Gazumping

Hehe. I like the way you said the major problem affecting UK people is confined to England! :-)

Likewise, the seller who is just playing games should be fined if they do not go through with the sale.

No-one can be fined because no-one is doing anything wrong.

You can't be taken to task for going back on an agreement which doesn't yet exist. People can throw their arms up in horror until they're blue in the face, but what they don't seem to realise is when they say (or indeed think) that their offer has "been accepted", or that they "have accepted" an offer, that nothing of the sort has actually happened. All that has really happened is that the parties have reached agreement on a figure on the basis of which a contract

The only solution to the perceived problem is to make sure the agreement is reached sooner. Once the agreement is in place, no-one can back out without being "fined", though of course the fines aren't fines, they're damages paid to the other party for breach of contract.

Maybe. To me Richard seems to be talking from pragmatic experience, and you seem to describe a perfect world where nothing ever goes wrong, or if it does people will happily move into rented accommodation for three months, or shrug their shoulders when the surveyor finds the house is about to fall down and complete the purchase anyway :) As is regularly pointed out, there is nothing to stop people in England making binding agreements earlier, but neverthless they don't, and it's probably because it's usually in at least one of the parties interests to keep the flexibility. Funny how we hear from the gazumped and never the gazumpers, even though there must be equal numbers of them ...