Is "Best Advice" best?

[darnsarf]

....Although plainly a salaried estate agent who didn't achieve many sales would be unlikely to remain salaried for very long! That said, I certainly wouldn't suggest agents, whatever their employment/remuneration status are all self serving blaggards. But the client relationship is to my mind too blurred for me to feel comfortable with.

The language/law issue bothers me. I wonder how many people in the UK would buy a house in the UK where the contract was in another language, their main contact was an apparently friendly agent financially involved in a sale taking place, a government employee whose primary role is tidy paperwork and tax collection, generally with no Surveyor involved, just the local builder and in a jurisdiction where the law as it applies to property, tax and inheritance is completely different. This is what has created some lovely material for programmes such as 'homes from hell'

[just john]

To buy anywhere except on home territory requires a leap of faith of course, relying on others for any stage was not what we did.  Caveat emptor, means as the buyer you should be either taking that expensive leap or checking everything for yourself. We checked and cross checked conditions, land titles etc, with the Mairie, Builders, Architects, friends and neighbours in the locale before signing up and beyond before final exchange. It changed the details not one jot (except from being informed about and adding a clause en Tontine), but at least we had an understanding of what we were getting ourselves into; and if there was any peace of mind in the process it was that we had exercised due diligence.