HIPs rolled out to all homes from December

The controversial Home Information Packs that are currently required for homes of three bedrooms or more that are being marketed for sale in England and Wales will not be rolled out to all other properties, according to reports.

When Home Information Packs or HIPs were brought in earlier this year they were applied to homes of four bedrooms or more. This was then switched to homes of three bedrooms or more several months ago. And now, according to the report, the government has announced that HIPs will be required for all properties being marketed for sale in England and Wales.

The HIPs will come into force for all properties going up for sale from December 14th, which means that any residential property in England or Wales that goes up for sale from this date will need to have a Home Information Pack. However, various statistics have revealed that HIPs may not be having the impact that the government had hoped, and for the first time since they were introduced the government has admitted that these packs may have adversely affected the housing market.

According to a report released by the Housing Minister Yvette Cooper HIPs had impacted on people putting their properties up for sale, causing delays in people deciding to sell their homes. Another report from Europe Economics showed that HIPs had not sped up home purchase transactions by providing more required information to buyers, which is something that ministers had claimed that HIPs would do.

A statement following this study read: ‘Hips may have had an additional modest-but-material effect on listings activity but no discernable impact on transactions, mortgages or prices.’ Surveyors now state that the introduction of HIPs for all properties may results in a drop in the number of starter homes coming onto the market for sale.

Tom Smith
30th November 2007

Tags: property, information, december, sell, uk, packs, home

Online Share Dealing Increases In Popularity

Now that some sort of stability has returned to the UK stock markets, and with the London FTSE 100 back over 6100, more and more individual investors are returning to the stock market in the hope of getting their share of the profits to be made.  Unlike previously, however, increasing numbers of individual stock market investors in the UK are electing to cut out the middle-man broker and invest themselves online.

In a report recently published by Saga Share Direct, 73% of all individual respondents declared that they now preferred to manage their own stock portfolio online rather than use the services of a UK stock broker.  This represents an 8% increase on the number of reported individuals using online stock dealing services in January of 2006.

Rather amazingly, however, 57% of all individual stock market investors in the UK felt they were now getting better returns on their investments from having taken control of these investment than they were previously getting using the services of UK brokers.  A trend on which Andrew Goodsell, chief executive of Saga, commented: “With more people returning to the market, demand for a well priced and competitive online share-trading service is high.”

Profit margins alone, however, do not appear to be the ultimate driving factor behind so many Brits moving into online share trading.  Saga’s report also shows that 56% of respondents felt that “maintaining personal control” over their share portfolio was sounded enough reason to prefer online stock trading over using the services of a UK stock broker.

With UK private individual investors having pumped in a £2.6 billion investment in UK stock market equity investments during August and September, the growing trend of Brits electing to invest in the stock market online only looks set to go from strength-to-strength.  Nevertheless, Brits looking to go it alone and make stock trades online should ensure they stay clear of the usual pitfalls associated with online stock market trading.  All of the usual research and analysts will need to be done, and much of this will now be down to the individual themselves as many UK online stock trading services will not offer investment research services without having to pay hefty membership fees.  Moreover, individual UK stock investors will also need to make sure the computer software they have is capable of transacting secure online trades, as well as keeping up-to-date tabs on where the UK stock market is going. 

That said, there are clearly profits to be made from stock dealing in the UK and cutting out the broker middleman’s fees is one sure way to ensure that you maximise those profits – provided, of course, that you know what you are doing and pick the right stock.

Tags: prfofit, stocks, shares, sell, dealing, cost. charges