Chicken Little is Alive and Well in the UK

[hausdok]

The official implementation of Home Information Packs (HIPS) and mandatory inspections paid for by sellers is more than a year away in the U.K. but the rhetoric coming from those marshaled against the new home inspection profession is reaching a fever pitch.

If the naysayers, including many members of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), real estate agents, mortgage lenders and appraisers, are to be believed, most of those home inspectors, who are presently enrolled in a 2-year full-time curriculum to earn their home inspection credential, will be completely inept and/or dishonest; the home inspection process will be a huge waste of everyone's time and money; and inspectors will be nothing more than "Cowboys" - a term in the U.K. that is apparently a derogative meaning an inept inspector who makes unjustified calls on homes in order to justify his/her existence.

Below are links to some of the good, the bad and the ugly that is fueling the debate across the big pond. Enjoy.

Pensioners rush for new £40,000 career by Rosie Murray-West

According to an article from The News.Telegraph.com, pensioners and people close to retirement are queuing up to train for a new career that could earn them £40,000 a year or more as home inspectors.

HIPS Will Hit Market, says CML

According to an article on FindaProperty.Com, a British real estate listing and real estate search engine site, commercial mortgage lenders (CML) in the U.K. feel that the introduction of mandatory inspections will set the market on it's ear.

Due to a massive response to their article, FindaProperty.Com did a follow-up piece entitled HIPS, Cure or Curse.

A More Sensible View of HIPs in the U.K.

Should sellers beware house sale reform?

A piece by Jill Insley in the Sunday, February 19th issue of the The Observer by Jill Insley reported about the fears over the government's introduction of HIPs and questioned whether sellers in the U.K. needed to be wary of house sales reform.