On 6 October 2025, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) launched a consultation on reforming the home buying and selling process in England and Wales. The consultation seeks public opinions on a series of proposals intended to create a more transparent and efficient residential property market.

Home information packs (‘HIPs’) are set to stage a comeback. Agents will need to hold certain qualifications and abide by a Code of Practice. Sales commitments are to be brought forward to squeeze out ‘gazumping’ (or ‘gazundering’).

This article examines the implications for stakeholders and identifies several areas where further clarification and caution are warranted.

Key Proposals of the Consultation

The consultation centres on four principal areas of reform.

1. Upfront Property Information

The MHCLG proposes requiring sellers and estate agents to provide standardised property information at the point of listing the property for sale, including:

• EPC rating, council tax band, property type, chain status and a clear floor plan;
• Title documentation and seller ID verification;
• Standard searches – namely, local authority, drainage and water, environmental and locality-specific risks like mining or chalk, planning consents and flood risk data;
• Property information such as that contained in the current conveyancing forms TA6 and TA7;
• Property condition assessment tailored to the property’s age and type;
• Service charges, leasehold terms and building safety data.

The stated aim is to increase transparency in the residential market, allowing buyers to make better-informed decisions and to have greater trust and confidence in the system.

The upfront disclosure of much of this information may indeed bring about the intended transparency, but not without significant cost and effort which might put some sellers off marketing their property: floor plans and searches may cost well in excess of £500 and take time to obtain. Legal and surveyor’s input will also be required at additional cost.

Other practical issues might arise. For example, to require disclosure of information about the property’s condition may be costly to the seller, may become stale over time if the property lingers on the market, and may nevertheless be ignored by buyers or their lenders.

Also, the level of survey carried out by the seller and the extent to which the buyer’s lender can rely on this would need to be negotiated. Buyers may refuse to cover this cost, putting the financial burden entirely on the seller.

Requiring standard property searches to be made available at the time of listing may mean that sellers incur wasted costs, i.e. if they can't find a buyer in time or they won’t reimburse the seller’s search costs. Currently, responsibility for obtaining these searches falls on the buyer, and they’re only undertaken when a sale is agreed. Requiring the seller to provide them up front could, in theory, reduce the number of failed transactions and reduce buyers’ wasted costs — particularly where issues are uncovered late in the process, after the buyer has already incurred costs.

However, in practice, buyers may still commission fresh searches in case any issues have arisen since the seller obtained theirs at the time of listing, or where the seller’s searches are over 6 months old. As a result, this reform might not deliver the intended cost savings, but instead duplicate search costs.

Another issue arises surrounding the legal responsibility for the accuracy of upfront property information. If a buyer later discovers a material defect not disclosed within the pack, would liability fall on the seller, the estate agent, the conveyancer, a third-party data provider, or all? The consultation is currently silent on this point.

Learning from the Past

It’s worth remembering that this is not the first time the government has sought to increase sellers’ disclosure obligations.

The Housing Act 2004 introduced HIPs for the sake of speeding up transactions and increasing transparency – the same ambitions that the MHCLG has for its proposed reforms. Sellers were legally required to prepare a HIP before their property could be listed for sale, which provided key property information similar to that proposed by the MHCLG.

After HIPs were introduced, sellers complained about the high costs of producing them without any clear benefit. Significant pushback also came from buyers and lenders, who had issues with the quality of the scheme: HIP condition reports did not meet the same professional standards as official RICS surveys. As a result, lenders would not rely on them and many buyers ended up obtaining the latter, duplicating costs.

So, how does the government propose to avoid another failure? It isn't clear as while the MHCLG identifies that the previous failure of HIPs was due in part to ‘challenges around trust, reliance and outdated information’, its proposed measures to avoid those pitfalls don’t address the fact that buyers and lenders were unwilling to rely on HIPs – they propose:

• drawing data from trusted sources such as HMLR,
• implementing free refreshes from search providers,
• setting standard validity periods – e.g. 6 months for searches,
• setting a minimum standard for data provenance,
• presenting information in a ‘standardised and easy-to-digest format’.

It remains to be seen whether these measures will be sufficient to prevent a repeat of the HIPs failure. In any event, the MHCLG states that its proposals ‘would not happen immediately’ due to the ‘significant change’ they present.

2. Professionalisation of Agents

The consultation proposes a statutory Code of Practice for residential property agents – including estate, letting and managing agents – to combat low confidence in the profession, with the government citing a public trust score of only 37%.

In an earlier consultation from this year on the implementation of Part 4 of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 (which deals with service charges), it was proposed that there should be mandatory professional qualifications for managing agents.  The MHCLG now proposes extending these qualification requirements to estate and letting agents as well.

Currently, agents are lightly regulated – although mandatory qualifications might improve agents’ standards of service, they may also cause service costs to rise to reflect higher employment costs.

3. Binding Agreements at an Earlier Stage

To reduce the number of transaction fall-throughs, the MHCLG proposes introducing conditional contracts ‘to make transactions binding at an earlier stage’ than exchange of contracts – perhaps even at the time of offer acceptance.

Withdrawing after signing such a contract would incur a financial penalty, such as the loss of buyer’s deposit if they withdraw after exchanging. The government predicts that this reform would reduce the number of fall-throughs from to 1 in 7 transactions.

While this approach might help deter ‘gazumping’ and sudden withdrawals, it would only be feasible if reforms around upfront property information are successfully implemented.

Otherwise, buyers may find themselves locked into transactions without the benefit of prior access to full property information and would face financial penalties for withdrawing if issues were discovered later.

They would lose their current ability to raise concerns arising from the standard pack or other professional advice and to negotiate a lower price as a result. This may become a recipe for litigation.

4. Digitalisation and Streamlining of the Conveyancing Process

A key aim of the reforms is increasing the efficiency of the conveyancing process through modern digitalisation. This includes:

• Digital property logbooks and packs to become a standard feature of transactions, with current and historic information about properties: for example, title information, council tax band, local broadband connectivity, etc.

The challenge here lies in ensuring that this data is accurate and up to date, so it can be relied on without extensive further searches and enquiries.

• Streamlined anti-money laundering (AML) checks to prevent clients from undergoing the same verification process multiple times during a single transaction with solicitors, lenders, estate agents and others.

This would likely be welcomed by clients and practitioners alike.

• Potential introduction of AI conveyancing technology to save conveyancers’ time.

AI tools could speed up certain areas of the conveyancing practice – for example, AML checks.

• Publishing transparent information about estate agents and property solicitors – the government suggests factors such as:
• Professional specialisms, e.g. local expertise, leaseholds, right to manage
• Performance, e.g. speed and quality of service
• Process, e.g. providing a digital property pack or logbook

While this information may help consumers make more informed choices, the metrics measured and the way they are reported may prove to be misleading.

Conclusion

The Home Buying and Selling Reform consultation outlines ambitious proposals to improve transparency, efficiency and digitalisation of the conveyancing process.

However, it could have the unintended effect of putting off potential sellers, i.e. those who might otherwise wish to test the market, and increase costs for sellers, potentially without a corresponding saving for buyers.

For now, the proposals remain just that – proposals. The consultation closes on 29 December 2025, with a government response to opinions received to follow at some time next year. The extent to which the reforms will go forward is unknown until then.