Government moves to placate MPs

MPs are concerned about housing in rundown areas

The government has moved to stave off a potential revolt over its plans to change the way homes are bought and sold.

Housing Minister Nick Raynsford indicated that cheaper homes might be excluded from legislation that would require vendors to provide sellers packs costing up to £700.

This way sellers and their agents will have the information they need to set a realistic price

Nick Raynsford

But although Mr Raynsford said the government would look at the possibility of excluding "low value properties in certain areas" from the scheme, he said ministers were reluctant to take such a step.

Speaking during the second reading debate of the Homes Bill, the minister said the government did not intend to introduce its provisions until 2003.

The proposed sellers packs would transfer certain costs such as a survey of a property on to the vendor from the buyer.

MPs concerned

Some Labour MPs are concerned that in areas where housing prices have collapsed, the extra cost would have a further negative impact on already depressed markets.

Former Labour minister Tony Lloyd expressed concern that in some areas house prices had plummeted to less than £4000 for some properties.

Mr Raynsford insisted that the process of selling and buying properties in England and Wales was one of the "slowest and most inefficient in the world".

He also argued that the sellers pack would provide a significant deterrent to gazumping by speeding up the sales process.

The government's proposals for the sellers pack has already been piloted in Bristol - a scheme which ministers have argued was successful.

The packs, costing between £400 and £700 and backed by an accreditation system, will include a survey, searches and a draft contract for potential buyers.

Mr Raynsford said: "This way sellers and their agents will have the information they need to set a realistic price and buyers can make a well-informed offer, safe in the knowledge that they are unlikely to find any nasty surprises later on."

Government's record attacked

Tory housing spokesman Nigel Waterson criticised the bill for "failing to tackle gazumping".

And he attacked the government's record on housing saying Labour had "presided over a growth in homelessness" and a "dramatic fall" in the provision of social housing.

"On the basis of a rather dodgy pilot scheme the Government is setting out to increase costs for potential sellers, to bureaucratise the sale of private properties and to criminalise ordinary law-abiding citizens who are simply trying to enter freely into contractual relations," he said.

Although Mr Waterstone welcomed some of the proposals he said that others were "unnecessarily burdensome on local authorities".

Nick Raynsford: 'Flexible'

Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Don Foster welcomed many of the bill's provisions but maintained that more could be done.

In particular he criticised the failure to address "obscenity of having 150,000 homeless households at the same time as 750,000 empty homes".

Mr Foster advocated lower VAT on repairs and renovations and introducing much stronger compulsory purchase powers.

"You have the plan in broad outline at the beginning and you hope that by the end of the programme it will work out all right," he said.

Earlier Joe Ashton, Labour MP for Bassetlaw in north Nottinghamshire, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that some properties - such as ex-council homes - in areas of severe deprivation could take years to sell.

He said Labour MPs were "99%" behind the rest of the bill but wanted to make sure such homeowners were offered "help and some sort of flexibility" over the sellers' packs.

The Law Society backs the scheme in general but is worried plans to fine homeowners who fail to provide a seller's survey could stop people putting houses on the market.

The scheme would put a "substantial extra expense" on vendors and hurt those on low incomes or with negative equity, said Michael Napier, the society's president.