END OF GAZUMPING?
If we all followed Scotland’s lead, buying and selling would be a breeze
For a nation obsessed with properties — finding our dream homes, doing them up, boasting about what they are worth — we are spectacularly incompetent when it comes to moving house.
About 18 per cent of British house sales, amounting to some 200,000 transactions, collapse every year. The buyer makes an offer. The seller accepts it. Then everything starts to go pear- shaped. Million-pound property deals vanish into thin air. If we were as cavalier when it came to trading stocks and shares, the country would be bankrupt.
The all-too-familiar practice of gazumping — a word that first surfaced in the Seventies — has bedevilled an entire industry. A makes an offer, which is accepted, then B comes in with a higher offer and gazumps A. It happens all over the country.
At times of runaway property prices, gazumping in Britain reached near- epidemic proportions. Even now the market is comparatively stable, people still gazump others with such depressing regularity that the department of Business, Innovation & Skills is considering outlawing the practice.
officials have privately met senior figures in the National Association of Estate Agents with a view to seeing whether best practice in Scotland — where gazumping is virtually unknown — can be introduced in England and Wales.
No doubt the department will also want to address the related problem of gazundering — where buyers make an offer, have it accepted, then reduce their offer. The term may have entered the language later, but gazundering is now, if anything, more common than gazumping.
Say someone offers £380,000 for a country cottage. The vendor accepts. Then the buyer has a survey done, realises that minor building works are necessary, and reduces the offer accordingly.
The vendor agrees to sell at the lower price — or puts the cottage back on the market. Madness. The root cause of the gazumping/gazundering problem is the same. Buyers are not legally obliged to put down even a small deposit when they put in an offer.
A deposit becomes payable only at the time of exchange of contracts, which can take place months later — particularly if the solicitors doing the conveyancing work at a leisurely tempo.
In Scotland, as in many European countries, the onus is on vendors: they need to have preliminary surveys and other paperwork done before they put a property on the market. That way, a legally binding ‘ missive’, equivalent to the exchange of contracts, can be signed shortly after a price has been agreed.
In England and Wales, even after a price has been agreed, buyers effectively have carte blanche to lower their bids and vendors can find alternative buyers. And the resulting uncertainty adds yet more emotional stress to what is already a stress-riddled process.
‘We had a case of gazumping and gazundering on the same property within a week,’ says richard Banes-Walker, of Strutt & Parker in Farnham, Surrey. ‘The vendor had offered the property to one buyer, then found a second buyer who was prepared to pay more — but who then lowered her offer because she thought she was paying £10,000 too much. Back to square one!’
With good will on both sides in expediting paperwork, contracts can be exchanged within a matter of days — and sometimes are. But progress is normally sluggish, as generations of frustrated property-buyers and sellers can testify.
‘The estate agents get the blame, but the main sources of delays in completing property purchases are solicitors, surveyors and mortgage companies,’ says Stuart Miller, of Jackson-Stops & Staff. ‘Even when people are keen to move quickly, the process gets hamstrung by interminable red tape.’
There are certainly plenty of estate agents who would welcome a more streamlined process.
‘our system for buying and selling property dates back to the 1920s and has not been updated for nearly a century,’ says Mark Hayward, managing director of the National Association of Estate Agents. ‘It is archaic.’
Cameron Ewer, of Strutt & Parker, Cambridge, who has worked for estate agents north and south of the border, believes that the Scottish system is far superior.
‘It is simpler. There are fewer grey areas. And it keeps people honest. It discourages buyers from putting in wildly inflated offers to clinch a deal, then dropping them later.’
The English language would be poorer if gazumping and gazundering disappeared — they are two of the most colourful words in the dictionary. But, perhaps, the time has finally come to conduct property transactions in a more business-like way. We need, as it were, to unleash our inner Scots.
THE next time you walk into your local pub, treat yourself to lunch in Harrods Food Hall or ride the london Tube, stop to take in the tiling. What a selection! Tiles have been around for more than 25,000 years and are still going strong. It helps that they are easy to clean.
‘Tiles are the simplest form of ceramic art. The earliest known examples are Egyptian and from 4,000 BC,’ says Jamie robb, of Marlborough Tiles.
‘Tiles were used as decorative pieces for cladding buildings and inside to keep interiors cool.’ during the Victorian era, they were produced en masse and used in public buildings, churches, shops and houses.
In the mid-18th century, hand-painted glazed tiles from Holland flooded into Britain, which led to the porcelain manufacturer Herbert Minton reviving encaustic tile making.
This is the process where a plain clay tile is infused with liquid clay in a different colour to make a pattern.
‘In the Victorian era, geometric tiles were popularly used in the hallways of middle-class homes,’ says Emma Page, of The Victorian Emporium, a company that restores period properties. ‘Cheaper tiles tended to be installed in the less grand areas, such as kitchens and servant’s quarters
‘Expensive, decorative tiles were more commonly used in fireplaces in the main reception rooms.’
Claire o’Brien, head of design at British Ceramic Tile, says: ‘ The historical Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton has a great display of William de Morgan tiles while another architectural spectacle is the Grade II-listed Albert Hall in Manchester.’
Here are some of the hottest trends:
PICK A PATTERN
Bold, patterned tile designs for floors and walls are the perfect pick-me-up for neutral but dull kitchens and bathrooms.
Ca’Pietra and Bisazza — Moorish-inspired encaustic tiles from Fired Earth — add punchy print and colour.
In crisp monochrome or rich colours, they have a holiday feel and when used in larger formats (such as 100cm x 100cm modern industrial porcelain tiles, £95 per sqm, alhambra home.co.uk) can offer an alternative to carpet. Tweed, tartan and dogtooth ‘fabric’ patterns, and graphic, hexagonal prints create mesmerising optical illusions.
‘Geometric patterns can work brilliantly in modern bathrooms,’ says Caroline Gow, of Fired Earth. ‘They are the perfect backdrop to angular wash hand basins and linear cabinetry.’
GO METALLIC
WARM metals such as rosy copper, burnished gold and bronze are popular.
dip your toe in the trend with a band of iridescent glass mosaics behind a basin or revamp a bath panel — a more budgetfriendly trick than covering entire walls.
Embrace metallics with golden tapestry-effect tiles or Porcelanosa’s Metal Bronze 3- d cubes (£ 345 per sq m, porcelanosa.com), which add texture.
DITCH WHITE
THE days of plain, white tiles could be on the wane as deep, dark ceramics in rich, inky hues and moody charcoal take over. ‘The effect can be elegant, sophisticated and e exciting,’ says Karen B Brimacombe, of reed Harris. ‘Glossy, black subway tiles create a premium look at an af affordable price.’
TRY TEXTURES
BUT if it has to be wh white, liven things up wi with textured designs. Sc Sculptural ceramic cu curves, spectacular 3-d ge geometric shapes and tac tactile domes throw it intriguing shadows. Try the Wow Wave from Stone & Ceramic Warehouse (£180 per sq m, sacw.co.uk) and Ted Baker’s Tactile (£35 per sq m, british ceramictile.com).
LOOKALIKES
NATURAL wood and real stone are classics, but not great in kitchens and bathrooms. But, thanks to digital printing techniques, manufacturers can transfer stone and wood designs to porcelain and ceramic.
Not only are they thinner and lighter than the real thing, they are cheaper and offer the same look as oak or marble, but won’t rot or fade and are easy to clean.
Choose from faux timbers which look exposed and stripped, polished concrete, plaster, industrial brick and chevron designs.