A pack on your back — it’s the latest way to gum up the market in houses

Just what we need: a well-meant effort to gum up the market in houses. This market now seems to be gumming itself up, but never mind. A new Housing Act has been passed into law, and with it the concept of sellers’ packs. Anyone who wants to sell a house will have to put one of these packs together or, more precisely, to order one. They are supposed to contain all the information that a buyer of the house might want to have, and members of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors will be happy to provide them for anything up to £1,000. Who are these surveyors? Well, if you wanted to annoy them, you could describe them as estate agents with their Sunday suits on. Preparing the packs will help to keep them busy and provide a welcome boost to their incomes — for business has been slackening off, and Countrywide, which owns the biggest chain of estate agents in the country, now forecasts that in the last three months of this year it will lose money.