Nick Raynsford, the housing minister, had one reason to look pleased with himself as Parliament assembled for its dash to the general election: he was elevated to the Privy Council in the New Year's Honours. But it was about the only bouquet being thrown to him. Most of his recent time has been spent illustrating that oldest of political truths: that it is very easy to please nobody.
The Rural White Paper with its sections on rural housing was greeted with polite if distant applause; a disgruntled Lord Rogers has been complaining at the dilution of his proposals for urban regeneration; the long-delayed announcement on new housing demand in the South East has been assaulted simultaneously as an unprincipled assault on the green fields of England and as a pathetic failure to address real housing needs; and now the Homes Bill has run into a barrage of criticism right across the chamber.
The contentious part of the Homes Bill is the provision requiring the seller of a house to provide a "seller's pack" of essential information about the property, designed to make the whole transaction quicker and easier.
What precisely is to go in the seller's pack will be subject to regulation, but the heart of it is a home condition survey - not, be it noted, a structural survey. The provisions will not be brought into effect until 2003, so lengthy consultations are promised.
Introducing his bill Raynsford waxed with dark lyricism about the excessive length of time it took to purchase property in the UK and the 28% failure rate between acceptance of an offer and exchange of contracts.
Denmark and New South Wales (to say nothing of Bristol where free packs were tested) were happy examples of saner systems.
The cost of the pack, Raynsford argued, would be about £500 (some of the solicitors in the House counter-bid at £700), and quite a lot of the items it would contain were already needed by the seller under the present system.
He ran into two basic objections. The first came from MPs worried about places where the housing market had effectively collapsed and houses could be sold for a few thousand pounds if at all.
The £500 or £700 charge on the seller would be a significant disincentive to sell at all, they argued. They urged Raynsford to exempt certain properties: indeed, there was one demand to exempt all Band 1 Council Tax properties - in some northern cities amounting to two-thirds of all houses. Another suggestion was for all homes in assisted areas to be exempt.
The minister will be wise if he resists these siren calls. There is a real danger of labelling some houses as too grotty even to merit a seller's pack: short of hanging a notice in the front window proclaiming "awful property, do not buy" it is difficult to envisage a more condemnatory label. If he is forced to provide exemptions the index of social deprivation which is based on council wards may be the easiest way forward.
The other objections focussed on the details of the proposals. Transactions were slow because most buyers and sellers were, in their own right, sellers and buyers in the chain: they were not moving into or out of rented accommodation which was the case abroad.
Most solicitors and licensed conveyancers already used a form of seller's pack including a contract, copies of title documents, copies of pre-contract enquiries, fixtures and fittings lists, documents relating to planning and Building Regulations, and warranties and guarantees - in short pretty well everything except details of the local search and a home condition survey.
Local and Land Registry searches would speed up in any case because of advancing technology and the purchaser's solicitors needed to initiate searches in case further information was needed.
So three different surveyors could end up looking at a property - representing, respectively, the seller, the buyer, and the buyer's lender. Buyers would additionally want a full structural survey. The report could become out of date. And why was it necessary to have a seller's pack for a house under 10 years old with a NHBC guarantee? Finally the bill came under attack for proposing to make it a criminal offence meriting a fine of up to £2000 to fail to produce a seller's pack.
In short, here was a mighty piece of intervention for, at best, minor gain and at worst dislocation. A useful bit of lubrication to the marketplace or the nanny state strikes again? As the Government gallops through the committee stage of the bill under Raynsford's beaming gaze we shall attempt to find out.
Source
Building Homes
