Are Property Packs Coming Back? Material Information and Home Buying Reform Explained

Since 2023 the rules on what estate agents must include in a property listing have tightened significantly. National Trading Standards have phased in a three-part material information framework that changes what sellers and agents must disclose — and when. At the same time, the government has been consulting on broader home buying reform that could reshape the whole transaction process, including the possible return of something resembling the Home Information Pack.

This article explains what material information currently requires, what the reform consultation is proposing, and what sellers, agents and conveyancers should be doing now.

What is material information?

Material information is any fact about a property that a buyer would consider important when deciding whether to make an offer and at what price. The definition comes from the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. Estate agents were always subject to these rules — the change from 2023 onward is that the National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agents Team (NTSELAT) has issued specific guidance on what counts, and enforcement has become sharper.

Parts A, B and C: what each requires

NTSELAT published material information requirements in three tranches:

Part A — mandatory from May 2023

Every residential listing must include:

• Property price
• Tenure (freehold, leasehold, or commonhold)
• Council tax band (or equivalent in Scotland and Wales)

This is the minimum floor. It has been in effect for nearly three years and any listing without it is now clearly non-compliant.

Part B — physical characteristics

Part B covers information about the property itself:

• Property type (house, flat, bungalow)
• Number of bedrooms and bathrooms
• Construction materials — including whether it is a non-standard construction type
• Parking (type and ownership)
• Heating type and fuel
• Utility connections (gas, electricity, water, broadband type)
• EPC rating (or exemption status)

Part C — legal and environmental

Part C covers the factors that most commonly cause transactions to collapse after offer acceptance:

• Building safety — is the building within scope of the Building Safety Act? Are there known cladding issues?
• Restrictions — restrictive covenants, rights of way, easements, and any other legal encumbrances
• Rights and informal arrangements — flying freeholds, shared drives, maintenance liabilities
• Flood risk — both surface water and river/sea flood risk
• Planning — any planning permissions, enforcement notices, or Article 4 restrictions affecting the property
• Accessibility — any known adaptations relevant to buyers

The GOV.UK guidance on material information in property listings sets out the full list and clarifies which items are always required versus required only where relevant.

Why this matters for fall-through rates

The UK has one of the highest property transaction fall-through rates of any comparable country — typically 25–30% of agreed sales collapse before completion. The main causes are survey findings, legal issues discovered during conveyancing, and buyers pulling out after learning something they should have known at the point of offer. Material information requirements are designed to front-load disclosure so that buyers are better informed before committing to offer costs, survey fees and conveyancing.

The practical effect is that agents must now do more work at the listing stage. Relying on a basic vendor questionnaire is not sufficient for Parts B and C: agents need to source data from official registers including Land Registry, the Valuation Office Agency (for council tax), and flood risk data from the Environment Agency.

The home buying reform consultation

In 2025 the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government launched a consultation on home buying and selling reform. The consultation is broader than material information — it covers the entire transaction process from listing to completion.

Key options under consideration include:

• Digital property logbooks — a persistent digital record attached to the title register, capturing conveyancing searches, planning history, and condition information. Updated by each successive owner and conveyancer.
• Mandatory pre-listing packs — a requirement for sellers to commission and publish certain searches and title information before going to market. This is the closest thing to a HIP revival, though the government has been careful not to use that language.
• Reservation agreements — legally binding contracts between buyer and seller at the point of offer acceptance, with financial penalties for either party pulling out without good reason. These would require primary legislation.
• Standardised conveyancing forms — a single national set of disclosure forms (replacing the current TA6, TA10, etc.) to allow digitisation and automated processing.

The consultation closed in late 2025. The government has not yet published its formal response, but industry bodies expect a white paper or legislative proposal in 2026–27.

Are HIPs coming back?

Home Information Packs were abolished in England and Wales in 2010 after a short and troubled life. They were unpopular with sellers (who had to pay for them upfront), inconsistently produced, and the Energy Performance Certificate — their one lasting legacy — was retained separately.

The current reform proposals are not identical to HIPs. The focus is on digital title information, legal searches, and flood/planning data — not the structural surveys and home condition reports that HIPs originally required. Any mandatory upfront pack would also need to solve the vendor payment problem: who bears the cost if the property doesn't sell?

Scotland already operates a different system. Home Reports have been mandatory for Scottish property sales since 2008. A Home Report includes a single survey, an energy report, and a property questionnaire. The Scottish evidence — that pre-listing surveys do not eliminate fall-throughs but do reduce them — is likely to inform the English and Welsh reform debate.

What agents and sellers should do now

Regardless of what the reform consultation produces, agents need to be compliant with the existing Parts A, B and C framework today. Practical steps:

1. Build material information into the listing workflow. Don't treat it as optional or as something conveyancers will pick up later. The NTSELAT guidance places the responsibility squarely on agents.
2. Source data from official registers. For council tax bands, use the VOA. For flood risk, use the Environment Agency flood risk checker. For tenure and title information, use HM Land Registry. Don't rely only on vendor questionnaires.
3. Flag non-standard construction. Concrete, timber frame, and PRC (prefabricated reinforced concrete) properties cause mortgage issues. Disclosing construction type upfront prevents the problem surfacing at survey stage.
4. Check for building safety status. For flats, check whether the building is within scope of the Building Safety Act and whether there are any outstanding remediation works.
5. Keep records. If there is an enforcement dispute, you will need to show that you made reasonable efforts to source and include the information at the time of listing.

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How property data can help

Several items in Parts B and C can be sourced programmatically from property data APIs:

• Council tax band — via the Homedata Council Tax API, which returns current bands by UPRN and address
• EPC rating and energy data — available at UPRN level via the Homedata EPC API
• Tenure and title information — via HM Land Registry
• Flood risk — Environment Agency open data
• Planning history — via the Homedata Planning Application API

Agents and proptech developers building listing tools can use these data sources to pre-populate material information fields automatically from address or UPRN, reducing the manual burden on agents and improving data accuracy.

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