My husband and I recently bought our first house together. After a couple of months’ searching for our dream home - evenings and weekends filled with scouring the property press, clocking up the car mileage on viewings – we were exhausted. So when we eventually found something we could feasibly raise a family in, we felt a huge sense of relief.
But then came the next hurdle – the period between offer and completion, when surveyors, solicitors and estate agents are drafted in to make your dream a reality. Despite my estate agent’s best efforts to sell me his firm’s services, I was adamant this part of the process should be completely independent.
It seemed logical to me to get the survey, conveyancing and property searches done in one place. Habitus, one of the UK’s largest and longest-established national networks of property professionals, takes care of the process from offer to completion. As part of its Home Move Service, an advisor assigns you a surveyor and solicitor in your area who is registered with them, and oversees the whole shebang.
It follows that a company whose name means ‘condition’ in Latin should be adept in surveying the condition of one’s future home. All its registered professionals are fully qualified in their field, whether they are chartered surveyors or licensed conveyancers. So I felt we were in good hands.
Quick off the mark
The first thing Habitus did after receiving our instruction was to appoint us a Home Moving Advisor. Because the Habitus network doesn’t yet cover our area, our service was delivered by telephone and email. Our advisor sent us a handy information pack and, after discussing which survey was right for us, he dispatched a surveyor to our chosen property at lightning speed.
So far so good, until the vendors pulled out of the sale…on the morning our surveyor was on his way. Sadly, our vendors were separating, and a personal dispute had given them cold feet. However, four days later they were back in business, and Habitus rescheduled the survey within a couple of days. Even our estate agent was impressed. “These guys are quick!” he conceded.
When the survey report came back it was clear and easy to comprehend – Habitus eliminates any jargon and rewrites it in plain English.
Our solicitor, based conveniently just around the corner from my office, was equally efficient, and wasn’t averse to email or mobile phones.
This made the process speedy and nonsense-free. Although I’d expected to liaise directly with Habitus throughout, I realised it made sense to communicate directly with our solicitor over the details of our case.
Within around eight weeks, we’d gone from offer to completion with minimal fuss. If Christmas, New Year and the blip with our vendors could be discounted, it would have been closer to five weeks.
A personal touch
Habitus delivers its Home Move Service through franchised offices around the UK, which run teams of Home Moving Advisors. An advisor visits you in your home to sort out paperwork and help manage the process.
The Habitus network currently covers 60 areas of the country, including Devon, Kent, South Wales, Manchester and Newcastle, with plans to expand further. In the meantime, for areas not yet covered, the service is delivered over the telephone and via email – as ours was.
We found the telephone and email service worked well, although we did find that different advisors would deal with our case. Roger Doddy, the firm’s marketing director, assures me that the areas covered do get a more personal service.
He explains that Habitus plans to expand its network and standardise its service further, in order to streamline the buying and selling process. “Research indicates that poor communication is often the main cause of delays in most transactions,” he says.
“Our plan is to have about 100 law firms in our network, using our case management application.”
Professionals working for the Habitus network all adhere to a common service standard – singing from the same hymn sheet, as it were. An online system allows them to track each case and keep it up to date.
Doddy adds: “The important thing for us is that at any one time, two law firms in our network can act for the buyer and the seller in the same transaction. This should make the process both smooth and speedy.”
If money’s tight, Habitus offers a handy 0% finance option on the Home Move Service, so you can spread the cost over 12 months. And, to help ease your cash flow even further, the company is offering £230 off the cost of conveyancing until the end of March.
For more information, visit the Habitus website or telephone 0800 634 3001.
By Sarah Speight
This article was published on 26 February 2007