Flaw within the Home Information Packs legislation

Better buying, simpler selling is the song from a Government insistent on Home Information Packs – unfortunately this is not strictly the case;

The introduction of Home Information Packs is supposed to make things easier, but there is a glaring error in the legislation – instead of making things easier they are in fact inviting it to become more expensive to buy and sell property.

One of the many elements of the Home Information Pack is the local searches that are requested by the mortgage lender. Under the new plans these will be part of the sellers pack and will be paid for by the prospective vendor. These will be available to the buyer and in principle save the money and time taken in conveyancing. The practise though is completely different when you understand that mortgage lenders insist on local searches being up to date i.e. not more than six months old and some lenders even insists on them being less than 3 months old on completion of contracts. This now means that the vendor will have to pay for these searches and unless they sell the property very quickly so will the buyer to satisfy the lender.

“This glaring mistake is typical of a flawed system” commented Bletsoe “This has been rushed through despite the government knowing that this is a problem and it beggars belief that they have pushed it through Parliament with such a fundamental problem”. Bletsoe concluded “The fact is that this fee goes to local government and national government have passed a law which may lead to buyers and sellers paying for it twice. It should be re-done for free!”

With only 31 days to go before the Home Information Packs are introduced surely the government need to postpone its implementation and sort out this problem.

Steven Bletsoe - Homefinder UK