The property industry has broadly welcomed the government’s decision to consult on major reforms to the home buying and selling process in England and Wales.
The proposed changes aim to modernise a system widely seen by professionals as outdated. However, some legal experts have expressed concern that rushing the reforms – particularly the requirement for sellers and agents to provide upfront property information – could lead to unintended consequences if not implemented carefully.
Liz Ramsden, a residential property lawyer at Knights, warns the proposals risk repeating the issues that came from the scrapped Home Information Pack (HIP) system from 2007, and urges the government to think carefully to avoid making these mistakes again.
Ramsden said: “The proposals announced by the government are well-intentioned and come at a time when the housing market desperately needs reform, but against the backdrop of a housing crisis, there’s a real risk they’re being rushed.
“These new plans sound strikingly similar to the old Home Information Pack system, which ultimately proved too costly and complex for sellers. Back then, many sellers paid hundreds of pounds to compile legal searches and documents upfront, only for the information to go out of date before a sale was agreed, forcing them to pay again.
“The new proposals risk repeating those mistakes. And the idea of binding contracts is particularly concerning. What would happen if someone were to lose their job or find issues following the surveys and checks on the property? The system needs reform, but it has to protect consumers as much as it promotes efficiency.
“To avoid another failed rollout, the government must learn from the last attempt and ensure information packs are digital, low-cost, and reusable, with clear validity periods to stop data expiring. It also needs to make legal advice mandatory before any contract becomes binding. Without those safeguards, the reforms could once again burden sellers and confuse buyers rather than speeding up the process.”
In response to the government’s proposed reform to the homebuying system, Lucy McCallum, head of residential conveyancing, and property specialist, at law firm WSP Solicitors, believes that giving buyers the option to enter into binding contracts early on in the process before all legal checks have been completed, “is unlikely to work in practice”.
She explained: “The government’s proposal to mandate upfront property information is a positive step towards tackling the inefficiencies and delays in the current home buying system in England and Wales. By including key details like title issues, leasehold information and any other potential issues, buyers can make more informed decisions and raise issues with their proposed lender early on to ensure they are able to proceed. It also flags issues early on giving both parties the benefit of greater transparency and certainty. If implemented properly, these reforms could help reduce transaction times and save both parties significant costs.
“Giving buyers the option to enter into binding contracts early on in the process before all legal checks have been completed, is unlikely to work in practice. Particularly where a buyer has a lender. If a lender’s requirements cannot be met once all due diligence has been completed, the buyers would be bound to complete, and unable to fund the purchase and they would risk losing their deposit. We would need to see more details on what is being proposed.”
Andrew Groocock, COO of estate agency at Knight Frank has welcomed the opportunity to speed up the transactional side of the home buying process, but he believes putting all of the onus on estate agents is not the answer.
He commented: “While the proposals’ ambition is commendable, there needs to be a complete overhaul of the Land Registry so that the data on it is accurate to at least a month rather than three-four months delayed. The ability to provide searches needs to be significantly improved, there are boroughs in London where local authority searches consistently take over forty working days – this needs to be digitised and instantly available, but that change sits with the government to invest in the correct solution to speed things up.
“There is a danger that the proposals simply pass all of the accountability and costs onto the vendor and estate agent. Under the current system the time delay sits between the offer acceptance and exchange period, the government’s proposals will simply shift this delay to the period before any property can be launched to market.
“We would encourage the government to consult with all those working at the sharp end of the industry in order to make meaningful, effective change which will benefit home buyers and sellers for the long term.”
100% agree with this.
The system is in need of improvement – but this doesn’t feel quite right.
I think this government are just try for quick wins – and reintroducing a HIPs style solution is not going to do it.
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Totally agree but there is one major problem that everyone has overlooked.
Whom in the current Government is capable of over hauling the current system.
It’s like one step forwards, three steps and more backwards at the moment.
Let’s just hope this new guy can get something sorted but like labour’s pledge ‘ we’ll ban section 21 notices on our first day in office’ is anything to go by I’m not holding my breath !
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You’re right, BillyRay — there might not be anyone *within* government capable of overhauling the system, but there is someone *outside* government who already has.
