Home Information Packs, which cost about £300, are almost completely useless. They are a clog on the housing market. The information they contain does not obviate the need for prudent buyers to make the usual enquiries. Almost invariably, they include only cut-down versions of local searches, meaning that any sensible solicitor will advise his client to do another formal search, costing at least £75 or so. They therefore do not reduce the time a transaction takes, nor the costs of sale; in fact, they increase them. They are a stupid, time-wasting irritation, whose only benefit appears to be the increased tax take the Government enjoys in the form of VAT.
At a time, therefore, of economic downturn, when house sellers are becoming thin on the ground, one might have thought a sensible Government would not have disturbed the present state of affairs, in which HIPs are ordered, tucked away in a bottom drawer and forgotten. Indeed, one might have expected a sensible Government unafraid of losing face to scrap the stupid things.
But not the redoubtable Mrs Beckett. No, she is ploughing on with Yvette Cooper’s harebrained plan, taking it to new heights of idiocy, and in the process encouraging even more house sellers to sit tight. Her Department, however, insists that, though the housing market is “in difficulty” (good to see that they have noticed), a strengthened HIP should “help sellers attract home buyers”.
You have to admire Mrs Beckett’s sheer doggedness. When all is collapsing about her, she sticks undeviatingly to the script, no matter how daft, and to heck with common sense or public sentiment. That is surely the way she has managed to stay for so long at the top in Labour politics.
There’s a lesson in that somewhere.
You say "as from April next year, house sellers will have to produce a completed Home Information Pack before an estate agent will be allowed to market their property"
I am surprised that you are prepared to put out something which is incorrect. A little research would show that, even after 6 April next, the Regulations only require the HIP to have been ordered and for the title evidence & EPC to be in place before marketing starts. It's Regulation 14 of the 2007 HIP Regulations (SI 1667) in case you didn't know. The PIQ and searches will not be needed until up to 28 days have elapsed.
As for duplicating searches, that is because of the lack of incentive for councils to provide them electronically.
HIPs are a start to getting the appalling process of homebuying improved; their implementation has been disastrous but the idea of scrapping them is ridiculous; they need to be made better, not scrapped, to benefit consumers.
Scrap them.
"Scrap them."
And replace them with what?
Or perhaps return to the system where everyone waits to do anything about getting their house in order (literally) until they have a buyer, who agrees a price based on virtually no information about the house, who then if they have any sense gets a survey, which causes them to pull out or try to renegotiate the price, who then gets a report from their solicitor which says there is a defect in title, who then has to negotiate to deal with it. In the meantime a chain of transactions is being held up whilst all these shenanigans go on, then the buyer (or someone else in the chain) gets cold feet & oulls out because there is no transparency & the whole stupid process collapses.
Is it better or worse to go into a transaction with proper reliable information? How about, for example, having searches refreshed online within the original price, at the time of exchange of contracts?
How about thinking what can be done with modern technology & a change of mindset?
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