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by henrikschroder 4344 days ago
> But buying a house is an enormously complicated transaction

Why?

Where I'm from, buying a home is a few pages at most. You need to put down the buyer, the seller, the object, the price, the down-payment and the date.

Same for getting a mortgage from a bank, it's a page of contract, and a page of terms and disclaimers. You need the buyer, the object, the mortgage amount, the date, and the type of mortgage.

(The trick, of course, is that where I'm from, the general proceedings of buying a home is regulated by law, so the only thing that needs to go on a contract is the specifics and deviations from the norm.)
3 comments
wpietri 4344 days ago
People's particular needs for housing are personal and detailed. Houses are complicated objects with complicated, unique financial, legal, and physical histories. It is the single largest financial transaction most people make. And the people involved are generally novices, which makes it yet more complicated.

I get that you'd like it to be simple, but it's coming across like this to me: http://xkcd.com/793/

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smackfu 4344 days ago
You don't have to do home inspections (and consequent repairs), radon testing, title searches, etc.? That's the junk that makes it complicated.
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henrikschroder 4344 days ago
> home inspections

House is sold as-is. Buyer is responsible for finding all visible issues. Seller is responsible for X years (3 I think?) for hidden issues. Done.

> radon testing

Buyer is responsible for testing. The city can tell you if a certain area is at-risk. Sellers usually provide long-term testing results. You can add a clause to the contract stipulating that if radon level is higher than X within Y years, cost of fixing is split between seller and buyer by Z.

> title searches

What is that? googles Oh. No, we have good public record-keeping, you don't need to pay third parties to trawl decentralized piles of unorganized records.

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joeframbach 4344 days ago
You come across as very naive here. "Seller is responsible for X years (3 I think?) for hidden issues." So, you need a method of determining if an issue was existing-but-unnoticed vs new-and-buyers-fault. How would you make that determination? With a home inspector whose word is good and whose work is thorough.
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timjahn 4344 days ago
I'm assuming you're not from the United States?
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joeframbach 4344 days ago
Either not from the United States, or doesn't know what they're talking about.
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