[OT] HIPs again

[Tim S]

It gets better:

these fools are out of government the better...

Tim

[Guy King]

The message from Tim S contains these words:

OK, give us a clue was it was about apart from being about errors retrieving articles, of course.

[Tim S]

Yeah - sorry about that - the "article" (OK was the DM) has disappeared - their own search engine can't find it...

I'll quote next time...

Tim

[Tim S]

Seems to be back...

But here's a quote, the entire article verbatim:

A lot of it most of us knew, but interesting it's starting to hit the tabloids...

===

£1,000 home sellers' packs won't warn of subsidence or floods by JAMES CHAPMAN, Daily Mail 12:16pm 17th June 2006

Compulsory information packs for house sales were branded worthless last night.

It was revealed that the £1,000 dossiers need not contain some of the most basic information on a property.

From next year, home owners will have to pay for a 'sellers' pack' before they can put their property on the market.

But they do not have to include: natural subsidence ; flood risks ; rights of access ; land contamination.

Regulations released yesterday also suggest that anyone who takes a house off the market for just 28 days, then puts it on sale again, will have to pay for a new pack.

Critics said the details raised questions about the whole point of the scheme. They said the information in the dossiers will be so limited that many buyers will order their own surveys, adding to costs and delays on both sides.

Tory spokesman Michael Gove said the packs would be "expensive, deficient and dangerous".

Nick Salmon, of the campaign group Sellers' Pack Law Is Not The Answer (Splinta), which represents 1,500 firms of estate agents, surveyors and conveyors against the packs, said: "The consumer is being conned into believing these packs will improve the home buying process.

"In fact, we believe they will prove worthless. This is almost bound to undermine people's confidence in the packs."

The regulations, released by Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly, say the packs must include details about how energy efficient a house is as well as its structural condition, title and deeds.

But Mr Gove said: "The refusal to tell families whether the back garden will be safe for their children or of potential flood risks, delivers a serious blow to the credibility of these packs.

"Nor will they even have to include information about ground stability or the effects of natural subsidence.

"Surely this information - knowing whether or not a property is sound - is one of the key things a buyer would want to know. The Government would be better to scrap the scheme than deliver expensive, deficient and dangerous information to potential homebuyers."

Ministers estimate that a pack for an average semi will cost £776, but experts say £1,000 is a more likely figure.

Buyers will also still have to commission and pay for valuations if they borrow more than 80 per cent of the value of the property - which most first-time buyers do.

VAT from the packs is expected to earn the Treasury £111million a year - the Government has been accused of using it as another stealth tax.

Ministers insist home information packs will transform the buying and selling of houses by adding a new certainty to the process.

The reforms, which come into force next June, shift the responsibility for gathering information from the buyer to the seller.

At present buyers can pay for a survey but find their money has been wasted if no deal is agreed. The Government, which is backed by consumer groups, says £1million a day is lost this way. But research shows that nearly two-thirds of mortgage lenders think the packs will have a negative impact on the housing market.

Rather than speeding up transactions, they will slow the process down, they fear.

There is also expected to be an artificial "bubble" in the market, with owners rushing to sell homes in the two months before the June deadline and a dramatic fall-off immediately afterwards.

The Communities and Local Government Department rejected the criticisms last night.

A spokesman said: "If you are buying a house at the moment, you will probably have a middle level of survey which wouldn't look at things like subsidence or flooding.

"If a home condition report identifies a potential problem with flooding or subsidence it could identify that it needs to be looked at further.

"On subsidence, we are developing a gold standard search and when that has been developed we will seriously consider making it a required component."

The spokesman said the 28-day rule would not affect people taking their house off the market while a sale was being negotiated.

The spokesman said: "If a sale falls through, people will not have to update their packs unless the information is by that stage three months old. The

28-day rule will only apply if a house is taken off the market for other reasons, such as someone going on holiday."

Housing minister Yvette Cooper said: "Which?, Friends of the Earth and the WWF all back these plans.

"The National Association of Estate Agents are against them. It's shocking that David Cameron's Conservatives are still backing vested interests rather than consumers and first-time buyers."

===

[Guy King]

The message from Tim S contains these words:

That seems an awful lot of money for a cursory survey done by someone in a hurry that excludes lots of userful information and, most likely, has sufficient get-out clauses that the firm preparing it never need stand by a word of it.

"Housing minister Yvette Cooper said: "Which?, Friends of the Earth and the WWF all back these plans."

What on earth's it go to do with FoE and WWF?

[Owain]

If they want to add certainty to the process they should make offer and acceptance legally and immediately binding on both parties, as it is in Scotland.

FotE and WWF are obviously the people to ask about house buying.

Of course most properties in Scotland are sold without the use of Estate Agents at all...

Owain

[Tim S]

As I've said before, for all the horror stories about surveyors, Home Inspectors will drop the bar to an all time low...

