A new TA6 Property Information Form that supports National Trading Standards material information guidance has been released by the Law Society of England and Wales.
It includes the information that the National Trading Estate and Letting Agency Team (NTSELAT) says should be disclosed by estate agents on property listings.
NTSELAT guidance advises sellers to contact their solicitor at an early stage, and sellers may therefore ask for help to complete a TA6 form earlier in the process so that more information about the property can be used for marketing.
The Law Society president, Nick Emmerson, said: “Earlier contact between sellers and their solicitors may provide an opportunity to address any issues that could cause delays in the sale process at a later date,” said Law Society president Nick Emmerson.
“We hope that the TA6 will help facilitate the flow of information from marketing a property by estate agents through to the legal process.
“The aim is that having better informed buyers could help reduce both the time the process takes and the number of sales that fall through.”
Updates to the TA6 form include:
+ Property details: including the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and council tax band of the property.
+ Tenure, ownership and charges: whether the property is freehold, leasehold, shared ownership, or commonhold; and details of the costs, such as ground rent and service charges.
+ Parking: including the cost of parking permits and whether the property has electric vehicle (EV) charging.
+ Building safety: providing details of any defects or hazards at the property and whether essential works have been recommended and carried out.
+ Restrictive covenants that affect the use of the property.
+ Flood risk and coastal erosion: to establish what the flood risk is for the area around the property, whether any defences have been installed, and if the property is near the coast, whether there is any known risk of coastal erosion.
+ Accessibility: the adaptations or features that have been made to provide easier access to and within the property.
+ Coalfield or mining area: identifying if the property is impacted by any past or present mining activity.
+ Solar panels: providing details about the installation that a buyer/lender will need to know.
+ Services connected: these now include air and ground heat pumps.
+ Drainage and sewerage: additional questions about where the sewerage system discharges to and whether it has an infiltration system.
+ Japanese knotweed: refinement of the question to incorporate the area adjacent to or abutting the property.
The TA6 Explanatory Notes for Sellers and Buyers and the TA7 Leasehold Information Form have also been updated.
The TA forms are available from Law Society licensed third-party suppliers.
This comment has been posted by legal trainer Stephen Desmond on LinkedIn:
“The new TA6 is surely overkill. How can this be in the best interests of clients or conveyancers? It consists of just over 6,400 words and, on a quick count, contains more than 180 questions (including requests for further particulars). It is almost double the length of the 4th edition of the form. Moreover, the updated Explanatory Notes now comprise more than 8,500 words. Then, if you are selling a leasehold property, there is the updated TA7 to contend with. And, now sellers are expected to assume the role of the property lawyer by answering numerous questions relating to the title of the property! Not to mention the duplication (e.g. information about mining areas).”
My response was:
“Questions like the above Stephen have been batted backwards and forwards for ages now, but, we are were we are.”
My viewpoint now is (and has been since we knew the writing was on the wall), if I was still at the front line, what would I be doing, not just to protect my business, but to improve and grow it, and offer the best service possible to my seller and buyer clients.”
Now is surely the time for agents and conveyancers to be working in perfect harmony?
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Stephen Desmond is spot on as usual.
Conveyancers and estate agents have been battling since before covid just to keep the public/housing market moving, whilst hurdles keep being put in front of us.
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The current norm of a typical solicitor starting work after a sale is agreed and taking forever with buyers finding out after four months about a right of way is useless. Sales falling through due to the speed of transactions and slow information may benefit a solicitor that charges per transaction but terrible for the public and awful for estate agents. The only way forward is maximum upfront information, ready before a property is put on the market. If a buyers has all this info there won’t be any late surprises. If the info is comprehensive enough it will reduce the two or three months of enquiries taken. Like Australia more sales could exchange two weeks after a price is agreed if this is all done.
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You are so right and by the seller conveyancer providing all of the information upfront the buyer’s conveyancer has far more chance of avoiding 5 of the 10 causes for claim that I have just listen to on the excellent Howden’s webinar on PII risk this morning:-
1. Failure to recommend/carry out searches (eg mining areas) and enquiries or following up on results
2. Omitting to check that the intended use of the property is permitted
3. Failing to spot lack of legal access
4. Failing on advising on restrictive covenants
5. Failing to advise on lease clauses eg onerous ground rent (not as many as expected)
All of these are material information so an estate agent has a legal requirement to disclose the information and because the searches shoud be bought and reviewed by the seller’s conveyancer to identify the material information and then reviewed by the buyer’s conveyancer (who can rely on searches which meet the PBBS Search Code or provided by the relevant Authority) the issues are far less likley to be missed.
The other good news is that 30% of the Buying and Selling Property Information dataset can be pre-populated by authority data removing the need for the seller to complete it from memory, not necessarily understanding what the questions actually refers to.
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It’s all well and good but we can’t even get these conveyancing sausage factories to do the job quickly once a sale is agreed. Can you imagine how hard it will be to instruct them to get all this information if there is NO urgency. And then their compliance teams will have to do the job again once the paralegals have not completed the job properly. Bring back HIP’s! But do it properly.
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Agreed most lawyers are utterley useless
They should ONLY get paid if a sale completes
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🙂 but their job is to identify if a property is not suitable for the lender or the buyer so by doing their jobn properly they would not get paid. 😀
At least the Material Information means that the right buyer, with the right lender for the right price is found . Where local networks are working together to get all Upfront information (title, searches, Property Information) transaction times are halfed and fall throughs and dis-instructions plummet. That works magic on the pipeline turn, customer satisfaction and reducing chasing.
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And what about the info in the LPE1 forms? Managing agents won’t even talk to Estate Agents let alone give them the information required. And self managed blocks? There needs to be onus put on the management of blocks to provide the required information.
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Yep, that’s why the seller should instruct their lawyer day 1! Othewrwise it adds 50+ days to the transaction time. If information changes the seller will get notice of it from the Lease Adminstraor because it will be a s.20 notice, service charge demand or notificaiton of a complaint.
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Come on guys, this is just the next step towards the inevitable return of the Home Information Pack.
Which was a good idea, but the timing was wrong. We are now much further advanced on the IT front, making HIPs a more realistic proposal – and to be fair it should help EVERYONE involved with the sale and purchase of a property.
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MI is a mess brought in without proper consultation. It needs to be put on hold until all the errors and problems conveyancers have noted and brought to everyone’s attention have been ironed out.
As usual Stephen Desmond, the real conveyancers champion, has summed the situation up perfectly.
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I heard the current new guide MI has had six years of consultation. CPR law on this came out 16 years ago, shall we kick the can down the road again? Of course now it’s out there it can be revised.
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Conveyancing is getting slower every year, yes this may be due to Law Society and Lenders’ hoops to jump through but solicitors don’t seem to want change. When I started in estate agency over 30 years ago I heard e-conveyancing was coming, a much faster service. I’m still waiting! It has got slower. Solicitors want MI to be put on hold. A transaction could be done in a few weeks but the powers that be aren’t interested. Maybe next year six months could be the norm waiting until exchange. The public deserve better than using the slowest conveyancing system in the world.
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