| New Features for April 6th |
31/03/2009
Introduction
We have developed a range of new features on the HIP Manager platform to accommodate for the legislative changes taking effect on April the 6th. Below is a summary of these changes and how they will affect the provisioning of our services.
Property Information Questionnaire
The Property Information Questionnaire or PIQ is intended to be completed by the home seller and will incorporate a series of questions aimed to provide critical information to a prospective buyer that may affect their purchase decision. You can see a sample of the PIQ here.
We have developed an online system that will enable the PIQ form to be emailed directly to the vendor. A number of clients have asked us what to do in circumstances where their client does not have email/web access. In such cases there will be a tool to manually upload a scanned copy of the PIQ from your control panel.
We are confident that our new PIQ system will be very simple and intuitive and should be something that the seller can complete in just a few minutes.
When we compile the HIP our system will automatically check for a PIQ. If the PIQ has not been completed then the system will add a blank template which the vendor must complete before the HIP is officially published.
Differential Pricing
As you may be aware the Local Authorities are introducing individual pricing on a cost recovery basis. This has been widely predicted to see an end to nationwide HIP pricing due to the deviations in Local Authority fees from council to council. We will be launching a new module on the 6th April that will dynamically generate a price based on the postcode entered. Our system will cross check suppliers to ensure we are obtaining the most competitive quote available.
White Label account holders should ensure that they remove any fixed pricing model to prevent orders being placed at a loss. It is advisable to switch to fixed or percentage markup pricing instead. This should be implemented by the 6th of April.
Currently we have only received pricing information from 25% of local authorities. This may cause some disruption to our service on the 6th as the final fees filter through from the councils.
First Day Marketing
First Day Marketing will officially end on the 6th of April, this will invariably place a strong emphasis on lead times for a number of components in the HIP. We are committed to delivering a very fast turnaround on all the components of the HIP by sourcing information from a wide range of suppliers and investing in the continual improvement of the technology behind our systems.
We will be providing a precompiled HIP from April 6th to enable properties to be marketed without delay.
|
 |
|