Trade and representative bodies representing the legal, surveying, estate agency and property management sectors, including the Conveyancing Association, last week launched the fifth iteration of the BASPI – Buyer’s and Seller’s Property Information form.

The BASPI, developed by the upfront information working group of the Home Buyers and Sellers Group (HBSG), is a ‘single source of truth’ dataset, designed to include all the information required on a property when it is put on the market for sale.

Split into two parts, Part A covers the disclosure of material facts required by Regulations, while Part B includes additional information required for the legal process. Information provided in the BASPI allows the seller to ensure their property is both ‘Market Ready’ and ‘Sale Ready’.

Part A asks for information regarding disputes and complaints, alterations and changes, notices, specialist issues, fixtures and fittings, utilities and services, insurance, boundaries, rights and informal arrangements, and any other issues affecting the property. Part B covers legal ownership, legal boundaries, services crossing other property, energy, guarantees, warranties and indemnity insurances, occupiers, and completion and moving.

This new version of the BASPI follows the annual review of the information, undertaken via the HBSG Steering Group, and co-ordinated by the Conveyancing Association.

Amendments to Part A of this iteration of the BASPI cover a number of additional information requests such as: freehold shares, details of any reserve fund and any annual contributions, whether the property is within the ULEZ area in London, how many storeys in the building, and whether it includes any commercial property.

There are also specific new questions related to any title defect insurance policies on the property, if it is within an area of unrestricted mobile phone coverage, whether there are any air/water or ground source heat pumps, whether any known risk of coastal erosion affects the property or its boundary, and if there is any step-free access from the street or throughout the property,

The latest version of the BASPI can be found via the HBSG website here, while the freely-available BASPI Schema can be found here.

The Conveyancing Association is also urging its membership, and all property market stakeholders, to engage with the recently-announced Inquiry from the Levelling Up Committee, on ‘Improving the home buying and selling process’. Full details of the Inquiry can be found here.

The Inquiry is seeking written evidence across a number of key areas within the process, namely: the transaction process itself, information provision, and conveyancers’ role. The CA will be issuing its own response, and is inviting feedback from member firms, and encouraging them to also provide their own evidence to the Inquiry.

Beth Rudolf, Director of Delivery at the Conveyancing Association, commented:

“Each year, via the steering group of the HBSG, the CA co-ordinates a fundamental and complete review of the content of the BASPI, to ensure it is as up to date as possible, that we are covering off all information requests we should be in today’s property market, and that it contains to be fit for purpose for all those who use, and rely, upon it.

“I’m pleased to say that, following this review, we have been able to update and include a number of amendments within Part A of the BASPI. This is hugely important as it helps identify the material information relevant to the property that the seller is aware of. Of course, the title and authority information will need to be reviewed by the conveyancing firm as part of the due diligence process to identify the relevant information via the Local, Water, Mining (where relevant) and Environmental authorities.

“Our freely-available BASPI Schema allows all the amendments to this version of the BASPI to be seen on the webforms, while there is also a new pdf, kindly put together by Advanced Legal, with form fields to enable those with accessibility issues, which also includes all the questions.

“We, at the CA, would also like to draw attention to the recently-announced Governmental Inquiry from the Levelling Up Committee on ‘Improving the home buying and selling process’ which will provide a further opportunity to feed conveyancing firms’ views in order to deliver the outcomes we believe will be most beneficial for our industry and our clients.

“The CA will be providing its own written response, and we are open to feedback from members, and would also encourage them to respond to the Inquiry directly.”

The Conveyancing Association membership is made up of the top 200 Solicitors and Licensed Conveyancers, who collectively conduct approximately 25% of all property transactions and 70% of all remortgage transactions in England and Wales.