The great proclaimer

by Clare Bettelley

Ashley King takes over as chairman of the Association of Home Information Pack Providers on Monday, the same day that first day marketing and Property Information Questionnaires are introduced. Here, he shares his thoughts on the impact of the changes and his new role with Clare Bettelley.

Ashley King is, by his own admission, the king of self-promotion in the Home Information Pack world, which is great news for industry players in the run up to the 2010 General Election. The straight-talking, no-nonsense businessman and founder of Simply HIP is the pack's evangelist, who has no qualms about expressing his outrage and exasperation regarding the Government's implementation of them.

King, who succeeds Tom Parker as chairman of the Association of Home Pack Providers on Monday, says: "I've made no secret of the fact that I think HIPs were implemented in the most awful fashion by the Labour Government; I've been beating the drum about this for some time. HIPs haven't been as effective as they should have been because of this.

"The [agency] industry doesn't stand opposed to the principle of transparency, just the way the packs were implemented and the U-turns along the way."

King's ability to ruffle feathers is what makes AHIPP's appointment such a coup; tact and diplomacy alone may be luxuries the trade body can ill-afford as its line of attack, given the six-month countdown before the political parties are likely to start penning their manifestos.

Conflict
HIPs were introduced in the 2004 Housing Act to improve the house buying process and minimise the number of aborted transactions - at the time around 30% per annum - by providing buyers with comprehensive information about their prospective home.

But the removal of the Home Condition Report as a mandatory document, as well as the Government's decision to stagger the pack's implementation, has led to the packs being used as a political football from day one of their introduction.

The Conservative Party has consistently dismissed the Government's handling of the packs as a farce, with Shadow Housing Minister Grant Shapps remaining wedded to his plan to scrap them if the party is voted into power in 2010. But the Government has dug its heels in, as Housing Minister Margaret Beckett reiterated in a House of Commons Hansard Debate in January.

Beckett insists that she has no plans to suspend HIPs, in spite of calls for them to be scrapped as long as the UK is in recession by, among others, the National Association of Estate Agents.

King is unphased by such threats, even Shapps' plans for abolition. "You'd have to go back to Parliament to do that, and it wouldn't be helpful since the legal framework to deliver an Energy Performance Certificate is the HIP."

King refers to research conducted by Connells last year, which claims that properties it tracked sold on average 12 days faster than those without a HIP in place. "While they have not delivered the benefits they should have done by now, HIPs have started to speed up delivery times, and Property Information Questionnaires will deliver transparency in a form that consumers can understand," he insists.

He adds: "HIPs are useless in their current format; the PIQ helps you understand them. Until now you could get more information when buying a mobile phone than a house; it [the system] has been archaic in providing upfront information."

Objectives
The PIQ is a key focus for King in his new AHIPP role. He wants to educate the industry - both HIP providers and agents - about the merits of supporting their successful implementation. "They are going to deliver greater transparency for consumers, so it is futile for people not to understand that. It is only non-completion that will cause complications."

That said, he acknowledges the possibility and dangers of misinformation, and the additional delay this my cause where there are inconsistencies between the PIQ and the Sellers Property Information Form [handled by conveyancers]. "If there are any conflicts in the answers in the form, conveyancers will be asking a lot more questions, which will delay contracts exchanging," he says.

He advises agents against assisting their vendor clients with PIQ completion. So, what's the answer with uncooperative clients? "Agents just have to tell them that it's a required document, and explain the barriers that failure to providing it creates to first day marketing.

"There are no difficult questions, andmotivated vendors will see the benefits," he insists.

King also wants to examine how exchange-ready HIPs can transform the conveyancing process in his new role, and explore how EPCs can be delivered through HIPs to benefit consumers, in terms of the implementation of EPC recommendations.

But he has no time for agency's concerns about first day marketing.
As of Monday, agents must have a HIP in place, including a PIQ, before they can start marketing a property. A number of agents have long bemoaned this rule, insisting that they will lose hot buyers to competitors if they cannot inform them about suitable properties as soon as they are instructed.

King refutes the suggestion, based on his claim that agents should be able to source HIPs in a matter of days, if not hours. "Any Code-Compliant HIP provider should be able to produce a HIP within 24 hours, once in receipt of an Energy Performance Certificate and a PIQ.
"The only barriers to this are vendors preventing Domestic Energy Assessors from entering their property, or who delay returning their Property Information Questionnaire."

And King is putting his money where his mouth is, claiming that Simply HIP is able to produce the necessary documents agents require to start marketing a property within one hour. Agents have 28 days to source the required searches.

Career
Before establishing the Simply Group with Simply Conveyancing in 2000, King's career spanned the property market. He started at North London-based Ellis & Co and then, following a one-year sabbatical, spent four years in property development before returning to agency as a managing director within Countrywide, with responsibility for two subsidiaries, R A Bennett & Partners and Taylors. He spent two years as conveyancing director at Connells before going it alone again to create his existing group.

King has no time for agents' concerns about first day marketing because, not in spite, of his agency experience. "It's like moaning about having to wear a seatbelt, or no longer being allowed to use a mobile phone while driving; you don't like having to do it, but you do because it's the law."

But even he, as incoming AHIPP chairman, is unable to clarify the definition of marketing. "It's like any legislation, it is a question of opinion until it is challenged in a court of law."

He adds: "You can't offer a property for sale from April 6 without a HIP in place, but to offer an area for sale is permissible."

He is dismissive of the suggestion that the Property Codes Compliance Board and Trading Standards lack teeth, in spite of the fact that they have allegedly fined just five agents for breaching the HIP Regulations. His focus is instead on a new amendment to the HIP Code, which obliges members to whistleblow on non-compliant HIP providers to either of the two aforementioned enforcement bodies.

He says: "It is about time that providers who flout the law be brought to bare."

Service standards
Unlike King, a number of lawyers are advising agents against divulging any property information at all to hot buyers until a HIP is in place. But this requires a robust and transparent relationship between agents and their HIP providers, to ensure a mutual understanding of HIP turnaround times and the availability of help for vendor clients with PIQ completion.

This will keep King busy with his Simply HIP hat on.

Meanwhile, with his AHIPP hat on, he is busy perfecting his responses for any media coverage on the April 6 changes, well aware of speculation suggesting that the PIQ constitutes the last chance saloon for HIPs in the run-up to the election.

With King as publicity engine and AHIPP director general Mike Ockenden as lobbying afficionado, there's little chance of HIPs being out of the limelight, though as King knows only too well, anything's possible. "What are the Tories going to say if we make HIPs a success in the next nine months?" he quips.

Whatever the success of the Tories, or King's own in his new role, he has one crucial ingredient to help him through - a sense of humour. And, in view of his unpaid chairmanship and ownership of a HIP provider, he will need this in spades if the Opposition is voted in and decides to stick to its plan to scrap HIPs.

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