The government’s home buying proposals revisit some old ground – and conveyancers are weary

The recent announcement that the Government is, once again looking into improving the home buying and selling process is particularly poignant for me, because as most of you know, I owned a Home Information Pack production business back in 2010.

Whilst the outlined new proposals don’t replicate exactly what was in a HIP, they do come close. My personal thoughts are that if HIPs had not been scrapped, but suspended, reviewed and improved 15 years ago we would not be where we are now. But that, as they say, is water under the bridge.

At the moment the Government is consulting on its proposals, and they may never even come to fruition. The reactions I have seen from conveyancers so far, are mainly as expected, muted, suspicious, and doubtful. Rather than comment on the practicalities of what is being proposed (numerous others are doing that), I am going to look at matters from a few slightly different angles.

Firstly, via the survey we are carrying out with our members:

• 62% of respondents say that conveyancing is challenging, and more difficult than before
• 27% of respondents consider the position to be critical, with the profession in decline
• Only 2% of respondents were optimistic about the future of conveyancing

At our conference last year, when I asked over 200 conveyancers if they knew then what they know now about their jobs, would they have become conveyancers, less than 10% said yes.

The above stats speak volumes, and when the Government is looking through the consultation responses it needs to also consider that we are we losing experienced conveyancers much faster than we are gaining them. Conveyancing is not a career choice for many, and the relentless mission creep being experienced by conveyancers not only needs to stop, but be reduced, now!

Secondly, my son and his wife are currently trying to buy their first home. Two transactions have collapsed (costing them thousands of pounds). The first one collapsed because vital (negative) information was disclosed very late in the process, the second one because of the condition of the property. In my opinion, more information provided earlier would have softened the fallout from the first collapse, and a seller’s condition report would have stopped them even making an offer on the second property.

Thirdly, these proposals, good, bad, or indifferent will go nowhere unless they are mandated, and at the moment I can’t see that happening.

And last but not least, the Government needs a Housing Minister that stays in place for more than a blink of the eye. In the last decade, we have nearly double the number of Housing Ministers than we have had have actors playing The Doctor in Dr Who, and that is a lot!