We've mentioned before that the process of buying and selling a house in Scotland is slightly different to England. For most houses the parties agree a purchase process based on 'offers over' in a sort of sealed bid, time bound way. Another key difference is the 'Home Buyer's Report' which in England we would call the 'Surveyors Report'. Our experience in England is that you put an offer in on a house, then it is accepted, then the real process starts including the buyer commissioning a survey to ensure that:
1 - they know what they are buying
2 - can start a mortgage process
In Scotland it's different. If you are selling a house, then you have to provide a Home Buyer's Report from a registered independant surveyor. This has to be made available for all prospective buyers and, most importantly, the report is not done by the sellers Estate Agent (ie it has integrity). Theoretically it should make the whole selling process quicker from start to finish, and more cost effective because only one report has to be commissioned per sale. It also means that buyers can see what they are getting in to before viewing and potentially wasting a lot of time and emotion.
Structural survey
In the report each aspect of the house is evaluated on a scale of 1-3. A real example of how useful we found this was we found out one particular property (a lovely chocolate box cottage by the side of the loch) was in need of a new roof because it had dry rot. Saved everyone a whole load of time, effort and money. Or, if we had pursued it, we would have known what we were getting into before even viewing.
Another useful part of the survey is the energy rating certificate. Now, John's a little skeptical on this one but it's not a bad input - particularly as energy prices keep going up. John's scepticism is based on the fact that realistically the survey has taken about an hour, so although they may point out that increasing loft insulation may cost £x and save £y, the surveyor has not necessarily spotted obvious issues like a 2 inch gap under the front door that means you could spend £5.50 and save that back in a week.
The survey helpful makes recommendations on what work to carry out to improve the energy and CO2 ratings of the house, and how much you could save per year in doing so. This is a great way to get an idea for the costs involved in hoe improvements on this front and whether it is something you have the skills to do, or at least where to focus your efforts.
The report also includes a mortgage valuation section. Now, we're not quite sure how impartial this is. How does the surveyor know the market value of the property (surely that's treading into estate agency territory)? However, maybe there's a good tension in there to hold back over enthusiastic estate agents overvaluing properties (at the end of the day, the estate agent is acting on behalf of the seller and therefore more likely to overvalue than undervalue).
Again this should speed the next steps of the process up as the mortgage valuation is recognised by mortgage lenders, so no mortgage survey process should be required. Now, caveat - that's the theory. We didn't test it in reality as we haven't bought a property using it as security for a mortgage!
The last section of the report gives some good insights in the form of a seller questionnaire. It covers all sorts of things such as asking if they have they done any work on the property during their ownership, like major structural changes, new windows etc, whether anyone has right of access across your land, whether you have any obligation to put funds into things such as shared road maintenance, and notices that affect the property such as nearby planning permissions. This avoids further downstream checks, and puts your mind at ease over some important questions.
So in summary - things are slightly different in Scotland but actually on balance (like some other things we keep stumbling upon) they make better sense, in our opinion, than the way we do things in England. Your solicitor will of course check all land registration etc, but the burden is far more on the seller than the buyer to pull all of this together.
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