4 ms·

As someone who bought a city property last year the Scottish system is lightyears ahead of England. I don't have to worry about leasehold, freehold etc - I boug

by cmdkeen 11y ago

As someone who bought a city property last year the Scottish system is lightyears ahead of England. I don't have to worry about leasehold, freehold etc - I bought my flat, it is mine. Buying through solicitors and the associated regulation produces a much more civilised system without gazumping (or at least much less of it). If you've ever spent much time in the Highlands you'll realise how remote and limited it actually is. You're realistically always going to have very large tracts of land owned by individuals or groups because it requires economies of scale to run. Short of making almost all of it national parks I'm not convinced the current state of play is that bad. Plus there is the right to roam legislation enabling people to actually use the land, it isn't like you're not allowed to walk on it.

smcl 11y ago
Yeah good point, Scotland hasn't got the lease\freehold distinction. Converting large chunks of the Highlands into national parks would be a great idea IMO.
- arethuza 11y ago
  A large chunk of the Highlands is already a National Park: http://cairngorms.co.uk/ http://cairngorms.co.uk/
  - smcl 11y ago
    Arguably a large part of the Cairngorms national park is not in the Highlands, but you're right. An additional nice thing is that the Cairngorms National Park is rare in the UK in that it is actually something resembling a proper national park.
    - arethuza 11y ago
      What part of the national park would you say isn't in the Highlands? It's not all in the Highland Council area but that's not all of the Highlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Highlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Highlands Maybe Ballater - I wouldn't put that in the Highlands although Braemar clearly is! Apart from along the Highland Boundary Fault I think the actual boundary of the Highlands is fairly fuzzy anyway :-)
      - smcl 11y ago
        Maybe my mental image of what is/isn't the highlands is pretty far off the norm :) In my head it's whatever is north\west of the invisible line between Inverness and Fort William (like that upper bar of the old BBC Scotland logo).
        arethuza 11y ago
        Isn't that the Western Highlands - i.e. the bit beyond the Great Glen?
  - tomwalker 11y ago
    Unfortunately parts are being developed on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-33801737 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-3380...
    - cmdkeen 11y ago
      National Parks can still get developed on, they aren't kept in aspic. UK National Parks are fairly unique in that they often contain substantial settlements, and as such need to change over time. Covering them completely in concrete is obviously a bad thing but providing the ability for local people to still live there (as any population is liable to grow), offer more facilities for people to enjoy the park etc is surely a good thing.
jacquesm 11y ago
> I bought my flat, it is mine. Is that so? Wow. In other countries you deal with a home-owners association and you get a right-to-occupy that particular space and 1/nth of every brick the building is made out of.
- cmdkeen 11y ago
  Well there is a lot of old Scots law words in the legal document about how tenements work, but essentially it is mine. There is a "stair committee" which handles things like common repairs to the roof, stair, garden etc but it is all very consensual and decent. The system isn't perfect. For properties that had no common committee there used to be the Statutory Notice system run by the council but that got abolished after a massive corruption scandal!
  - lmm 11y ago
    > Well there is a lot of old Scots law words in the legal document about how tenements work, but essentially it is mine. There is a "stair committee" which handles things like common repairs to the roof, stair, garden etc but it is all very consensual and decent. So in practice is there any difference from the leasehold system that I have here in England?
JetSetWilly 11y ago
Political sorts in Scotland like to produce statistics like "70% of the land area of Scotland is owned by 500 people!" in order to shock people into supporting their generally redistributive political views - it is endlessly brought up. But when you factor in land area value - if you could distort the area of Scotland such that the land value and the area were 1:1 - then suddenly it doesn't look anything like as bad. As the market says that owning a 4 bedroom flat in the west end of Glasgow in fact is worth more then 10,000 acres of land in the highlands. Given as well that Scotland has very robust "right to roam" - people can walk on privately owned land as long as it isn't your back garden - and also laws to allow "wild camping" and so on, it just doesn't seem like that big of an issue to me either. But nationalists in every country become obsessed with who owns the country, especially if it is people outwith the country, people against their cause etc - the SNP are no different.
- petewailes 11y ago
  As someone who's considering buying in Scotland in the not vastly distant future, this. It's a question of what the land is used for and the scale of it.
- willyt 11y ago
  I'm not Scottish but I live in the Highlands. I think it's less to do with nationalism and more to do with to do with security of tenure. A lot of rural housing and farmland is owned by these large estates. The houses that have not been converted to holiday lets are often badly maintained and leased on very short term tenancies by absentee landlords. Tenant farmers on these estates have the additional problem that they can be also be evicted from the farmland.
gutnor 11y ago
There are benefit to the British system too. The real problem is common with both systems: bubble seller market like in London, and month long administrative procedures for what should be trivial matters in 2015. With the British system (in short, non-legally binding offer, deposit 5 days before getting the keys), you have plenty of time to do survey and make sure everything is correct without risking your deposit. For better (buyer market) or worse (seller market) negotiation is open till the very end when both parties have maximum information. I have seen friends struggling in similar seller market in more "civilised" countries. They had less risk of gazumping, but the risk of betting blind is very real. As for the lease holding, there is no simple "flat ownership" as it is part of a building and that means shared responsibilities on the common and weirdo syndic / condominium / association of owners. I don't mind the British way, but I suspect that is mostly because I have a good landlord but had a flat in a shitty community in Spain.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  > flat in a shitty community in Spain. What happened? I had an apartment abroad for about a decade, paid annually for security for the building and underground garage (this is Africa btw), cleaning and concierge and it was great. I always wondered what'd happen if things went sour in the association of homeowners but at the same time I could hardly conceive issues and never heard of problems from friends, either. A lot of issues of the commons never seemed to pop-up.
  - gutnor 11y ago
    Plenty of annoyances - landlord teaming up together, article of associations written by a company that we learned later one of the landlord is director of, ... One instance in particular - we don't have a parking space but we have a cellar at the same level than 1 of the parking floor. Because there is no lock on the door that leads to the parking, the landlords with parking decided that it means we need to pay the charges for the parking and parking elevator (for which we don't have the keys). Obviously they declined the request to put a lock on the door. They can do it because they are the majority and the way the article of association were written. We could contest legally of course, or team up with other landlord to build a majority that would lead to the charges being split between all landlord regardless if they have a parking or not. We are talking about 20 flats here, and frankly we would like to avoid the political drama. Edit: Some info about the UK process. Here after we made the offer (not legally binding in the UK), we had the solicitor review the leasehold contract for such problems. There is always a freeholder that is responsible for crafting the leasehold unlike in Spain when the association of landlord is formed after ( for new build anyway ) and anyway, a side effect of the legally binding offer is that you are psychologically driven to minimise the impact of a solicitor report ( btw, the notary in Spain that deal with property purchase is there a lot more to validate the transaction rather than defending your interests, so they don't really highlight those kind of things as clearly as UK solicitor - of course there are good ones and bad ones YMMV)
rsync 11y ago
Forgive me ... I'm afraid you're going to have to define "gazumping" ...
- smcl 11y ago
  First paragraph of wiki has a good definition - "Gazumping occurs when a seller (especially of property) accepts an oral offer (a promise to purchase) on the property from one potential buyer, but then accepts a higher offer from someone else. It can also refer to the seller raising the asking price or asking for more money at the last minute, after previously orally agreeing to a lower one. In either case, the original buyer is left in a bad situation, and either has to offer a higher price or lose the purchase" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazumping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazumping

