Selling a house in England is one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had.
Not because houses are complicated.
Because we’ve built a system that seems optimised for everyone except the people trying to buy and sell one.
I’ve now had two sales collapse in the space of a few months.
Both frustrating.
Both avoidable.
Both leaving me wondering whether we’ve solved entirely the wrong problem.
Our sale
We’re selling our main house and retaining two other properties on the same site.
Before anyone made an offer, we explained there were a few shared services.
A shared septic tank, which is fairly common in Cornwall.
A shared water supply, which we’d already committed to separating by installing a borehole.
A small electrical supply feeding the annex that we planned to retain. We’d install a sub-meter, generate monthly bills automatically, collect payment by Direct Debit and, importantly, the new owners would have complete control of the incoming supply.
Don’t pay?
Turn the switch off.
Simple.
None of this was hidden.
It was discussed before an offer was made.
The buyers proceeded anyway.
Then everything stopped.
Our solicitor received enquiries in May.
I didn’t receive them until July.
Two months.
Nothing happened.
During those two months the buyers became increasingly nervous.
Perhaps we’d have ended up in exactly the same place.
Perhaps not.
But if those enquiries had reached me in May instead of July, we’d have had two extra months to resolve the issues or put the property back on the market.
Instead everyone simply waited.
The electric supply became the issue.
The buyers decided they didn’t want the arrangement.
Fair enough.
People have different risk tolerances.
But they never made their offer conditional on every service being separated.
That only became a problem months later.
Eventually I even agreed to remove the shared electrical supply completely.
It wasn’t my preferred solution.
It would probably cost me around £10,000 and involve installing an off-grid system or a completely new connection.
Ironically, installing a new grid connection would probably require digging up the buyers’ newly purchased garden.
The very thing everyone was trying to avoid.
By then it was too late.
The sale had already collapsed.
The proposal that surprised me most
The buyers’ solicitor suggested retaining £65,000 after completion.
The idea was that if I didn’t complete the works quickly enough, they could use the money themselves.
I couldn’t agree to that.
Not because I wasn’t committed to the work.
Because I wasn’t prepared to leave £65,000 sitting in someone else’s client account against something we’d already been completely transparent about.
What struck me wasn’t the proposal itself.
It was what it revealed.
The discussion was no longer about solving the practical problem.
It had become entirely about allocating risk.
That seems to describe modern conveyancing.
Every question is designed to eliminate another tiny possibility.
Do you have this certificate?
Do you have that approval?
Where are the building regulations?
Has this right been documented?
Most of the time the answers already exist.
Or they’re solved with indemnity insurance.
Mining rights.
Missing planning paperwork.
Historic alterations.
Missing certificates.
Insurance has quietly become the answer to many of these problems already.
So why isn’t it the answer to more of them?
It feels like we’ve optimised the wrong thing.
The purpose of conveyancing should be simple.
Transfer ownership safely.
Instead, the process seems increasingly designed to eliminate every conceivable future dispute before anyone moves house.
Those aren’t the same objective.
Estate agents only get paid if the sale completes.
Solicitors are understandably trying to protect themselves from future liability.
Surveyors protect themselves.
Lenders protect themselves.
Everyone is protecting themselves.
Who, exactly, is optimising for getting people moved?
I wonder if there’s a simpler model.
Imagine buying a house with a standard contract.
Standard covenants.
Known searches.
Then a comprehensive insurance policy that covers the unknowns arising from the seller’s ownership.
Instead of months of negotiation over missing paperwork, unusual arrangements and hypothetical future risks, those risks are simply priced and transferred.
The buyer gets certainty.
The seller gets certainty.
The insurer assesses the risk.
The lawyers focus on transferring ownership rather than endlessly negotiating edge cases.
Would it work?
I honestly don’t know.
There are plenty of legal and regulatory questions.
But after watching two perfectly good sales fall apart over problems that could have been managed rather than endlessly debated, I can’t help wondering whether we’re trying to solve the wrong problem.
Sometimes the quickest way to improve a process isn’t making it more thorough.
It’s asking whether the thing you’ve been optimising was ever the right objective in the first place.