Thrifty Loans

The much-maligned Home Information Packs (HIPs) were meant to help speed up the sales of houses. However, so far they are having the opposite effect.

The Government claimed that the information in the packs would only take a week to pull together, but pack providers and estate agents say this has been unrealistic, and the packs are taking over a month to produce. Sellers have to collate the information in the packs, costing around £400, to pass to potential buyers. The packs contain all relevant documentation for a buyer to be able to make a purchase.

The major problem area is proving to be drainage searches, which provide full details of the drains of a property and a map showing water supply connection to the property. The slowdown is that water companies in some cases are taking longer than four weeks to send the information through, causing a serious delay to the HIP.

One company that produces HIPs is The Partnership. Spokesman Peter Ambrose said: “I’ve got a pile of packs sitting here waiting for a drainage report, some from August. It’s horrendous.”

The worst offender, according people in the know, is Southern Water which is responsible for more than a million homes. A spokesman there did admit that there had been problems, but extra staff have been hired to help. He said: “We have has a round a 40% increase in requests for searches compared to this time last year. In addition, the content required is more detailed so it takes longer to process the information and produce the searches.”

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors estimate that HIPs have caused a 10% fall in the number of properties coming to market since their inception on 1 August for four-bedrooms or more, and 10 September for properties with three bedrooms.

Housing Minister Yvette Cooper denied that HIPs were creating months of delay. She said: “In fact the average time taken to compile a HIP is five to seven days, far faster than it takes under the old system to gather the same information.” Another government worker said that most water companies are providing search information in less than a week