Home Information Packs came into force this week but, as Marsya Lennox discovers, potential buyers are just not interested in them.
Nobody likes them - and we don't really care, but the new Home Information Packs are now part of the house selling process and estate agents are getting on with it.
From last Monday, most of us will need a pack if we are selling our home, now that three bedroom properties are no longer exempt from the new requirements, and since August 1, the industry has been getting used to the new layer of bureaucracy, practising on homes of four bedrooms and above.
"Now it's here, we have to embrace it," says Victoria Jeffs, of Savills, this week.
The Stratford-upon-Avon branch, where she is based, was the first in the country to complete an HIP in August, when the new packs became compulsory.
"They are not going to go away and we are doing our best to make sure they do not hold up sales."
The HIPs debacle has unfolded over the last year, with delays, revisions and much argument from the pros (the new HIPs industry), and the cons (just about everyone else).
One rethink has left most sighing in relief. A pack need only be ordered before a house can be marketed. Initially, more draconian requirements were for a HIP to be fully prepared before a "for sale" sign could be erected.
"That would have been a nightmare," says Victoria.
The summer marketplace has seen the first glossy sales brochures to now include the new information gleaned from the required energy assessments.
These little graphs are now displayed, in glorious technicolour, at the end of the property details, grading each property from A to G for its energy efficiency and its environmental impact.
As in GCSEs and A-levels, an A grade is supposed to be good, perhaps better described as a rating, as in electrical appliances. There are numbers too, apparently marking efficiency and impact out of 100.
Confusingly, a 100 per cent score in environmental impact is better than it sounds - and would signify minimum carbon emissions.
Room for improvement is also part of the calculation, apparently showing the lower costs incurred if certain measures were implemented, such as low energy bulbs and improved insulation, for example, but a random study of these first ratings to be published in sales particulars, show remarkably little encouragement to improve.
For instance, some houses with a low F grade in both categories are predicted only a high F within their current potential.
Maybe a total rebuild with new energy systems in place is the only way to achieve a prized A, and looking at just a handful of assessments on new Warwickshire instructions for Savills, the best mark awarded is a C, for a 1980s executive detached house, rather better than the G on a smart conversion, described by Victoria Jeffs as "stun-ningly beautiful".
The reaction of the buying public is rather clearer. The selling public must just get on with it. It is the buyers, however, who show whether such measures are worth the effort.
Victoria Jeffs reports that not one buyer has yet asked to study a HIP relating to a potential purchase. "Nobody has ever asked," she says.
That appears to be the general attitude. The people that matter in the property market, the purchasers, are just not that interested and even if they are, the figures don't yet make it clear what grade is actually really good - or even just indifferent.
Many more comparisons will be needed before one can judge the ordinary house, from the "pure green" and the leaky, costly, carbon-belching monster.
David Poole, of the Solihull branch of Savills, has found much the same. Do buyers seem to care? "Not really," he says. "Nobody has looked at one of these yet and said to us 'that doesn't look very good - I'm not going to buy it'," but the agent must abide with the law, go through the motions, and make the whole process as easy as possible for his client.
"We are getting on with it. It is very early days and the main thing is that it has not made any difference to our business. The HIPs have not really provided purchasers with any new confidence - but they have not put them off either."
The anti-HIP lobby says that the packs may deter "speculative" vendors - those who like to test the market before deciding to move.
As some of those do end up selling, there are fears that supplies will further decline, more fuel for price inflation.
Sceptics admit that the introduction of HIPs has not had as bad an effect as predicted.
Sellers may be "wearied and resigned", fed up with any extra cost, but buyers are "largely uninterested".
