News

06/12/2005

Home Information Packs – a solution for independent Property Lawyers

Steven Mason Steven Mason is a licensed conveyancer and a former council member and Chairman of the Council for Licensed Conveyancers. This is an extract from an article published in the December 2005 Chronicle.

The introduction of Home Information Packs in 2007 will pose a serious threat to all independent conveyancers and estate agents. Many of the large estate agency chains are already planning to provide packs for clients with no upfront charge and reimbursement on completion. There will be further competition from independent HIP providers and conveyancing marketing companies who will use the HIP to reinforce and expand their existing market share.

None of this is good news for conveyancers. Once HIPS become compulsory your former clients who intend to re-instruct you may be persuaded to use a HIP provider for their conveyancing, and your estate agent contacts will be looking for a similar solution. As an estate agent will be prohibited from marketing a property until a HIP is in place, the essential requirement is the ability to offer a HIP quickly and with no upfront charge. We concluded that to succeed a HIP provider must provide an estate agent with:

Forfront who designed and wrote the Council’s in-house software and web site and have extensive experience in building this type of software are currently assembling a system that will meet all these requirements, and offer a high level of sophistication and ease of use for agents and conveyancers.

The system will provide:

This type of system will allow independent agents to compete on the same terms as their larger competitors, and provide them with greater flexibility in how they negotiate their terms and fees. Where clients instruct you direct, it will give them the autonomy to instruct agents on their own terms and strike a better deal. Most important of all, it will give you control of the HIP.

Most agents we spoke to were unaware that the legal HIP is something that we already produce as part of the conveyancing process. It made sense to them when we explained that we should be instructed at the outset to prepare all the paperwork, and then continue with the conveyancing process once a buyer was found. We also made a point of emphasising just how important it was to make sure all the right documentation was available in the pack. The draft government regulations that have just been published seem strangely lacking in the requirement for certain documentation that most conveyancers would regard as mandatory, but that does not mean that they should be excluded. Our agent contacts were delighted with our suggestion that with our knowledge and experience we should be able to flush out any potential problems with the sellers title prior to a buyer being found, and provide a pack that would offer a genuine contribution to the progress of the sale.

I suspect there are few members of this profession who view the onset of HIPS with any great excitement, but they are now firmly on the agenda and will be with us in just over a year. We all take pride in the work we handle for clients and generally resent any suggestion that delays have anything to do with us. However, the fact remains that the vast majority of our clients are dissatisfied with the process and while it is easy to become complacent, I believe we must take the initiative and demonstrate that we are committed to providing a faster and more efficient service. Over the past few years the turnover of many small firms has been steadily eroded by conveyancing factories and marketing companies who charge large referral fees for the benefit – in some cases - of introducing our existing clients back to us. The skill and experience of this profession puts us in an ideal position to control the HIPS process and produce a product that is superior and less expensive than our competitors. Sitting around and waiting for someone else to do it first is no longer an option.


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