How to buy a house in England

In California, the process is pretty simple:

1. Find a real estate agent who will match your requirements to the market, show you various properties, negotiate the price, and step you through the rest of the process.
2. When you sign contracts, you put down a small deposit, and set a closing date, typically 30 days.
3. Your agent arranges an inspector and title search, while you find a lender. Assuming everything is satisfactory, the money and keys are exchanged through an escrow agency.
4. You record the documents with the land registry office and pay a nominal fee, usually based on the number of pages.  Average closing costs, not including points, are around $4,000, which can be included in the loan.

In England, naturally, it's a little different:

1. They don't have buyer's agents; you have to contact every real estate agent in the area to see what they have listed. (Of course, they'll show you everything they have, regardless of what you want.)
2. You negotiate the price directly, but you don't sign contracts or put down a deposit. Even if the price is agreed and the property is "under offer," the seller is free to take another offer. (They even have a word for it: "Gazumping")
3. You find a solicitor (attorney), a surveyor, an inspector, and a lender. The solicitor does the title search.  You can have a basic inspection or a structural inspection, depending on how much you're willing to pay.
4. It generally takes about 3 months from agreeing on the price to exchanging contracts (assuming the seller hasn't backed out yet). A week after that, you carry the check from the lender to the solicitor, who exchanges it for the keys.
5. You pay the government a "stamp duty" which is 1-4% of the purchase price, bringing the average closing costs to £13,000 (US $20,000), which cannot be included in the loan.

The stamp duty is tiered -- 1% up to £250,000, 3% up to £500,000, and 4% after that.  However, the percentage is not tiered -- that is, if the purchase price is £249,000, the stamp duty is £2,490, but if the price is £251,000, the stamp duty is £7,530!!  (And you can't find a house in London under £250,000.)

As you can imagine, title searches are much more complex in England than in the US, not just because it's so much older, but also because they do really weird things here, like "leaseholds" where you buy the property for 99 years, and then it reverts back to the original owner.  (The original owner can even sell the "freehold" to someone else!)  Or a shared driveway owned by someone who doesn't even live there.  Or a house with a covenant prohibiting it from being used as a pub.  I've only just started looking, and these are just a few of the stories I've already heard about! 

And just to make it a little more depressing, the standard mortgage term here is 25 years "or until normal retirement age." I only qualify for a 24-year mortgage.