Everything about Home Information Packs (HIPS)

The National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) today expressed ongoing concern over the Government announcement that they were pushing ahead with Home Information Packs and that they were to spend £4 million pounds supporting an Industry dry run of Home Information Packs in six locations.

Bearing in mind that these are being organised by Pack Providers, who must have a vested interest, the NAEA remains very dubious as to whether these trials will be truly independent and whether they will properly address at all the issues.

Peter Bolton King Chief Executive of the NAEA said 'The Association has always said that it was vital that any trials thoroughly test not only the systems but whether our concerns about the effect on the market caused by a lack of first day marketing and reduction in housing supply are justified. We have not been told how these trails are to be conducted and have doubts as to their effectiveness in a voluntary scenario.'

The Association is disappointed that the Government is spending tax payers money on trialling a scheme that we have called on them abandon.

It is not convinced that there will be a voluntary take up of Home Condition Reports and without a compulsory Home Condition Report one has to seriously question whether the rest of the HIP, other than the energy rating, is worthwhile.

With no contract, and no legal summary, the remaining documents in the HIP were always going to be difficult for the consumer to understand.

The Government's stated reason for bringing in HIPS was that if potential purchasers were armed with all the information fewer sales would fall through. However there is little evidence that sales fall through because of legal, title or search problems and as such there is absolutely no need to insist on this information being made available prior to a sale being agreed.

In any case, the speed of conveyancing will shortly be improved by the introduction of E-Conveyancing and the Land Registry's Chain Matrix system again negating the need for information up front. There is no point in having information that may well become out of date during the period of sale thus causing additional unnecessary expense to the consumer.

The association again calls on the Government to realise that HIPs are not the way forward and sit down with Industry to look at ways of really improving the system to the benefit of consumers.