Home Report Failures Continue

The appalling Home Report fiasco imposed on the Scottish House Market by the Scottish National Party continues to do harm. Hated by sellers, not trusted by buyers and not accepted by lenders these expensive reports and the system required for them fails daily.  And it is poor clients who have to pick up the costs as the politicians move on to something which interests them more. Consider just a tiny recent example from our firm.  A house is up for sale.  An “interested” buyer says he is thinking of offering.  But the Home Report is over three months old.  So the potential buyer demands a “refresh” of the Home Report.  This is duly ordered by the seller – fearing he may lose a buyer if he does not do so.  So a “refresh” is obtained – and the “refreshed” Home Report is not now out of date – although identical to the original report. Then guess what? The buyer changes his mind and decides not to go ahead.  Of course the buyer has no obligation to pay for the “refresh”.   So what has been achieved?   1. The poor seller is left to pay for a completely pointless “refresh” of a Home Report.  2. The surveyor pockets a fee for a second completely useless service – having previously pocketed a fee for a Home Report which itself has proved useless since it has served no purpose thus far.  In fact it is possible that no one except the seller has even read it. So in this case we have a double survey on one house and no sale.  And it could well happen again to this very client.  But houses often take many months to sell these days – so how many times is this ridiculous and expensive farce played out over Scotland?  Nobody knows of course.  Well done the SNP government! David Borrowman, Senior Partner Caesar and Howie