The Government yesterday made a dramatic u-turn in connection with the forthcoming home information packs.
The new pack was supposed to help speed up the sales process but had various requirements in it that had to be paid for by the seller (vendor) such as home condition report, energy efficiency, land registry searches and more.
The u-turn has removed the need to supply a home conditions report with many pundits predicting this to be the end of the packs as many are against then anyway.
Our view
We have always been against them as we believe that no adviser would accept liability for his client buying a property on searches and research that he has not done.
The simplest way to speed up the process of buying and selling is to use a USA style escrow account. In this way a deposit is placed in an escrow bank account and if you do not purchase the property quickly enough e.g. within a month or if you pull out, you lose the escrow deposit. This compensates the seller if you have not already arranged adequate finance.