UK Property Blog, Housing Market News and Articles

The recent OFT report into estate agency has led Gary Smith, president of the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) to write an open letter to the Office of Fair Trading regarding possible loosening of regulations to further facilitate the involvement of Tesco in the property market.

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Since the ‘renowned’ training provider Property Professionals went into administration there has been a flurry of people and organisations offering advice, guidance and support.

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The property market is starting to recover from the recent housing crash witnessed and experienced around the world. However, it is a start of a recovery and certainly in our minds has not ‘recovered’ as some would like us to believe will happen very shortly or has actually happened and we just missed it.

The economic meltdown caused by the banking crisis will no doubt continue to affect the property market for some time (unless it was really caused by the introduction of HIPs) though the phoenix could rise out of the flames with some new and improved solid foundations. This possibility does potentially bring some questions to the forefront;

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Grant Shapps MP office contacted us after a recent article ‘Conservative Home Information Pack policy to stall property market?’ where we posed a few questions. Grant Shapps office offered to provide answers to these questions, which we were pleased to accept.

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The Conservative HIP policy is being criticised by a number of industry professionals at present and quite ironically from both Pro-HIP and Anti-HIP supporters. The common ground which is uniting these two groups is ambiguity, uncertainty and lack of clarity from Mr Grant Shapps on his intentions and implementation plans if they were to win the next election.

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David Pett has started a pro-HIP organisation named the HIP Reform Group which has been recently promoted to many DEAs, HIP providers and industry professionals.

What made you establish the HIP Reform Group?

David Pett stated,

“I took this action as I became frustrated by the political spin and half truths emanating from the Conservative Party and how I feel the end user i.e. the consumer is being misled.

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Two new groups / associations have launched this week aimed at specific property professionals namely HIP Providers, Energy Assessors and the infamous Home Inspectors.

They are the The Federation of Property Information Providers (FPIP) and the HIP Reform Group though both are separate entities.

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The Nationwide have released data indicating that house prices rose by 0.5% during November 2009. The data seemingly supports house price forecasters who expect that the rate of house price rises will diminish over coming months with possible retreat of prices during 2010.

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IPSA have today released a list of Local Authorities that they are advising members NOT to buy official searches from, to ensure Home Information Pack compliance.

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The Association of Independent Personal Search Agents (IPSA) has today completed a partial survey of its members in relation to their combined burden of bad debt. The survey has revealed the amount IPSA members have written-off since the introduction of Home Information Packs due to non-payment, liquidation, alleged fraudulent trading and improper business conduct.

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