Most people won’t know the full Patagonia story — Yvon Chouinard, the mountaineer who founded the company, proved that real change doesn’t need permission. He built Patagonia around responsibility rather than profit, even giving the company away so its future profits fund environmental protection. He didn’t wait to be consulted; he created a working model that made the old one obsolete.
That’s what this moment reminds me of. I didn’t wait for a consultation either. I have six years of receipts showing that **Material Information** became *a thing* in September 2019, sat in a car park in Stockport. Everything the government is now proposing — short of condition reports — was already live by 2020, and there are readers here who can confirm it.
It’s worth remembering that in **2023**, DLUHC was given **£3 million** to deliver exactly what the now Labour-controlled MLHG are consulting on — but the election scuppered that progress. So here we are, starting again… only to risk having it all halted once more when we inevitably end up with *Worzel Gummidge for PM* at the next election.
Peter Knight’s *Project 28* is setting out to achieve what was already demonstrated between 2020 and 2022, when we showed — through more than **1,400 completions** — that a **minimum of three weeks** could be removed from the post–memorandum of sale process.
Yesterday I made another breakthrough. The “wormhole” I opened in 2020 — taking agents’ listings beyond the black hole of Rightmove — now connects directly into another dimension: **large-language-model interrogation of material information**, drawn from *trusted, authoritative sources*, many of them government databases themselves.
In short, I’ve already built what government is now consulting on — and it works simply, effectively, and **exactly as agents would wish it to work**: faster, fairer, and without undermining the **principle or profits of agency**.
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Completely agree. The government need to sit with long term successful Estate Agents that specialise in residential sales to use their knowledge and experience to ascertain where changes can be made. HIPS were a flawed system introduced by the last Labour Govt in order to get EPC’s rolled out. They failed as the motivation was wrong and the implementation flawed. Our land ownership goes back to the feudal system. This means that HIPS work well as long as there’s clean title but as soon as there’s a problem the same time delays will occur. Unfortunately our legal process for conveyancing isn’t black and white – it’s grey. I have come across so many instances where two solicitors both believe they are right and it’s left up to the estate agent to negotiate a way through. It is too opinion orientated to be able to work properly and therefore the expense of HIP style packages becomes worthless if there are still inconsistencies and arguments to be had. Same goes for surveyors. Two surveyors can survey the same property on the same day and write extraordinarily different reports. How will the system allow for a buyer having their own survey done that is completely different to the owners’? There are subtle ways to be able to speed things up but HIP style is not one of them. Most problems come from historic issues that have no standard way of rectifying them and are reliant on solicitors sorting them out at whatever cost they want to impose. Conveyancing problems are a cash cow for the legal business. If it’s the lawyers who are asked to sort it out I can’t see them
Coming up with a cheap viable solution. You need to ask the problem solvers. Also the need for clarity over intro fees is required. Too many conveyancing sausage factories are gaining business by paying brokers and agents for intros rather than by quality work. More often than not unqualified legal executives or junior conveyancers are left to do the work and just don’t know what they’re doing. There are some simple ways to speed this up.
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EAMD172 this is a great point ‘Our land ownership goes back to the feudal system.’ and it needs to be brought up to date. Whilst reviewing the whole process might and will be painful, it has got to be an improvement on what currently exists. The whole process needs to be brought up to date, which will take time. I have read nothing but complaining from across the sector about the current process.
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Things aren’t helped when a firm what’s to.. hmmm simplify the process… has half the work done in India.. most their clients won’t be aware.
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I can’t remember the last property I sold that didn’t require an indemnity, with lawyers, buyer’s and seller’s questioning who should pay for it
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Sadly, Lucy is completely wrong on this and needs to look at the reservation agreements already being used successfully by around 1,000 agents across the UK.
At Cooper Adams, we’ve been using them for years and they absolutely work in practice. The key is how they are structured. Ours are fair, transparent and clearly set out what happens if someone withdraws without good reason. They even cover situations where a lender will not lend on the property, so buyers are not unfairly penalised.
This early commitment reduces fall throughs and removes the uncertainty that so often drags chains down. Combined with our upfront information packs, it is a proven way to speed up transactions and give everyone far greater confidence in the move.
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How often are they used Shaun?
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About 90% of our sales have Gazeal Reservation agreements on. We’ve used them successfully for the past five years. https://cooper-adams.com/blog/cooper-adams-secure-reservation-agreements/4616
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