by cmdkeen 11y ago

smcl 11y ago

Yeah good point, Scotland hasn't got the lease\freehold distinction. Converting large chunks of the Highlands into national parks would be a great idea IMO.

arethuza 11y ago
A large chunk of the Highlands is already a National Park: http://cairngorms.co.uk/ http://cairngorms.co.uk/
- smcl 11y ago
  Arguably a large part of the Cairngorms national park is not in the Highlands, but you're right. An additional nice thing is that the Cairngorms National Park is rare in the UK in that it is actually something resembling a proper national park.
  - arethuza 11y ago
    What part of the national park would you say isn't in the Highlands? It's not all in the Highland Council area but that's not all of the Highlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Highlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Highlands Maybe Ballater - I wouldn't put that in the Highlands although Braemar clearly is! Apart from along the Highland Boundary Fault I think the actual boundary of the Highlands is fairly fuzzy anyway :-)
    - smcl 11y ago
      Maybe my mental image of what is/isn't the highlands is pretty far off the norm :) In my head it's whatever is north\west of the invisible line between Inverness and Fort William (like that upper bar of the old BBC Scotland logo).
      - arethuza 11y ago
        Isn't that the Western Highlands - i.e. the bit beyond the Great Glen?
- tomwalker 11y ago
  Unfortunately parts are being developed on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-33801737 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-3380...
  - cmdkeen 11y ago
    National Parks can still get developed on, they aren't kept in aspic. UK National Parks are fairly unique in that they often contain substantial settlements, and as such need to change over time. Covering them completely in concrete is obviously a bad thing but providing the ability for local people to still live there (as any population is liable to grow), offer more facilities for people to enjoy the park etc is surely a good thing.

jacquesm 11y ago

> I bought my flat, it is mine. Is that so? Wow. In other countries you deal with a home-owners association and you get a right-to-occupy that particular space and 1/nth of every brick the building is made out of.

cmdkeen 11y ago
Well there is a lot of old Scots law words in the legal document about how tenements work, but essentially it is mine. There is a "stair committee" which handles things like common repairs to the roof, stair, garden etc but it is all very consensual and decent. The system isn't perfect. For properties that had no common committee there used to be the Statutory Notice system run by the council but that got abolished after a massive corruption scandal!
- lmm 11y ago
  > Well there is a lot of old Scots law words in the legal document about how tenements work, but essentially it is mine. There is a "stair committee" which handles things like common repairs to the roof, stair, garden etc but it is all very consensual and decent. So in practice is there any difference from the leasehold system that I have here in England?

