It gets better:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770

Sooner these fools are out of government the better...

Tim

The message
from Tim S contains these words:

It gets better:

OK, give us a clue was it was about apart from being about errors
retrieving articles, of course.

--
Skipweasel
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Guy King wrote:

The message
from Tim S contains these words:

It gets better:

OK, give us a clue was it was about apart from being about errors
retrieving articles, of course.


Yeah - sorry about that - the "article" (OK was the DM) has disappeared -
their own search engine can't find it...

I'll quote next time...

Tim

Guy King wrote:

The message
from Tim S contains these words:

It gets better:

OK, give us a clue was it was about apart from being about errors
retrieving articles, of course.


Seems to be back...

But here's a quote, the entire article verbatim:

A lot of it most of us knew, but interesting it's starting to hit the
tabloids...

===

£1,000 home sellers' packs won't warn of subsidence or floods
by JAMES CHAPMAN, Daily Mail
12:16pm 17th June 2006

Compulsory information packs for house sales were branded worthless last
night.

It was revealed that the £1,000 dossiers need not contain some of the most
basic information on a property.

From next year, home owners will have to pay for a 'sellers' pack' before
they can put their property on the market.

But they do not have to include: natural subsidence ; flood risks ; rights
of access ; land contamination.

Regulations released yesterday also suggest that anyone who takes a house
off the market for just 28 days, then puts it on sale again, will have to
pay for a new pack.

Critics said the details raised questions about the whole point of the
scheme. They said the information in the dossiers will be so limited that
many buyers will order their own surveys, adding to costs and delays on
both sides.

Tory spokesman Michael Gove said the packs would be "expensive, deficient
and dangerous".

Nick Salmon, of the campaign group Sellers' Pack Law Is Not The Answer
(Splinta), which represents 1,500 firms of estate agents, surveyors and
conveyors against the packs, said: "The consumer is being conned into
believing these packs will improve the home buying process.

"In fact, we believe they will prove worthless. This is almost bound to
undermine people's confidence in the packs."

The regulations, released by Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly, say the packs
must include details about how energy efficient a house is as well as its
structural condition, title and deeds.

But Mr Gove said: "The refusal to tell families whether the back garden will
be safe for their children or of potential flood risks, delivers a serious
blow to the credibility of these packs.

"Nor will they even have to include information about ground stability or
the effects of natural subsidence.

"Surely this information - knowing whether or not a property is sound - is
one of the key things a buyer would want to know. The Government would be
better to scrap the scheme than deliver expensive, deficient and dangerous
information to potential homebuyers."

Ministers estimate that a pack for an average semi will cost £776, but
experts say £1,000 is a more likely figure.

Buyers will also still have to commission and pay for valuations if they
borrow more than 80 per cent of the value of the property - which most
first-time buyers do.

VAT from the packs is expected to earn the Treasury £111million a year - the
Government has been accused of using it as another stealth tax.

Ministers insist home information packs will transform the buying and
selling of houses by adding a new certainty to the process.

The reforms, which come into force next June, shift the responsibility for
gathering information from the buyer to the seller.

At present buyers can pay for a survey but find their money has been wasted
if no deal is agreed. The Government, which is backed by consumer groups,
says £1million a day is lost this way. But research shows that nearly
two-thirds of mortgage lenders think the packs will have a negative impact
on the housing market.

Rather than speeding up transactions, they will slow the process down, they
fear.

There is also expected to be an artificial "bubble" in the market, with
owners rushing to sell homes in the two months before the June deadline and
a dramatic fall-off immediately afterwards.

The Communities and Local Government Department rejected the criticisms last
night.

A spokesman said: "If you are buying a house at the moment, you will
probably have a middle level of survey which wouldn't look at things like
subsidence or flooding.

"If a home condition report identifies a potential problem with flooding or
subsidence it could identify that it needs to be looked at further.

