Should sellers beware house sale reform?

Once HIPs are introduced, these costs will be transferred to the seller, who must include this information in the pack he has to draw up before putting his house on the market. Provided he is buying another property, he should recoup this by not having to pay for the information on his new home. However, there are concerns that lenders will not accept the HCR for valuation purposes when deciding whether to lend a mortgage on a property (see below). This could result in sellers forking out for two surveys of their home.

HIPs are expected to cost between £700 and £1,000. To ease the burden of meeting this cost, My Sale Pack plans to offer an interest-free, no repayment loan for six months. After this interest will be charged at about 7.5 per cent on any outstanding balance. Other HIP providers will no doubt do the same.

Lenders will not accept the Home Condition Report for valuation purposes

HIPs will not include a valuation, and the Council of Mortgage Lenders says the HCR will not remove the need for lenders to conduct valuations on each transaction to assess potential levels of lending risk. Spokesman Bernard Clarke says: 'Lenders will need a robust valuation of the property. That information may or may not be contained in the HCR. We believe more than half of the mortgages applied for will require a traditional valuation.'

One lender told Cash that, while the HCR contained sufficient information on the condition of the property itself, it gave no idea as to its location - a factor that can have a huge influence on the value. 'The property may be on a busy or quiet street, in a corner position, or back on to a factory. You'd have no idea from the report,' it said.

Another lender, the Nationwide, said that, while it supports the idea of HIPs and intends to take part in a trial run later this year, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has yet to make enough information available to work out whether separate valuations will be necessary.

Even if a separate valuation is necessary, it need not cost a fortune. The body in charge of examining home inspectors - the Awarding Body for the Built Environment (ABBE) - is working on a qualification to enable inspectors to make a valuation at the same time as conducting the home condition report. Alternatively, lenders may increase their use of 'desk-top valuations', using computerised data about previous surveys conducted on the property for sale and those nearby.

There will not be enough inspectors, and they will probably be cowboys

The ODPM has estimated that between 5,000 and 7,400 inspectors will be needed by June 2007. Training courses have been up and running for several months, and last week the government announced that 2,500 people were training or had qualified as inspectors.

Apparently there is no need for panic. Although courses for those starting from scratch can take up to two years, chartered surveyors already doing valuation work can do 'top-ups' lasting an average of six months. Courses are being run by several bodies, including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and Surveyors and Valuers Accreditation. Everyone must take the same NVQ Level 4 (equivalent to degree level) exam, run by ABBE. It's not easy - only qualified surveyors have taken the exam so far, and the pass rate is just above 50 per cent.

All home inspectors must have standard professional indemnity insurance cover of £1m per claim, and are liable to all three parties involved in a property purchase - the seller, the buyer and the lender - to ensure their independence.