Helping Innovate Property (HIP) – Blog, Housing Market News and Articles

In the context of house moves, conveyancing is the legal and administrative work associated with changing ownership of a property from one party to another. In practice it’s an umbrella term that includes exchanging contracts, transferring finances for the property and a host of other related tasks.

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The modern conveyancing system in England & Wales was born in 1925, with the introduction of the Law of Property Act 1925 and Land Registration Act 1925.

Before we can look at where property conveyancing is going we must look at where we have come from.

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Estate agents Countrywide and property portal Rightmove say they have seen a 35% increase in new properties for sale since the coalition governement announced HIPS were suspended, on 21 May.

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Islamic Mortgages and not just for Muslims which may come as a suprise for some. However, an Islamic mortgage does have its differences.
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In our guide to lease extensions, we look at how a leaseholder can extend their lease and what pitfalls you should look out for.

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A right over a piece of land for the benefit of another piece of land, such as a right of way or a right to use services running under the land is called an “easement”. The land which benefits from an easement is called the “dominant tenement” or “dominant land” and the land which is subject to the easement is the “servient tenement” or “servient land”. There are several ways in which an easement can be created and once it exists then subject to certain exceptions, it exists for all time for the benefit of the dominant land.

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Ever since it became commonplace for the ordinary men and women on the street to own their homes many law firms have seized on this huge market and placed great emphasis on their conveyancing departments. The resulting competition for work means that it is now possible to pay as little as £200 in legal fees and indeed, to pay nothing at all if the proposed sale or purchase never proceeds to completion.

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Grant Shapps would have hoped that the contentious issue of Home Information Packs would have quietly slipped away into the background. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Yesterday, both Hywel Williams MP and the Institute of Domestic Energy Assessors slammed the coalition governments handling of the HIP suspension.

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In 1999 a father and son were so frustrated with the delays from local councils in providing local searches to enable them to buy a house they went to the council and searched the records to produce their own search. Realising there was a business potential there the father and son contact a couple of solicitor friends and with their help started a personal search company.

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Eric Pickles has finally granted Mr Shapps’s long held desire to suspend HIPs this morning, though it remains unclear on what basis. Grant Shapps who has increasing appeared to be on personal crusade to scrap HIPs has seemingly suceeded and issued a statement shortly afterwards.

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Despite recent rumours and ill informed articles to the contrary, it is still ‘business as usual’ in the HIP industry – for now at least. Since the new Government confirmed that they planned to scrap HIPs whilst retaining the Energy Performance Certificate (they have no choice in this – it’s required by European Directive), there has been constant talk about if and when the requirement for a Home Information Pack will be abolished.

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