In foreign parts: America is streets ahead when you are moving home

America has been getting a lot of stick lately, what with a string of business scandals and general doubts as to whether George Bush is mentally qualified to run a sweet shop, let alone the most powerful country on earth.

But in one respect the United States leaves us standing – when you're buying and selling a house.

I speak from present experience, simultaneously undergoing the ordeal on both sides of the Atlantic, selling in London and buying in Washington DC. And don't think that London has the global monopoly of runaway property prices.

This city may be top of the Osama bin Laden hit list, and reputed target for the delightful little radioactive device that the "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla is said to have been trying to put together.

But that hasn't prevented house prices in Washington rocketing up by 20 per cent in the past year.

And if anything, the going's getting even faster and more furious, with rock-bottom mortgage rates and panicky investors fleeing the dodgy stock market for the supposed safety of bricks and mortar.

Take the pleasant but by no means luxurious house opposite us, in our quiet little corner of north-west DC. The three-bedroom property went on the market on Saturday, within 24 hours attracted nine offers in excess of the asking price of $575,000 (£371,500), and two days after that a contract had been signed for more than $630,000 (£407,000).

With demand far outrunning supply, the Washington market is adopting something akin to the "blind bid" system which operates in Scotland, where a property is put on the market, and potential buyers make sealed offers at or above a specified minimum asking price. The highest wins. As here, the process requires an initial hardnosed calculation of what you can pay and what you will probably have to pay.

But thereafter, in the US as in Scotland, greater peace of mind is guaranteed than in England.

The crucial difference is the contract. In England, nothing is certain until contracts are exchanged, normally close to the end of the process.

In America, when you sign the preliminary contract, the deal is in effect done. At that stage, immediately after the offer has been accepted, the buyer puts up "earnest" money – a deposit equal to between 5 and 10 per cent of the agreed price, so named to show you are serious or earnest about the transaction.

Barring an inspection that shows the place is structurally unsound or evidence that the place is riddled with termites, if the buyer thereafter pulls out, he loses his deposit.

But – and here's the good bit – the seller is locked in, too. No gazumping or gazundering. The process is on tram-lines – even when, as in our case, both parties dispensed with an estate agent, to avoid the extortionate 6 per cent commission they levy (under one of the most anti-competitive and disgraceful cartels known to mankind).

Yes, the mortgage provider, in our case a bank, makes a big fuss about credit checks (in America, until you have a credit record, you don't exist). But don't imagine such precautions are not taken in our own discreet and supposedly better-mannered land.

We've received an offer for the house in London. We've accepted it – but that legally doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

The potential buyer can pull out or abruptly lower his offer. We could change our minds and drop the whole thing, or receive a higher offer and tell the first bidder to increase his own, or else.

Until everything is done, nothing is done. No wonder buying and selling houses is up there on the stress charts with bereavement, divorce or losing one's job. Not so, thank goodness, in Washington.