Conveyancing Month!

 

 

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 The UK’s first monthly on-line journal dedicated to conveyancers!

 

News...

 In a wide ranging review published this month, The Council of Mortgage Lenders has given the Government cautious support for it’s HIPs plans, but continues to express reservations, particularly in relation to the need carry out physical inspections of properties, rather than just relying on the Home Condition Report (HCR) to be contained in the HIP.

 

Currently almost all house purchase transactions require a physical inspection. Whilst the CML believes that the HCR is likely to have an impact on lenders' practices and will significantly change how lenders make lending decisions, the full impact of HCRs on valuations is not expected to be immediate. Although, nearly eight in ten lenders believe that the need for a physical inspection will reduce and seven out of ten believe that the use of automated valuation models (AVMs) will increase one year after implementation, the CML estimates that even after 5 years,  AVMs will account for less than 40% of valuations, with physical inspections still accounting for about half.

 

According to the CML, lenders believe that applications will increase in the run up to HIPs and decrease immediately afterwards, but do not expect there to be a long-term drop in transactions as a result of HIPs. Less than half the lending industry anticipates that HIPs will deliver substantial benefits for consumers.

 

The operation of NLIS came in for particular criticism, and was described as “a mess”  in the review, which went on to point out that three quarters of local authorities are still unable to provide a fully electronic service. That an electronic system depended on so many personal searches was described as “a contradiction in terms and wholly unsatisfactory”

 

The CML highlighted that there had been no compulsion on local authorities to adopt full connectivity to NLIS and further cited inadequate investment as the reason for this. The review is available from the CML website. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Cautious support for HIPs from CML