On 6 October, the government declared its desire to raise the speed and increase the certainty of residential transactions. Labour wishes to improve today’s average of 17 weeks from start to completion, with a 33% risk of breakdown, to 13 weeks, with a 15% chance of the deal ending in wailing and the rending of costly paperwork. Done by exhuming Home Improvement Packs. An idea devoid of logical foundations.

HIPs had the opposite effect to that intended. A folder, containing proof of title and the condition of the home, assembled before marketing could begin, promised to squeeze the 11-week gap in 2007 to eight weeks. Since then, the gap has yawned to 17 weeks. To offer a modernised version of HIP as a way to bring the gap down to 13 weeks betrays the collective political memory of a goldfish.

Read Home Information Packs: A short history ( 2010, House of Commons Library, 39 pp). Conceived by Labour in 2000, born into law in 2004, gutted before commencement in 2007, repealed in 2010. Judgement? Paying for a HIP made damn-all difference to either speed or certainty. Ministers mistook lobbying for wisdom, resulting in a policy over-shaped by vested interests.

Estate agents, solicitors, lenders and professional bodies will now be flooding the online consultation, which ends at midnight on 29 December. Blame for slowing the process since 2007 will be placed on proliferating red tape. A fair point. But it remains shaming that a machine transacting 1.2m deals a year remains huffing and puffing in the steam age while the rest of the world runs on silicon.

Note to housing secretary Steve Reed: technology has advanced since 2010. The market, aided by AI, will speed the information merry-go-round. Meddle at your peril. By all means, take an interest in market governance, but understand this is polishing the brass while the engine rusts. Read Home Buying and Selling: a Market Study (Office of Fair Trading 2010, 231 pp). A world of unmet good intentions.

Property law-making grinds slowly, aided by a legal profession which delights in the intellectual pulverising of good ideas. Happily, one good idea does lurk in the proposals – a breakdown pain clause. Concentrate on overcoming opposition and fashion a simple-as-humanly-possible way of making it hurt if a buyer or seller pulls out after the contracts have been exchanged. Some wise advice follows.

Lord Woolf’s cry

Lord Woolf was Master of the Rolls between 1996 and 2000, then Lord Chief Justice until 2005. Who better to ask what single action would improve a process that comes third in the hierarchy of stress after the death of a close relative and divorce.

“The introduction of legislation that would end gazumping or the last-minute withdrawals is needed. For the ordinary member of the public, the most important single commercial transaction in their lives is likely to be the purchase or sale of their home. For them to be let down at the last moment can be traumatic. I know, because it has happened to my wife and myself. I believe that legislation could achieve what is necessary.

“Even though you can arrange a ‘lock-out’ that only provides partial compensation. It should be automatic that, once you have made an offer to purchase, you can be released from the transaction only in restricted circumstances; likewise if you have accepted an offer to purchase, subject to contract. If you withdraw, without cause, you should be liable to pay compensation on a basis that recognises that the loss that you have caused to the other party is not confined to financial loss.”

This was written back in December 1999 by Lord Woolf in a millennium supplement to the Estates Gazette, just weeks before Labour first raised the HIP plan. Proposals absent of Woolf’s idea, versions of which are common in many parts of the world, including north of Hadrian’s Wall. Why? Because the Law Society and the RICS opposed break-clause penalties.

A summary of the objections from last time around. The RICS: ‘No, no, no! Break penalties will deter sellers, trap buyers and lead to lots of disputes and litigation and risks slowing the market.” Heaven forbid. The Law Society? “No, no, no! That would require fundamental reform of contract law… and so on, and on, ad nauseam.” Will both reconsider in the face of the broken HIP evidence? Well, maybe, but don’t count on it. Lord Woolf, now 92, would probably not appreciate being asked again.

Peter Bill is a former editor of Estates Gazette

Image: Colin Miller