Sealed bids for Englands property market?

Posted: 22/07/2014

The current procedure when purchasing a property in Scotland contains a sealed bid process which helps stop gazumping in the property market.  The people at www.purplebricks.com asked their website visitors if that had been gazumped in the past when purchasing a property and a huge 57% of them answered yes.

The question the Independent have asked is should England introduce a sealed bidding process to the property market to try and banish gazumping all together? Those who took part in the survey agreed that they are now nervous about making offers on properties and believe it would be a good idea to introduce something like the system that Scotland currently have in place.

Some of the suggestions made by those who commented on the survey included fixed fines or penalties for those estate agents who encourage gazumping because of the surging demand for property and a 55% of people who took part in the survey agreed with the above idea.

It looks as though the property market isn’t going to cool down any time soon because according to Zoopla, the average British property rose in vale by £90 per day during the first six months of 2014! This puts the figure for the average house at £260,488 compared to January’s figure which was £16,265 less. The region which experienced the largest property price rise was London at 8.2% but that is no surprise however, every region of the country experienced a positive increase in property prices including Wales and Scotland whose property prices rose 3.5% and 1.1%.

Would you believe that the town which had the fastest house price growth is Salford in Greater Manchester whose property prices jumped up a massive 12% equating to £14,874? This makes the average house price in Salford an impressive £138,619.

According to the CEO at Purplebricks, gazumping - “used to be a prevalent issue for sought after locations in London but now, everyone is susceptible to it.” Would you like a sealed bid process introduced to England’s property market? What do you think the advantages and disadvantages would be for the buyer and seller of the property in question?

Amanda McGovern, Pali Ltd
www.paliltd.com

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