There are at least two dates in my life I’ll never forget: 1st August 2007, and 28th July 2007. The first marked the official launch of Home Information Packs (HIPs), a policy shift that had the potential to modernise the conveyancing process. The second was the day I got married.
When the HIPs commencement date was unexpectedly brought forward by three months, I found myself cancelling my honeymoon in order to launch a HIP production business in partnership with Oyez. That’s how pivotal and personal HIPs became for me.
The concept behind HIPs was reasonably straightforward but ambitious: to improve transparency and efficiency in the home buying and selling process. By providing essential information upfront, including, Energy Performance Certificates, local authority searches, and title documents HIPs aimed to reduce transaction delays and mitigate issues like gazumping and gazundering.
However, anyone with practical conveyancing and home buying experience could see that the prescribed contents of HIPs would never realise those ambitions. Yet rather than dismissing them, I saw an opportunity: HIPs were a framework to be built upon.
My business model was simple: produce the basic core HIP swiftly and cost-effectively to allow marketing of the property to begin immediately. Then, drawing on 30 years of conveyancing experience, I would enhance each pack by adding key documents, such as missing transfers, guarantees and planning permissions transforming the basic core HIP into a pack that was as exchange ready as was possible.
And it began to work. Transactions were smoother. My long-term vision was to build a collaborative ecosystem in which agents and conveyancers worked together (ideally via our platform) to prepare properties for sale with minimal delay and maximum information and transparency.
But within three years, the government withdrew HIPs, swayed by political resistance and scepticism from parts of the property industry. The “anti-HIP” narrative prevailed, and with it, a promising avenue for reform was abandoned.
What Could Have Been?
Let’s reimagine a scenario in which HIPs had been allowed to evolve, assisted by practical insight and technology:
- Sellers would be accustomed to upfront costs, or deferral schemes, and would understand the value of early property sale preparation.
- Conveyancers could begin their work the moment a sale was agreed, or even earlier.
- Buyers and sellers would benefit from faster, less stressful transactions, encouraging more people to move, more often.
- Estate agents and law firms alike would enjoy quicker completions, improved cashflow, and higher client satisfaction.
- The pack could now also include a survey.
- Property logbooks and digital records would be commonplace.
- Agents chasing conveyancers (now at ridiculous and counter effective rate) would be rare rather than the norm.
- Conveyancers could be being instructed when a property is being first marketed, and on occasion even before the estate agent.
Moreover, material information requirements, now a source of confusion and inconsistency, would likely be embedded naturally within the evolved HIP framework. Instead, we are left retrofitting transparency into a system that still runs on outdated assumptions and fragmented workflows.
Addressing the Objections
Critics will say HIPs were too costly, too prone to obsolescence, and too complex for the average seller and buyer to understand. But these objections were never insurmountable.
Searches could be refreshed or insured. Costs could be structured flexibly. As familiarity grew, so too would public understanding. And more importantly, with HIPs in place, the real and numerous bottlenecks in the system, like slow managing agents, would have become more visible, prompting targeted reforms, possibly even government intervention.
A lost moment for progress – or was it?
The decision to suspend HIPs didn’t just stall a policy, it paused the evolution of an entire industry. What was needed wasn’t abandonment but adaptation. We lost the chance to modernise the home buying and selling process in a way that could have benefitted everyone: professionals and the public alike. HIPs, had they been allowed to mature, might have laid the foundation for a truly efficient, transparent, and user-centric property market. Instead, we’re left with an even slower cumbersome process, wondering what might have been.
Consider this though, the legal framework for HIPs still technically exists in the Housing Act 2004. It is therefore legally possible to reactivate the Home Information Pack requirement, because the enabling provisions in the Housing Act 2004 still exist, they were suspended, not repealed. This would not require a new Act of Parliament, only a change in regulations via statutory instrument, subject to parliamentary approval.
Rob Hailstone is CEO of Bold Legal Group
3 responses
Like the Murphy’s, I’m not bitter!!
Oh, I am, but life goes on.
I was never a fan of HIPS and didn’t think they would survive.
I do think some upfront information could assist the home buying process but the key to any consultation and agreement on what it should comprise is getting the major lenders involved. They need to be willing to rely on the information.
For leasehold property the information needed is substantial (and costly). Insurance to guarantee validity of information for 6 months (or potentially more in the current market) is not necessarily the answer.
It remains my view that whilst homebuyers in England expect to buy and sell on the same day (which is not the case in many other countries) then it will be difficult to speed up the process.