"On subsidence, we are developing a gold standard search and when that has
been developed we will seriously consider making it a required component."

The spokesman said the 28-day rule would not affect people taking their
house off the market while a sale was being negotiated.

The spokesman said: "If a sale falls through, people will not have to update
their packs unless the information is by that stage three months old. The
28-day rule will only apply if a house is taken off the market for other
reasons, such as someone going on holiday."

Housing minister Yvette Cooper said: "Which?, Friends of the Earth and the
WWF all back these plans.

"The National Association of Estate Agents are against them. It's shocking
that David Cameron's Conservatives are still backing vested interests
rather than consumers and first-time buyers."

===

The message
from Tim S contains these words:

Ministers estimate that a pack for an average semi will cost £776, but
experts say £1,000 is a more likely figure.

That seems an awful lot of money for a cursory survey done by someone in
a hurry that excludes lots of userful information and, most likely, has
sufficient get-out clauses that the firm preparing it never need stand
by a word of it.

"Housing minister Yvette Cooper said: "Which?, Friends of the Earth and the
WWF all back these plans."

What on earth's it go to do with FoE and WWF?
--
Skipweasel
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Guy King wrote:

The message
from Tim S contains these words:

Ministers estimate that a pack for an average semi will cost £776, but
experts say £1,000 is a more likely figure.
That seems an awful lot of money for a cursory survey done by someone in
a hurry that excludes lots of userful information and, most likely, has
sufficient get-out clauses that the firm preparing it never need stand
by a word of it.

As I've said before, for all the horror stories about surveyors, Home
Inspectors will drop the bar to an all time low...


"Housing minister Yvette Cooper said: "Which?, Friends of the Earth and
the WWF all back these plans."

What on earth's it go to do with FoE and WWF?

I read it as "WTF" first time, which sort of made more sense ;-

Cheers

Tim

PS

The FoE interest might be due to the real reason for the HIP - so that
the EU directive on getting an energy rating on every dwelling can be
realised. Along with the other real reason, so that Gordon Brownstuff
can make a few quid in VAT.

In article ,
Guy King writes:
The message
from Tim S contains these words:

Ministers estimate that a pack for an average semi will cost £776, but
experts say £1,000 is a more likely figure.

That seems an awful lot of money for a cursory survey done by someone in
a hurry that excludes lots of userful information and, most likely, has
sufficient get-out clauses that the firm preparing it never need stand
by a word of it.

On the radio, it said there's a fine of £200/day for the
time between when you first made it known to any potential
buyer the house is for sale, and the time you get a sellers
pack in place. Originally, it was going to be a one-off £500
fine, but as that's less than the seller's pack, I guess they
thought people would go for the fine instead.

"Housing minister Yvette Cooper said: "Which?, Friends of the Earth and the
WWF all back these plans."

What on earth's it go to do with FoE and WWF?

It is difficult to find any body it has got something to
do with which backs these plans, so you have to start looking
around for bodies it's got nothing to do with to try and
scrape together any credibility.

--
Andrew Gabriel

Andrew Gabriel wrote:


On the radio, it said there's a fine of £200/day for the
time between when you first made it known to any potential
buyer the house is for sale, and the time you get a sellers
pack in place. Originally, it was going to be a one-off £500
fine, but as that's less than the seller's pack, I guess they
thought people would go for the fine instead.

Yes, I thought I remembered seeing a one off fine of a few hundred (more
like 250-300 I thought).

When I just checked a copy of the act today (I don't know if it was the
final copy - just one google came up with), it said fine not exceeding
level 5.

Level 5 is currently upto 5000 quid. One off.

The "per day" is certainly news to me...

Cheers

Tim

In message , Guy King
writes
The message
from Tim S contains these words:

It gets better:

OK, give us a clue was it was about apart from being about errors
retrieving articles, of course.

I had no problems

The great "Sellers Pack" lacks some fundamental bits - which makes it
next to worthless



--
geoff