Are Home Reports in Scotland working for you?

I live in England but am still very interested in this because I thought the Home Information Pack would be a potentially most useful document for prospective purchasers. Once the valuable bit, the condition survey, was stripped out it became useless [and the EPC isn’t exactly wonderful either]. I am hoping the Scottish experience will demonstrate the value of this kind of report, first to speed up the conveyancing process and second to avoid frustrated sales as the truth emerges during the legal work.

At present, homebuyers have to rely on the estate agent’s imperfect and usually partial particulars, what they can see with their own eyes on a restricted viewing opportunity and, if they’re lucky, a second viewing, and what eventully they deduce from the seller’s Property Information Form and Fittings & Contents Form [which usually are not received until significant search fees and legal expenses have been incurred]. The PIF has lots of questions that depend on the openness and honesty of the seller, like “is the central heating system in good working order?” to which “yes” can be answered so long as a vestige of heat and no audible clanking are discernible. I would prefer questions like “how old is the boiler?”, “what type is it?”, “when was it last serviced [and enclose a copy of the test report]?”, and “has it been necessary to have any repairs or replacements made to any parts of the system in the last three years?”. I would also want to know whether any alterations have been made to the electrical systems [and have a copy of the certificate], and when any structural alterations were made [building control certificates required]. I accept that it is difficult to know where to draw the line between what the seller should tell the prospective buyer upfront, and what a buyer should employ a surveyor to discover. Perhaps the usefulness of this depends on whether a mortgagee is involved and will have a valuation survey done. However, if the buyer could learn at the outset that there had been ingress of water or dampness, infestation or rot, or any structural problems, overflowing gutters, drainage problems, double glazing failures, they could make a more informed judgment on whether or not to have a fulll survey carried out; at the very least, they could factor in the cost of rectifying these issues and possibly seek some moderation of the purchase price. A particularly useful question would be “has any buildings insurance cover been declined or issued on special terms?”. Some sellers of unmortgaged properties haven’t even sought buildings insurance cover and the reason why could be informative. I shall be very interested to see all the other concerns that prospective purchasers have about property information, and what any sellers think about this issue.

When the Property Misdescriptions Act was repealed [possibly only in England & Wales] and its purposes effectively subsumed in the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations it was said that the principle of “caveat emptor” (let the buyer beware) no longer prevailed and that estate agents would, as a matter of course no less, have to provide all the information reasonably required by a potential purchaser to make a sensible judgment on whether or not to proceed. If only! As you would expect, agents hide behind “we have not tested this or that”, they don’t show pictures of every room, their measurements are “for guidance only”, their floor plans – if they exist at all – are not to scale, the details say nothing about any boundaries, building dates, or the number of power points in each room, and even the Council Tax band is a mystery! Most agents also think the world will end if they give the street door number and postcode [in case you’d like to go there without asking them I suppose]. The fact that anyone can, without too much effort, find this out from a spell on mapping and postcode finder websites, appears to have escaped them.

One of the estate agents in Surrey currently has this enticing introduction to their property description : “Enviably situated on the River Thames is this fantastic detached bungalow . . .”. I hope they are immediately amending their advertisement [and maybe even the price] for this particular Chertsey residence in order to comply with the law. I have enormous sympathy for the owners who obviously didn’t bargain for the heavy flooding when they put the property on the market. This unfortunate event will blight houses along the River Thames for years now.