Surge in House Sales to Escape New Rules

Lisa Bachelor, The Observer - 1st April 2007

Householders are rushing to put their property up for sale before June to avoid paying £450 for compulsory Home Information Packs (Hips).

In eight weeks' time anyone selling a house will be legally required to provide a pack to buyers, containing a certificate rating the energy efficiency of the home as well as local authority searches.

The National Association of Estate Agents said that a sudden awareness of the packs had started to have an impact on the property market. 'I am getting reports from estate agents that people are waking up to the fact that they are going to have to pay more if they don't sell now,' said Peter Bolton-King, of the National Association of Estate Agents.

Estate agency Haart has launched an advertising campaign to encourage people to sell now with the simple message: 'Before 31 May, save £450, after, pay £450.' It said it was expecting up to a 20 per cent increase in the number of properties entering the market over the next eight weeks.

'This month the number of properties put up for sale in our branches has increased by 4 per cent, but we anticipate the surge to really kick in after the Easter break as the government's campaign starts to have an effect,' said Russell Jervis, managing director of Haart. On Thursday, the final regulations governing Home Information Packs were laid before Parliament and the government has launched a multi-million pound advertising campaign to raise awareness about them.

Mark Desvaux, managing director of Houseweb, an online marketplace where homeowners can sell without an estate agent, said he had seen an unprecedented increase in the number of properties on the site in the past week. He said: 'This advertising campaign is driving people to put their property on the market straight away, as they have now realised that it will cost them more in June.'

Estate agency Manning Stainton, which covers Leeds and West Yorkshire, said it had also seen a flood of properties coming on to the market in March. 'We typically put around 400 properties on the market a month, but last month we put 530 properties up for sale. Sellers are telling us that they are coming to the market now to save money,' said David Pank, a manager at Manning Stainton.

Peter Womersley and his partner Judith Pearson have just put their Leeds house on the market with Manning Stainton to beat the 1 June deadline. 'If I had waited for Hips to come round it would have cost me a lot more money and I would not have got anything back.'

The fee for the Home Information Packs will bring the average cost of moving house to £10,000, according to website Propertyfinder.com. It found that expenses associated with moving house had tripled in the past 10 years, from an average of £2,925 in 1996 to £9,486. Stamp duty and estate agents' fees make up more than £8,000 of that total.