 2 months ago.

These are just my thoughts. What do you think of the whole buying and selling process in the UK? I'd love to hear your comments.

Stay tuned. We will get to Barbados for our new life as soon as possible. I always believe in making the best of any situation, even one as annoying as this one! I can't change the past, I can only shape the future. Things happen, some good, some bad....because that's life. I could scream and cry about it, or I can use it as an opportunity for new adventures. On that note, we just might have a short adventure somewhere else in the not-too-distant future, to keep us going. Keep your eyes peeled for more details.....