Property: Sales

(asked on 8th September 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of adopting a property buying process with legally binding missives in England.


Answered by
Christopher Pincher Portrait
Christopher Pincher
This question was answered on 11th September 2020

As we set out in the Government response to the Call for Evidence on improving the home buying and selling process published in April 2018, adopting a property buying process with legally binding missives would require a fundamental re-engineering of the way in which houses are bought and sold in England.

We think that it may be possible to deliver many of the benefits of binding missives without the associated disruption through the adoption of a standardised reservation agreement. These agreements would see buyers and sellers commit to going ahead with the transaction and suffering a financial penalty if they withdrew without good reason, and these could be accommodated within the current process. Government is currently working with industry to evaluate the potential of these agreements.

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