A Firm of Owners, Not Renters

The usual mistake in a property sale is treating your own step as the end of your responsibility. The agent gets the offer signed. The bond originator submits the application. The conveyancer prepares the transfer documents. The municipality issues the rates clearance, an electrician issues the compliance certificate, and somewhere in the middle a seller waits for a date.

Each person can say, truthfully, that their part is done. The offer is signed and the commission is promised. Meanwhile the electrical certificate has been sitting with an electrician who has not answered his phone for a week, and nobody has noticed, because chasing it was nobody's job.

Someone with an owner's attitude follows the file to registration even when the next step belongs to somebody else. That means asking whether the rates figures have been requested, checking that the seller has signed the transfer documents, and reminding the buyer that the bank still needs a payslip. It appears in no job description.

It also cannot be ordered into existence. People start acting like owners when they can see the whole file, when their name stays on it until the deeds office registers the transfer, and when the people senior to them already behave that way without being asked.