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A new body bringing together independent conveyancers, estate agents and other property professionals, who support moves to comprehensively improve the selling and buying process, says the Government is confusing everyone with its plans to introduce home information packs.Per Pro, established to voice the concerns of independent property experts, says that the devil is in the detail of the HIPs and that planned regulations will not solve the fundamental problems of the process.
Michael Garson, chairman of Per Pro, said: Numerous technical questions will remain to be resolved and many experts still doubt whether the government truly understand the way in which land ownership and transfer is carried on in England and Wales. There is a long chain of processes for professionals to cope with - it is not just buyers who have problems. There are glaring obstacles that should be tackled to help consumers and some of these are in the government's own backyard.
Consumers are in danger of being misled. New regulations are just the tip of the iceberg that will make selling more difficult in future. The likely winners will be lenders and commercial selling organisations .
Mr Garson added that the plans could also mean the market would be saturated by cheap but inadequate packages, driving reliable family firms and efficient small independent companies out of business as expanded offerings and bloated choices take standards down for the consumer. Traditional professional practices are keen to promote improvements but are not being given a fair chance to introduce changes in an ordered way.
It is intended that new operators such as government favoured supermarkets should be encouraged. They will of course want to introduce non transparent pricing and cross selling offers in order to ensure profitability for their backers.
More importantly and as the government have been repeatedly warned the markets are being unsettled and the creation of a new multi million pound market for new commercial providers threatens chaos and uncertainty for existing providers and, more importantly, their clients. Seller and buyers are already affected by the oncoming legislation in their selling decisions and yet most know little of what is in store for the future.
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