Hips earnings ’sliced in half’
July 13, 2007 by admin
Filed under News, News-Mortgages
Pack providers have cut the earning potential of home inspectors implementing the new Home Information Packs (Hips), it has been claimed.
Interviewed on BBC Two’s Working Lunch, home inspector Alyson Cadd said that her potential earnings could now have been halved, thanks to meddling by high street providers.
“The pack providers… have now basically driven themselves between us and our clients, which would have been the estate agents or even the self-seller, the seller of the property, we now have the pack providers and these panels that we have to contact.”
She added that providers were “not just taking the commission or a cut; they’re actually taking half our fee in many cases, certainly the larger pack providers which really seem to have cornered the market with a lot of people”.
Hips, sometimes known as seller’s packs, will become mandatory for sales of homes with four bedrooms or more in England and Wales on August 1st, before being extended to cover all properties over the next year.
Ms Cadd also strongly criticised the delays to the scheme, which was originally to have been implemented across the country earlier this year.
Describing herself as “angry and stunned” by the hold up, she said that she knew of people who had given up jobs to become home inspectors in time for the original start date who had been left badly out of pocket as a result.
