What’s ruffled the feathers of the NAEA this time is a little email sent by the Government to HiP industry stakeholders. It claims that so far the implementation of this ridiculous legislation has been smooth, trouble-free and generally held up by all concerned as being a total success.
The NAEA disagree and have lambasted the Government by publicly stating that this message is “misleading and completely lacking in substance”.
Apparently the Government has received “good feedback from estate agents and consumers” however the NAEA disagrees and is riled because there aren’t any facts or figures to support this claim.
In fact they state that the picture being painted by their estate agency members on the ground is completely different. Here’s what NAEA chief executive Peter Bolton King had to say:
“A number of HIP providers are not supplying Packs as quickly as promised; there are ongoing problems surrounding the supply of searches and their acceptance by the legal profession; leasehold information is, as we expected, slow to obtain and perhaps most worryingly the public are expressing little interest in this watered-down HIP”.
“Once again we urge: scrap HIPs and let energy performance certificates stand alone in their own right, as the only sensible part of the whole HIP scheme”.
He then adds: “It is ridiculous to suggest that the implementation is trouble-free. The NAEA and others believe that there is clear evidence that new instructions in England and Wales are way below the normal expected levels even taking into account the slightly slower market caused by interest rate rises”.
God help us for when HIP’s do finally become compulsory for 1 & 2 bedroom property is all I can say!
Estate Agents Still Not Satisfying Their Customers
If your planning a house sale and thinking of using an estate agent, I think the results of the latest survey by thinkproperty.com will be sobering reading.
This month the property portal carried out research amongst 1,200 home movers into how satisfied they were with the service provided by their estate agent.
Here are the (not unsurprising) results of the survey and the areas where the levels of service from estate agents were rated as “poor” or “very poor”:
76% of home movers said that their agent didn’t provide any updates on their sale or purchase as they happened.
71% said that their agent was slow to respond making the process long and stressful.
67% said that their agent failed to return telephone calls.
50% said that their properties were not marketed to a level at met their expectations.
36% said that they were not notified when their agent had arranged a viewing.
34% said that they were not notified when their agent had received an offer.
28% complained that the agent had over-valued their property.
27% complained that the agent’s contract was misleading.
Really none of this should come as a surprise but if you want to reduce the chances of falling foul to poor estate agency practices, there are other options for you to consider.
To take a look at the pros & cons of alternative methods for selling a house, take a look at the free guides on our website.