Problems loom for Home Information Packs

“Drop them now or risk damaging the market”- so say Peers.

Well that’s fairly damning. It would appear that one of the United Kingdom government’s flagship policies is in trouble. Well, there’s nothing new in that but except with this one it could have a knock on effect on every one of us.

You see a policy that is in trouble is the proposal full home information packs. Now students of political history might remember that the proposal for the Home Information Pack was a fairly key component of the New Labour election winning manifesto in 1997.

The idea was, in a nutshell, that home sellers would supply all salient information pertaining to their property in one slim dossier that they would then be able to supply to prospective buyers as a form of pre- legal document.

Became ultimately waltzed to try and stop the practice of gazumping, which is a practicing web by unscrupulous liars and settlers hijack the sale of a property driving the price higher by putting in a higher bid at the last minute.

This practice, government sources felt, was providing a dangerous side effect to the property market but now it would appear that the government potential remedy might prove to be more damaging.

Brilliant. Does it not to make you feel all the more comfortable knowing that we have the future well-being of our country in the hands of such splendid individuals who come up with such well thought out policies. The real problem with the Home Information Packs, it would appear is that nobody knew how much these packs were going to cost.

Now as part of a policy that was introduced to make selling your house easier and possibly cheaper this is a problem. It would appear that industry assessments were suggesting that sellers will have to pay out anything between £400 to £600 for their home information packs and, in some cases as much as £1000.

The other potential nail in the coffin of the policy was the fact that the government dropped the need to include a structural survey in the packs last year as a result of intense lobbying from banks and building societies. It would appear that mortgage lenders were not prepared to rely on a survey, paid for by the seller as the basis from which to lend large sums off money.

Well I could have told then that. How any idiot thought that the provider of a mortgage would rely on information from the seller of a property as the basis for an unbiased valuation is beyond me.

But then I’m not in Government and on the basis of lunacy like this, glad to be well away from it.

Stephen Morgan writes about a number of Internet Real Estate based issues such as Real Estate Investors, Home Finance and also about Insolvency Services UK and Foreclosure Issues too