JetSetWilly 11y ago

Political sorts in Scotland like to produce statistics like "70% of the land area of Scotland is owned by 500 people!" in order to shock people into supporting their generally redistributive political views - it is endlessly brought up. But when you factor in land area value - if you could distort the area of Scotland such that the land value and the area were 1:1 - then suddenly it doesn't look anything like as bad. As the market says that owning a 4 bedroom flat in the west end of Glasgow in fact is worth more then 10,000 acres of land in the highlands. Given as well that Scotland has very robust "right to roam" - people can walk on privately owned land as long as it isn't your back garden - and also laws to allow "wild camping" and so on, it just doesn't seem like that big of an issue to me either. But nationalists in every country become obsessed with who owns the country, especially if it is people outwith the country, people against their cause etc - the SNP are no different.

petewailes 11y ago
As someone who's considering buying in Scotland in the not vastly distant future, this. It's a question of what the land is used for and the scale of it.
willyt 11y ago
I'm not Scottish but I live in the Highlands. I think it's less to do with nationalism and more to do with to do with security of tenure. A lot of rural housing and farmland is owned by these large estates. The houses that have not been converted to holiday lets are often badly maintained and leased on very short term tenancies by absentee landlords. Tenant farmers on these estates have the additional problem that they can be also be evicted from the farmland.

gutnor 11y ago

There are benefit to the British system too. The real problem is common with both systems: bubble seller market like in London, and month long administrative procedures for what should be trivial matters in 2015. With the British system (in short, non-legally binding offer, deposit 5 days before getting the keys), you have plenty of time to do survey and make sure everything is correct without risking your deposit. For better (buyer market) or worse (seller market) negotiation is open till the very end when both parties have maximum information. I have seen friends struggling in similar seller market in more "civilised" countries. They had less risk of gazumping, but the risk of betting blind is very real. As for the lease holding, there is no simple "flat ownership" as it is part of a building and that means shared responsibilities on the common and weirdo syndic / condominium / association of owners. I don't mind the British way, but I suspect that is mostly because I have a good landlord but had a flat in a shitty community in Spain.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
> flat in a shitty community in Spain. What happened? I had an apartment abroad for about a decade, paid annually for security for the building and underground garage (this is Africa btw), cleaning and concierge and it was great. I always wondered what'd happen if things went sour in the association of homeowners but at the same time I could hardly conceive issues and never heard of problems from friends, either. A lot of issues of the commons never seemed to pop-up.
- gutnor 11y ago
  Plenty of annoyances - landlord teaming up together, article of associations written by a company that we learned later one of the landlord is director of, ... One instance in particular - we don't have a parking space but we have a cellar at the same level than 1 of the parking floor. Because there is no lock on the door that leads to the parking, the landlords with parking decided that it means we need to pay the charges for the parking and parking elevator (for which we don't have the keys). Obviously they declined the request to put a lock on the door. They can do it because they are the majority and the way the article of association were written. We could contest legally of course, or team up with other landlord to build a majority that would lead to the charges being split between all landlord regardless if they have a parking or not. We are talking about 20 flats here, and frankly we would like to avoid the political drama. Edit: Some info about the UK process. Here after we made the offer (not legally binding in the UK), we had the solicitor review the leasehold contract for such problems. There is always a freeholder that is responsible for crafting the leasehold unlike in Spain when the association of landlord is formed after ( for new build anyway ) and anyway, a side effect of the legally binding offer is that you are psychologically driven to minimise the impact of a solicitor report ( btw, the notary in Spain that deal with property purchase is there a lot more to validate the transaction rather than defending your interests, so they don't really highlight those kind of things as clearly as UK solicitor - of course there are good ones and bad ones YMMV)

rsync 11y ago

Forgive me ... I'm afraid you're going to have to define "gazumping" ...

smcl 11y ago
First paragraph of wiki has a good definition - "Gazumping occurs when a seller (especially of property) accepts an oral offer (a promise to purchase) on the property from one potential buyer, but then accepts a higher offer from someone else. It can also refer to the seller raising the asking price or asking for more money at the last minute, after previously orally agreeing to a lower one. In either case, the original buyer is left in a bad situation, and either has to offer a higher price or lose the purchase" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazumping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazumping