Neighbourly disputes – what you need to tell buyers

Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours. Sadly, that isn’t always the case. 

And when it comes to selling your home it is your duty to inform would-be buyers of any neighbourly disputes that have involved official bodies. If you don’t, you leave yourself open to being sued years down the line. 

The guidelines on what you have to declare to prospective property buyers are a little bit murky,  but we will do our best to shine a light on what you should and shouldn’t be doing.

There have been examples in the past where buyers of a home have sued the previous owners for not warning them about especially awful neighbours. 

With this in mind, it’s wise to be aware of the law and what your obligations are. 

Firstly, if you have been unfortunate enough to have had an actual dispute with a problem neighbour, you will have to make reference to this on the form your solicitor sends you – known as a Seller’s Property Information Form (SPIF). 

It is left open to interpretation as to what counts as a dispute and what doesn’t. However, generally speaking, if you’ve contacted your neighbour in writing, or made a complaint to the council or another authority regarding their conduct, you will have to declare this.

The most common types of disputes that would need to be declared on the SPIF are anything that involves shared house maintenance (this is usually to do with repairs to shared facilities like drains or gutters) or boundary disputes (disputes involving land or fence/hedges).

It’s also important to remember that action can be taken by buyers for years after the sale of your property has gone through. 

So, even once you’ve moved out, the problem could come back to bite you if you’re not upfront and honest with buyers from the start.

On the other side of the coin, there are issues that you needn’t mention. For instance, you might have a neighbour who was once a regular holder of noisy, raucous parties, but this is now no longer a problem. 

In this case your buyer would not need to be informed. Similarly, if an issue has been dealt with amicably between you and your neighbour, there is no need to mention this to prospective buyers. 

Other issues such as noise, children and pets tend to be very subjective – so, just because you’ve been driven crazy by the neighbour’s dog barking, doesn’t mean your buyers (who may have pets themselves) will think the same. In other words, you are under no obligation to inform would-be buyers of things like this. 

It’s best to check with your solicitor or estate agent if you are unsure about any of this, what constitutes a dispute and what, if anything, you need to declare. 

The SPIF is a legal part of the contract between you and your buyer, so it’s important to get this right to prevent any issues occurring at a later date. 

Neighbourly disputes, when they do occur, can be very colourful and newsworthy – as we saw with Channel 4’s Posh Neighbours at War, which was screened on Monday 3rd May.  

Many people will have heard of the story of the wonderfully named Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring, the eccentric property developer who painted her plush Kensington home in red and white stripes just to irritate her neighbours that objected to her planning applications.

The dispute with her neighbours, who have labelled the property as an eyesore, has gone back and forth to the high court and magistrates’ court several times with still no end in sight.

Super-rich neighbours are also increasingly at war over new basements being dug, as well as things such as noisy-leaf blowing and even an opera festival being staged! 

The likelihood of disputes with neighbours remains very low, and it’s very unlikely that you’ll be taking anyone to court over a stripy coloured home, but if any issues do arise it’s vital that you go through the proper channels and declare it to the buyers of your property. 

It could cost you must more in the long-term if you don’t.

 

Your job and home affordability

 If you're looking to own a home, you need to know for sure that you can afford the mortgage repayments each month. 

It's why people need to know beforehand how much they could borrow – dependent on income – and how much mortgage repayments will be on different types/sizes of mortgages.

Put simply, the job you have is likely to decide the type of home you can afford. 

To this end, here at reallymoving we've looked at what percentage of homes people can afford by job and location. 

By analysing UK salaries and property prices, we have calculated what proportion of homes people in certain jobs could afford, broken down by city.

In order to create our 'home and mortgage affordability' charts, we combined data from three sources (ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, Land Registry Paid Price Data and reallymoving.com data and analysis) to produce a simple illustration of homes in selected major UK cities that people working full time in 12 popular jobs could afford.

The major cities we focused on were Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, London, Manchester and Glasgow, to ensure that we got as great a sweep of the UK as possible. 

The 12 occupations we focused on were chief executive, doctor, train driver, police officer, teacher, social worker, nurse, bricklayer, car mechanic, taxi driver, sales assistant and bar employee. 

We worked on the assumption that people have a deposit equal to six months gross salary, and a mortgage of 4.5 times gross salary. 

Incomes, meanwhile, were based on median average full-time salaries for each job and location.

The findings are very revealing... 

London

In the capital, for example, chief executives would be able to afford 80% of the homes on offer, with doctors not far behind on 61%. 

After this, though, the prospects of affordability for the other occupations are much, much bleaker. 

Train drivers would be able to afford 25% of the homes in the capital, while for police officers and teachers it's 14% and 13% respectively. 

This falls even further for the remaining occupations: social workers (6%), nurses (7%), bricklayers (3%), car mechanics (2%), taxi drivers (2%), sales assistants (1%) and bar staff (1%). 
 
Unsurprisingly, the more well-off you are, the greater your chances of buying a home in London. For those in middle-income or lower-paid jobs, the task is almost impossible.    

Manchester

Manchester is much more affordable for all occupations, with chief executives (97%), doctors (96%), train drivers (87%) and police officers (76%) all finding affordable housing easy to come by. 

The percentage of properties that teachers (73%), social workers (64%) and nurses (57%) could afford is also much, much higher, although lower-paid positions such as sales assistants (14%) and bar workers still struggle (4%).

Glasgow

In Scotland, Glasgow proves affordable for nearly all of the occupations we looked at. 

Taxi drivers could afford 54% of home on offer, rising to 62% for bricklayers and 65% for car mechanics. 

CEOs, doctors and train drivers could afford more than 90% of homes, police officers and teachers more than 80% and social workers and nurses more than 70%. 

Sales assistants and bar staff also have a better chance, up to 21% and 14% respectively. 

Cardiff

The Welsh capital, on the other hand, is more evenly split, with the better paying professions being able to afford a far greater percentage of homes than the lesser-paid ones. 

CEOs, doctors and train drivers again fare very well, as do police officers, teachers and social workers (to a lesser extent). 

However, nurses, bricklayers, car mechanics and taxi drivers are left lagging behind somewhat, while the affordability prospects for sales assistants and bar staff are poor (13% and 9% respectively).    

Birmingham

The UK's second city – which, like Manchester, is seen as far more affordable than London – is also quite top heavy. 

CEOs, doctors and train drivers in Birmingham could all afford a high percentage of homes, while police officers (68%) and teachers (60%) don't fare too badly. 

All of the other occupations are below 50%, with bricklayers (26%), car mechanics (26%) and taxi drivers (23%) having very little wriggle room on affordability. The situation is even more bleak for sales assistants (4%) and bar staff (2%).

Belfast

Meanwhile, the picture looks rosier for nearly all occupations in Belfast, where the chances of nurses (65%) and social workers (63%) affording a home are good. 

The situation also isn't completely terrible for bricklayers and car mechanics (both 45%). Once again, the outlook for the five best-paid professions is excellent, while the two lowest-paid professions lag well behind. 

Looking at the results by profession, it's clear that chief executives – as you might expect – lead the way when it comes to the number of homes they can afford in each city. 

They scored 94% or more in every city other than London, and even in the capital CEOs have an 80% chance of affording a home. 

Doctors, another highly-paid profession, also scored more than 90% in every city except the capital. In London, they were the only profession that was even close to CEOs in the percentage of homes they could afford.

Train drivers, meanwhile, have a very good chance of affording a home if they live outside of London, something that is also the case for police officers and, to a slightly lesser extent, teachers. 

For social workers, Glasgow, Belfast and Manchester offer the most hope, while Birmingham and (much more so) London are best avoided. It's a similar story for nurses, who will find affording a home in London nigh on impossible, but have a better chance in the Northern Irish capital or Scotland's second city. 

Glasgow is also the only real place that offers bricklayers a decent chance of affording a home, ditto car mechanics. For taxi drivers, the chances of affording a home in any of the cities we focused on are slim, but Glasgow is again the only city that offers them some hope (with 54% of properties they can afford). 

For the lowest-paid positions – sales assistants and bar staff – the situation looks is not very promising across the board. Again, Glasgow offers the most hope – but the chances of people in these jobs finding any affordable housing is slim.

Can blockchain speed up the conveyancing process?

With more research going into speeding up the conveyancing process, we ask whether blockchain is really the answer.

 One of the most important parts of the home buying and selling process is conveyancing – the legal act of transferring home ownership from the seller to the buyer.
 
But it can be a slow, frustrating and cumbersome process, which has led to calls in recent years for ways of speeding it up.
 
A solution that has been discussed in the past is the use of blockchain in property transactions. Here, we take a look at what it is and whether it’s the answer to making conveyancing less laborious for all involved.
 
What is blockchain?
 
Blockchain, which is the technology that enables bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to function, is an open, digital and distributed ledger which records transactions between two parties in an 'efficient, permanent and verifiable way'.
 
It aims to create a world where contracts (both property and otherwise) would be transformed into digital code and protected in shared, transparent databases, free from doctoring, deletion or corruption. The digital trail would also mean the contracts are easily validated and easy to track down.
 
Land Registry explores blockchain
 
As part of its two-phase digitisation programme, to work out how innovative technologies can make the house buying process smoother and quicker, HM Land Registry has been working with specialists to explore the possible benefits of blockchain for the property market.
 
The digital transformation project – known as Digital Street – has been analysing ways of improving the property buying process in the future, with Land Registry rigorously testing blockchain and recently successfully using a prototype of the technology to highlight how buying and selling a home can be made simpler and quicker by demonstrating a digital transfer of ownership.
 
To show how the emerging technology could be used to cut uncertainty and delays when people are buying a home, a trial was carried out on the sale of a semi-detached house in Gillingham, Kent.
 
“It was really straightforward,” said Stefan, the seller of the house in Gillingham who took part in the trial. “It shows how technology like this can help make everything so much quicker and you can see clearly what’s happening at every stage. If this is the way forward, it’s going to make everything easier.”
 
HM Land Registry’s prototype blockchain technology was developed through conversations with stakeholders across the property market, and tested with the close cooperation of Mishcon de Reya, Premier Property Lawyers, Shieldpay and Yoti.
 
At present, the Land Registry’s trials with blockchain are merely exploratory – and a way of proving that the technology can be used to speed up the conveyancing process.
 
“We wanted to work with the industry to make sure that we understood how forms of the blockchain network could work to benefit the industry as a whole,” a Land Registry spokesman said.
 
“We’re looking to take all we have learned from this successful test and discuss it further, internally and with members of the Digital Street community – which is comprised of regulators of conveyancers, mortgage lenders, and technologists.”
 
 “Land Registry is often cited as a potential use case of blockchain, so we thought we should be doing thorough due diligence [and] seeing what it can actually bring to the property market in the UK,” the spokesman added.
 
With delays to the buying process causing stress and, in some cases, the total collapse of the sale, anything that can be done to speed up currently slow property transactions will be welcomed by buyers and sellers alike.
 
While HM Land Registry isn’t yet ready to roll out blockchain technology to the masses, the successful recent trial suggests it could be a part of the conveyancing process sooner rather than later, reducing the risk of transactions failing or being abandoned at considerable cost to both parties.
 
Further trials and purchases by blockchain
 
Recently, a number of key PropTech players behind a trial of blockchain claimed that the technology can reduce the time of a transaction from the typical three months to something much closer to three weeks.
 
While few details of the trial have emerged, a statement from Instant Property Network (IPN) said it had successfully completed ‘a global trial of a new distributed ledger-based system, demonstrating the potential to speed up property transactions by months.’
 
The latest trial, facilitated by a blockchain software firm, ran transactions using test data through a new ledger system to simulate property sales over a five-day period and claims to have shown how costly duplications in the transaction process could have been removed.
 
“It’s estimated that, with the addition of off ledger business process and consumer decisions, the end to end buy/sell process could be reduced from over three months to less than three weeks,” IPN said.
According to IPN, each property transaction currently involves, on average, eight parties plus the buyer and seller, with data shared through dozens of documents, platforms and databases. This, it says, can cause errors, increased costs, uncertainty and delays in transactions.
 
To solve this, IPN has created a system where participants can join up their business processes and transact directly. Although the network does not store data itself, it has the capability to integrate with a company’s existing technology.
 
“This means that each party retains control over their own data - negating the risk of breaches and compliance issues and vastly reducing risk and the cost of continuous reconciliation of facts and data,” the statement continued. “The trial revealed that most companies will be able to deploy the platform in a matter of days, opening the door to widespread adoption throughout the property industry.”
 
The trial involved 40 organisations in 23 countries, with several familiar to UK transactions, such as Barclays, Clifford Chance, AXA XL, Royal Bank of Scotland, BBVA, Search Acumen, Shieldpay and Swiss Re.
 
Blockchain has, however, already been used in some house sales. In October 2017, electronic property transaction platform Clicktopurchase claimed to be the first to complete an online property transaction by blockchain for a home in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, while the same platform was later used by HS Property Group to sell a four-bed HMO in Oldham, Greater Manchester.
 
More recently, at an auction held by London-based Clicktopurchase, a Dublin house was sold using both blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI).
 
In this case, a verified bidder was able to submit an offer on behalf of a buyer, in turn creating an electronic offer with a legally binding electronic signature. Once the offer had been accepted by the agent, solicitor or seller operating the dashboard, a second electronic signature was added and an immediate online exchange of a property contract took place.
 
From the above, there certainly seems to be evidence to suggest that blockchain (and other types of new technologies) can play a key role in speeding up the conveyancing process, making transactions safer, quicker, simpler and more transparent.
 
A mass rollout still seems some way off, but the trials taking place and Land Registry’s high-profile digital transformation programme suggests a faster, more tech-led approach to property transactions is on its way. The days of frustrating delays and high levels of stress could soon be a thing of the past.