Pass the Aspirins Please

Mortgage misery. Higher interest rates, higher petrol and food prices, higher everything have increased the financial pressures on many mortgage payers. Some desperate borrowers simply hand in their keys. Others are lured by Sale and Rent Back schemes which can prove ruinous. To learn about better alternatives - including some that may allow you to remain in your home, and maybe even retain ownership - see the Mortgages page.

Pass the morphine, please. Shortly after buying a country home, the new owners discover (true story) that a public footpath runs through—and gives ramblers right of access to—their living room. In a case currently (July 2008) going through the courts, a buyer of a riverside house in an upmarket London suburb is suing his seller because the garden - not the house - regularly floods. Several sections of PWP - particularly the entries on solicitors and estate agents - provide information designed to help you sidestep this sort of muck.

Estate agents: good, bad, ugly...or all three? Agents has some answers.

Money: Where have all the mortgages gone? The Mortgages pages explain the basics, and the Money pages discuss affordability and other financial issues.

Cracks in walls. Some spell trouble, and some don't, but how can you tell the former from the latter? Owning tackles various issues facing property owners, especially involving repairs, renovations and extensions.

Surveys: waste of money or worth every penny? The Surveyors page peers behind the scenes.

Contracts to be exchanged - as soon as the solicitors get around to exchanging them. Commonhold? Managing agents? Leasehold rights? Many legal issues and technical terms are discussed on this site..

The Internet: A vast and wondrous resource, but how do you find what you need, and who can you trust? Internet cuts the web down to size.

Nice flat, nice building, nice tenants, nice area, nice everything except the managing agent, whose service charges are literally unbelievable. Tribunal time.

Home Information Packs Who needs HIPs? Who pays for it? Are they here to stay?

Pain Relief

Buying a home is the most important and expensive purchase most people will ever make.

It can also be the most stressful and miserable. The process rarely runs smoothly. Even successful purchases are often traumatic, entailing considerable frustration and anxiety.

Property conveyancing is often wasteful for buyer and seller alike: buyers spend money on searches, surveys or fees only for the purchase to fall through. In a sellers' market, buyers run the risk of being gazumped (outbid by a rival buyer offering more money).

The opposite - gazundering - occurs In a buyers' market, when the buyer lowers the price he is willing to pay on a take it or leave it basis, usually just before exchange of contracts. The seller faces two unpleasant choices: accept the lower price, or pull out of the deal entirely, forfeit legal and other costs, and start all over again.

Is there a silver bullet, a magic cure to rid the process of all of its ills? Probably not. Too many different people and institutions (solicitors, estate agents, lenders, surveyors, others) are involved, and a delay or mistake by one can gum up the entire works.

Knowledge is key: the more you know, the better you can anticipate problems and develop tactics and strategies to overcome them. Learning some basics about bricks and mortar can also be valuable.

This Property Without Pain website has been written and designed by Robert Liebman, a London-based property and personal finance journalist. Robert writes for the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Mail on Sunday and other national newspapers and magazines. He also writes and designs websites, including www.willswithoutpain.com, a companion to this site.

This site aims to help buyers, sellers and owners alike by providing highly specific tips and information across the entire range of property conveyancing and ownership. These pages are regularly revised and refined: new pages added, old ones tinkered with and updated.

To get a head start and get some hints about property hunting and conveyancing, start with the Start page.

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