A trade body representing UK estate agents has criticized the planned introduction of home information packs or 'Hips'.
The National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) claims that, while 30% of British homeowners it surveyed have been party to a collapsed house sale, the introduction of Hips will do little to counter this trend.
Hips are packs that a seller will be obliged to put together, and are intended to ensure vendors undertake a more rigorous survey of the state of their property before they put it onto the market. Compilation of a Hip will indeed be compulsory for sellers from June 2007, ensuring that buyers will see title deeds, local authority searches and a property condition report before the purchase process begins.
However estate agents are largely opposed to the government-inspired introduction of Hips, and the NAEA has come out arguing that a lack of information is rarely that cause of a collapsed sale. Instead, the trade body argues, so-called ‘gazumping’ or a broken sales chain are more likely triggers – neither of which will be much affected by Hips, it claims.
The government seems to be of the opinion that the majority of home sales fall through due to unexpected flaws unearthed at a late stage in the process via the survey or legal problems, This is Money quotes Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the NAEA, as saying. He adds that this is rarely the case.