Sellers pay £650m + for HIPs

Property vendors have paid £657.6m for Home Information Packs (HIPs) since they were introduced in 2007, raising nearly £100m for the Treasury.

New figures released by the Conservatives reveal that around two million sellers have bought the controversial packs since they were introduced as a compulsory requirement in April two years ago.

HIPs have raised £94m for the Government in that time in the form of VAT.

The unpopular ‘seller’s packs’ were supposed to speed up the buying process, as they contain all of the property details, searches and an Energy Performance Certificate in one place.

However, estate agents and industry experts warned from the start that gathering information for the packs prior to marketing a property, as required by law, would actually slow the process down and add an extra burden of cost to the vendor.

And the situation has worsened since the credit crisis began in August 2007. Conservatives now accuse Government ministers of stifling the property market with unnecessary red tape, creating a headache for those seeking to sell their homes in today’s stagnant property market.

Should the Tories come to power they have vowed to bin HIPs, except for the Energy Performance Certificates.

Grant Shapps, the shadow housing minister, said:

"By imposing a £657.6 million burden on the housing market during the longest and deepest recession in living memory, Labour's short-sighted bureaucratic policy is milking the industry dry.

 “They should have listened to the consumers, the industry and the Conservative Party and scrapped this discredited scheme before it even began.

"HIPs will be history under a future Conservative Government, with only the useful energy performance certificate surviving."