I read it as "WTF" first time, which sort of made more sense ;->

Cheers

Tim

PS

The FoE interest might be due to the real reason for the HIP - so that the EU directive on getting an energy rating on every dwelling can be realised. Along with the other real reason, so that Gordon Brownstuff can make a few quid in VAT.

[Andrew Gabriel]

On the radio, it said there's a fine of £200/day for the time between when you first made it known to any potential buyer the house is for sale, and the time you get a sellers pack in place. Originally, it was going to be a one-off £500 fine, but as that's less than the seller's pack, I guess they thought people would go for the fine instead.

It is difficult to find any body it has got something to do with which backs these plans, so you have to start looking around for bodies it's got nothing to do with to try and scrape together any credibility.

[Huge]

But without the "Offers in excess of" nonsense, please.

Hair splitting. Solicitors functionally act as Estate Agents.

HIPs are obvious cack, all the same.

[dom]

What I've heard of the energy rating scheme (which is presumably the FotE interest),

Loft insulation, tick box. Double glazing, tick box. Cavity wall insulation, tick box. Condensing boiler, tick box. Energy saving lightbulbs, tick box. etc.

i.e. no attempt to look at the actual u value of a particular house (and calculated u-values aren't terribly accurate), or any real impression of how energy efficent it actually is.

What you get is a simpletons assesment. I expect the rest the buyers pack to be the same inane statements of the bleeding obvious. And of course the actual contract of sale will (as now) state "there are no terms, representations, descriptions or warranties other than those appearing in this contract". So whatever the pack has told you, there's no gaurantee that's what you get.

[Derek ^]

From:

" Yvette Cooper says: (on her cannabis use) "I did try cannabis while at university, like a lot of students at that time, and it is something that I have left, you know, behind and it was several years ago."

Others say: Simon Sebag Montefiore, the Sunday Times: She is the "dazzling star of the Blairite nomenklatura." "

What more can one say ?

DG

[Owain]

It's no dafter than "offers under"

Yebbut it does take a teensy weensy bit more training to be a solicitor than it does to be an estate agent. And why pay two firms if the job can be done better by one?

I wonder how much NAEA are expecting their members to make from HIPs ... less than £111 million perhaps, so less of a vested interest than the Government has.

Owain

[Steve Firth]

Of course, it's Blair's idea, pushed through without thought. And it all stems from his pique at being the worst buyer and seller of houses in the UK. He lost a bomb on his in Islington because he sold too early, got out of housing then overpaid to get back into it. The man is a grade A f****it.

He hopes that by creating these HIPs that it will stop people making what he sees as excessive profits on house sales (i.e. more than he's ever managed to make).

[Huge]

Yes it is. The "excess" varies dramatically from place to place, and given the "sealed bid" method of buying houses, it serves neither buyer, who cannot raise their bid, and may overbid dramatically, nor seller, who cannot play buyers off against one another to get the best price.

Both true, but that's not what you said.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

What a strange way of thinking. If you want to auction a property you still can. But the Scottish way means a total commitment from both buyer and seller - non of this nonsense you get in England of offers being accepted then reneged, or buyers pulling out because of a chain, etc.

[Tim S]

Yes, I thought I remembered seeing a one off fine of a few hundred (more like 250-300 I thought).

When I just checked a copy of the act today (I don't know if it was the final copy - just one google came up with), it said fine not exceeding level 5.

Level 5 is currently upto 5000 quid. One off.

The "per day" is certainly news to me...

Cheers

Tim

[Tim S]

So that's a quality report then...

There would be so many ways to make it partially allude to being worthwhile...

PIR the electrics (there is a working standard for this)

Do something like a "landlords" on the gas, ditto standard

Give an Environmental Agency basic report on flooding risk if in a relevant area.

Trace the planning applications (failed or successful) and building regs applications for the property.

I'm not saying I agree with doing the above - but it would add some tangible value to the report...

Cheers

Tim

[Huge]

Not at all. We've been seriously looking at moving to Scotland when I retire, and I can honestly say that I think their system is no better than ours.

Actually, all it needs in England is for the offer and acceptance to be legally binding (which you could argue it already is.) I've known people to drop out after *exchange*, which is definitely breach of contract, and no-one *does* anything about it. Why not sue? That would smarten people's thinking up a tad.

[Steve Firth]

I got around to liking the French/Italian system which involves creating a heads of agreement between seller and buyer and putting down a deposit. The seller is then bound to either sell at the price agreed or to forfeit 5x the deposit. This does allow the seller some flexibility, because they can still "gazump" if the increase in value is worth it, but it discourages ditching someone who has invested a lot in the process and if one chooses the deposit carefully can ensure that the buyer recovers all fees in the event of a gazump. Obviously if one really want to secure a property one divvies up a deposit of >20%.

[mogga]

Which of course people take with them when they move...

No. It won't say whether things are installed right.

using a heat viewer you'll not know whether your insulation is intact.