Survey figures released by the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) reveal 69% of respondents do not believe the Home Information Pack (HIP) will be introduced by the government deadline of 1st June 2007.
The majority of the estate agency industry lost faith in the idea of compulsory HIPs a long time ago. Particularly as the need for a Home Condition Report (HCR) is redundant thanks to the onset of e-conveyancing which will dramatically improve the time it takes to process residential property sale transactions, without any change to existing legislation. The HCR was a fundamental part of the HIP until a partial government u-turn on the legislation earlier this year. Without the HCR the HIP is unnecessary and will still do little to improve the buying and selling of residential property in the UK.
Furthermore, the so-called HIPs trial, which is to receive £4m of government funding, is an equal waste of time and public money. As participants will receive a fully or partially funded HIP the trial will be a very unlikely indicator of how well HIPs will be received by the public and carried out by the industry when it becomes a legal requirement to have one before selling a home. To add insult to injury, the trial is being carried out by an organisation representing HIP providers and has a clear, vested interest in the success of the trials.
When asked whether HIPs should be scrapped completely, following the extraction of the compulsory HCR, 84% of respondents felt the legislation should be dropped. This will come as a blow to those who have invested large sums of money becoming fully qualified home inspectors, as without a HIP there is no requirement for a HCR. A further setback for those hoping to change career is that 60% of the estate agents surveyed said they were interested in taking a qualification that would enable them carry out the energy performance certificate. This further decreases the demand for home inspectors while the HCR is not a mandatory requirement of the HIP.
Peter Bolton King, Chief Executive at the NAEA, comments: "This research clearly demonstrates the industry has gone cold on the idea of HIPs altogether. The NAEA has called on the government to abolish HIPs, but this call has to date fallen on deaf ears and begs the following questions: Why make consumers pay additional fees to market their property when it won't help them sell their home faster or more securely? Why make the industry invest time in an initiative it doesn't support because it won't work? And why make taxpayers fund private sale transactions that won't be objective?"
