According to its Levelling Up report, a 332-page document which outlines government plans to “spread opportunity more equally” across the UK, the homebuying and selling process could be “expensive, time consuming and stressful” and had to be improved.
It added that around a third of housing transactions fell through and costed millions of pounds each year.
The report said: “The UK government and the industry will work together to ensure the critical material information buyers need to know – like tenure type, lease length and any service charges – are available digitally wherever possible from trusted and authenticated sources, and provided only once.”
“If necessary, the UK government will legislate,” it warned.
According to reports, the suggestion is like Home Information Packs, which were introduced in 2007 by Gordon Brown’s Labour government.
It was a set of documents to provide buyers with key information and had to be provided by the seller or the estate agent. Documents included index, property information questionnaire, sustainability certificate for new homes, energy performance certification, sale statements and land registry documents.
They were scrapped in 2010 by David Cameron’s coalition government and were labelled expensive and unnecessary as they added extra red tape to the selling process, and a £200 to £400 price tag for sellers.
Measures to support homeownership
One of the other main missions in the report include giving renters a “secure path to ownership” by growing first-time buyers in all areas and aims to cut the number of non-decent rented homes by half and deliver the biggest improvements in the lowest performing areas.
Other measures included in the report include building on the success of the Help to Buy scheme and Mortgage guarantee scheme to “maximise the availability of low deposit mortgages”.
It added that it would ramp up the First Houses scheme, which provides up to a 30 per cent discount, to help key workers and other young people get on the property ladder.
The report continued that it would “explore further options to limit the competition first-time buyers face”, which mainly focuses on curbing factors that price out local people.
It has also proposed improvements to planning system, encouraging councils to bring empty homes back into use and improving housing quality.
