Estate agents and property professionals are being encouraged to share their views on new government proposals aimed at transforming the home buying and selling process in England and Wales.
The Home Buying and Selling Reform and Material Information consultations opened at 9am this morning, with the government calling for input from across the sector. In particular, it is keen to hear from estate agents and others directly involved in property transactions.
As part of the proposed reforms, estate agents and sellers must publish information from searches and surveys before a property listing is published.
The idea is to allow buyers to see the physical condition, characteristics, and flood risk of the property online. The government hopes it will enable buyers to make informed decisions sooner and sellers will benefit from faster transactions, designed to result in fewer costly fall-throughs.
The full list of proposed mandatory upfront information includes: tenure, council tax band, EPC rating, property type, legal and transactional information such as title information and seller ID verification, leasehold terms, building safety data, standard searches, property condition assessments tailored to property age and type, service charges, planning consents, flood risk data, chain status, and clear floor plans.
Buyers and sellers will have the option to sign binding contracts that would end the practice of parties pulling out of agreements months into the process.
The transaction process will also see the deployment of digital tools – including digital property logbooks, digital ID verification, and standardised data sharing – enhancing transparency and security for buyers and sellers.
The government will also introduce mandatory qualifications and ‘Code of Practice’ for estate, letting and managing agents, driving high standards in the sector and increase trust in the industry.
The government will publish information on the services of estate agents and property lawyers, so consumers are well informed on how and where to get help.
The average time from instruction to completion is currently over five months, and the government estimates these reforms could speed up transactions by around four weeks.
The Home Buying and Selling Reform consultation launched can be found here.
The Material Information Consultation can also be found here. Material information in property listings. This further consultation will support estate agents with their legal responsibilities, including requirements under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. This will aim to help provide explicit guidance for estate agents on what information they should include in property listings.
Property industry responds to government’s home buying reform plans
Hahahahaha! Bear with me… Hahahahaha! This might take me a little while to get over.
Talk about rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic sinks. Or perhaps fiddling while Rome burns.
Get a freaking grip!
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Sorry, I should be a bit more positive, perhaps.
I get that we could do with a bit of a revamp.
But there are two things to consider:
1) This will distract us all while new taxes are introduced
2) There are way more important things for the Government to focus on and to be dealing with than tweaking the house buying process by potentially 4 weeks and £710. FFS
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On the plus side last time Yvette Cooper brought in the HIP’s everything went to **** and signalled the end of the Labour Government. The reason they were scrapped by the coalition was to remove costs from the housing market. Does this government actually want anyone to own their own home or be a private landlord or do they want to control everything. Five months is ridiculous for transactions but it was less than that when the HIPS were introduced so for the sake of a month it’s not worth it. That said, there is information that if made available prior to purchase, would help considerably and reduce aborted sales.
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Policymakers should be properly qualified and understand the wider impact of their decisions. They ought to focus on stabilising the country before introducing measures that risk disrupting the housing market again.
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Well, on the plus side, at least they do now appear to be going through the motions of garnering industry opinion instead of just ploughing ahead with the legislation with no consideration for consequences, as they did 20-odd years ago.
But nearly all the “case studies” which they cite happen to be from software service providers who have an obvious interest in their own package/service being identified as the “gold standard” for information interchange between all parties – Landmark, Moverly, Redbrik & ViewMyChain. I don’t have an axe to grind about any of these, but the ideal outcome would be for the MHCLG to publish an Open standard for EVERYONE to adhere to rather than going down any one provider’s proprietary route. This which would force the various commercial providers to make their systems able to talk to one another rather than trying to twist the arms of all agents & solicitors in the chain to sign up to use the same platform.
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Is there not more important issues to sort. Like, where is Ben Madden’s drivel of a diary for this week?!
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