MSE News: Home Information Packs scrapped

A rather stupid move.
These packs are extremely useful for all buyers. It's puts the onus on the seller to provide information for all prospective buyers rather than hiding and hoping something bad in the searches wont put you off once you've spent some money.
It also tells a buyer that the person selling the house is serious and not just speculating and wasting your time as they have had to spend money to market their house where as now you can do it for free!!
Now a house many have many prospective buyers doing the same searches against it to find out the same information which puts them off. I suppose it's more money to the various agencies behind those searches.
With a HIP the seller's cards were on the table and any dodgy goings on were there for all to read.

As a buyer I always asked for the HIP of property I was interested in. They told me many useful things and I found details in more than one which put me off the house. To the extent that I would not have continued even if I had to pay for the searches. Only that I would have wasted a significant amount of money due to either the seller's dishonesty, or lack of their own searching when they bought it themselves.



Now you will have buyers who are worried about throwing several hundred pounds down the drain on searches whilst strugling to obtain a deposit in the first place.
All this has suceeded in doing is upping the barrier to FTB's and making it significantly more expensive to purchase a house for all buyers. The average buyer wont be making just a single set of searches.

Labour had many policies which were plain wrong regarding the housing market, but this was the shining beacon of light in a sea of bad decisions and our new masters have just gone and sunk it.

I only paid for mine on Tuesday and they left five minutes ago after doing it. £340 down the drain!!!!!!