Door opens for house surveyors

New laws on property sales will mean huge demand for reports, many done by newly trained inspectors surveyors are to lose their monopoly on inspecting homes for sale as part of a shake-up in the law on buying and selling houses.

Ministers will announce today that they are to open up the role to other professionals as part of the introduction of compulsory reports on homes before they are put on the market.

Yvette Cooper, the Minister for Housing and Planning, told The Times that Home Information Packs will be a legal requirement in England and Wales from 2007.

A new army of inspectors will have 18 months to seek qualifications under the scheme, which will be modelled on the CORGI (Council for Registered Gas Installers) registration system for gas fitters.

Ms Cooper said: “A lot of people effectively already have the skills and experience and it’s just simply making sure they are properly certified and qualified.”

Only chartered surveyors may currently do surveys because they involve a valuation for the mortgage lender.

But the new report will not require a valuation and will open up the role of home inspector to a wide range of industry professionals, who will undergo a “conversion” course, as well as to people with no experience.

The Government would like to attract more women into the profession and is hoping that a certification scheme will silence critics who have called it a “burglar’s charter”. Inspectors will undergo checks on their competence and personal history, including any criminal convictions.

They will also be required to have insurance because they will be personally liable for errors in the report.
The number of inspectors needed is expected to be about 7,000: more than 1,000 candidates have registered. Only one in ten buyers currently pays for a survey, so the increase indemand will be enormous.

More detail will be announced when Ms Cooper meets estate agents’ representatives, solicitors’ leaders and mortgage lenders to discuss how the Government will implement the Home Information Pack. Ministers want a “dry run”, which would introduce the packs in one area in the middle of next year, to iron out problems before they become compulsory early in 2007.

The cost is projected to be between £800 and £1,000 and will be met by estate agents or inspection firms at the outset, then recovered from the seller on completion, along with estate agents’ and solicitors’ fees. The National Association of Estate Agents is against this, arguing that it will be a crippling financial burden on independent agents who may have 100 properties on their books.

Kevin Martin, who has just become President of the Law Society of England and Wales, said that the information packs will be costly and of doubtful benefit to buyers.

There was also no evidence that this would speed up the house-selling process, he added, saying “buyers will want to have their own surveys”.

July 25, 2005 - An article which appeared in The Times.
By Catherine Riley