Protect UK Property Buyers and Sellers

Protection: is it too much to ask for?

As a first time buyer the insufficient laws surrounding the protection of buyers and sellers has shocked me and I want something to be done!

Having successfully bid on a property, paid for a survey and taken on various solicitor costs... a day before exchange of contract another bidder placed a bid which I (despite desperately trying to save the property I had come to think of as home) could not match therefore the seller dropped me and went with the higher bid despite the survey having been successful, mortgage guaranteed and substantial costs incurred on my behalf.

This, I am told, is quite common. I am disgusted that there is no protection for buyers and sellers from depressingly common incidents such as this.

Surely there should be a law which protects us? It wouldn't be that difficult to insist that if a seller pulls out then the seller should pay costs incurred, or if the buyer pulls out then the buyer should pay costs incurred. Isn't this just common sense?

The law needs to change.

We know it can work; take the Scottish system for instance, which seems to be more interested in protecting its citizens than England does, -I quote: 'If your offer is accepted, the seller%u2019s solicitor will send

your solicitor a written acceptance letter and you and the seller are then bound to go ahead with the sale.' Consequently, in Scotland both parties are 'bound' however in England we are not. Absurd? Surely you agree.

What can we, the common people, do about this? Well, I plan to speak up, bombard parliament until they realise that we, the people of Britain, deserve protection....

Protection. That's all I'm asking.