Mini Product Update – Spring 2014
5th March 2014
- Lawyer Checker, the online service developed to reduce uncertainty in identifying the legitimacy of vendor conveyancers, have announced that their entry product, the Account Screen, will be discontinued from May 2014. The Account & Entity Screen will remain with no differential in pricing, £10 +VAT and will continue to be available on the ETSOS platform. In addition to the instant result on the outcome of the check against the database, the Account & Entity Screen does the legwork when a potential risk is identified by undertaking further research into the firm:
- Roll of solicitors/conveyancers
- Companies House information
- ICO Data Protection Register
- FSA Registers
- Land Registry Transfers of Value lists
- Sort code look-up
- Streetview
- Anglian Water’s search arm, Geodesys have announced a price increase effective from 1st April 2014. The price of their residential CON29DW Drainage & Water Enquiry will go up by £1.50 +VAT across the board. Should anybody have any queries on this, please contact your ETSOS account manager.
- Landmark have announced two new updates to their Homecheck Flood report and Energy & Infrastructure report. Both updates reports are available through the ETSOS platform.
- With flooding and insurance very much in the public eye, Landmark have enhanced their market-leading Homecheck Flood report to offer a solution that not only provides more data than basic flood assessments (including, for example, critical information on the likely depth of a flooding incident) and suggested resistance measures and costs, but also now promotes an insurance broker that will guarantee to beat a high street home contents quote (where low risk is identified) and will always offer a quote even in high risk areas. Even if further negotiation on the purchase price of the property is required as a result, the report offers offering the best chance of the transaction proceeding as quickly as possible.
- Landmark’s Energy & Infrastructure report has been updated at no extra cost and now includes new data sets covering:
- Existing and planned solar farms (new data set)
- High Speed 2 including, critically, the safeguarding limits
- Crossrail phase 1
- Historical and existing oil and gas licensed exploration blocks and drilling locations
- Existing and planned location of wind farms and wind turbines
- Yorkshire and Humber CCS and Cross Country Pipeline
- South West water have announced a price freeze on their residential CON29DW. Their commercial searches will see a small increase of £3.25 +VAT on their standard CON29DW while the premium search will go up by £5 +VAT from 1st April 2014.
- Mining Searches UK have announced a £2.50 +VAT price rise on their reports, effective from 4th April 2014. The reports affected are as follows:
- Metalliferous Mining Search
- China/Ball Clay Search
- Limestone/Chalk Search
- Combined Metalliferous/China/Ball Clay Search
- Combined Metalliferous/Limestone/Chalk Search
- Yorkshire Water (SafeMove) have announced a price freeze on their residential CON29DW. The standard “Commercial” report, and the “Commercial Plus” are both subject to a £4.50 +VAT increase, effective from 8th April.
Latest news
System Maintenance
Please be aware that we are performing some system maintenance this weekend. We don’t anticipate that this will result in any downtime of our services, but we apologise if it does cause any inconvenience
Government Confirms New Regulations and Qualifications for Estate Agents Will Happen
The government has accepted the proposals of the Regulation of Property Agents (RoPA) with wide-spread consequences for estate and letting agents.
The proposals reach right into the heart of the industry to affect regulation, training and licensing.
(more…)
Fears of Tougher Regulations and Unjust Costs Mount Ahead of Government Announcement
Estate Agents are waiting for the big reveal on Monday after Lord Best has admitted some firms could close when the regulation of property agents (ROPA) makes its recommendations to the Government early next week.
Lord Best, the chair of ROPA, has already outlined the working group’s desire for more regulation.
[NEWSFLASH] Agent Charged DOUBLE Over AML Registration Mistake
Property Industry Eye (PIE) has highlighted the case of an estate agent who has fallen foul of HMRC and been charged double.
On 4th April, with plenty of time to spare, Hayman-Joyce renewed their annual HMRC registration. They paid the fee and thought they’d ticked all the boxes.
Compliance in a Box: The Natural Remedy for Your AML Headache
Estate agents around the country are realising that the new 5th AML Directive goes deep. There’s a lot of work involved in becoming compliant. And the penalties for non-compliance, either deliberately or through confusion, are severe. (more…)


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