I live in Scotland, and the process here is the seller has to undertake a survey with someone who is accredited. In practice this means that the same 3-4 firms end up doing most of the surveys. It's not just some ranodmer saying "yeah, looks good mate".
> In the US this only costs a few hundred dollars for a typical house, which is a tiny fraction of the overall transaction price.
You know what's even better than _only_ a couple of hundred dollars? The seller paying it once.
It's the same in Sweden, that the seller does and pays for a survey. Still common for the buyer to request to be allowed to get a second independent survey done. Of course the seller can refuse to allow a second survey, but that in itself is quite telling.
Easy way to solve that is making sure there’s a record of all accredited inspections that potential buyers can access. So you have a do-over after fixing something but there’s a trail for the buyer.
> In the US this only costs a few hundred dollars for a typical house, which is a tiny fraction of the overall transaction price.
You know what's even better than _only_ a couple of hundred dollars? The seller paying it once.