Home Information Packs 'to affect market'

New rules regarding Home Information Packs could damage the fragile housing market, estate agents have warned.

From June sellers can only put their house on the market if they have a HIP, which cost between £300 and £500.

Critics claim some sellers are having to wait three weeks for a HIP, and that the new rule will slow down the process of selling a house at a time when the market has cooled.

Trevor Kent, former president of the National Association of Estate Agents and a campaigner against HIPs, said: "Now the Government is saying it is against the law to market your house until you have one of these packs. It is just not acceptable."

Splinta (Sellers' Pack Law is Not the Answer), a pressure group, has launched a petition on the 10 Downing Street website calling for the law to be left alone, which has attracted 2,645 signatures.

Grant Shapps, the shadow housing minister, said: "Caroline Flint, the new housing minister, could make her mark and ditch HIPs for good. They hamper the housing market and provide no advantages. Labour should listen to the experts and stop meddling in the property market."

A HIP contains a home's title deeds, local searches and an energy performance certificate.

The packs are supposed to speed up the house buying process by shifting the responsibility for compiling the documents from buyer to seller.

However, critics claim the pack does not include key documents such as a survey.

Gillian Charlesworth, policy director at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, said: "It has not improved the buying process. There is the cost of the pack, which is full of holes and now the delay in waiting for the pack."