Leading bulk conveyancing firms are steering clear of trying to sell home information packs (HIPs) direct to customers, at least until the market shakes out after launch in June next year.

Hammonds Direct and Barnetts will initially concentrate on making HIPs for companies that have first contact with clients - such as lenders and estate agents - rather than offering them directly to those selling properties.


Achilleas Hatjiosif, business development manager for Hammonds Direct, said: 'The [HIPs] market will change quite a lot in the first few years - would you bet your whole business on that? It depends how risk averse you are.'


Mr Hatjiosif said that Hammonds Direct ultimately would want to be a direct provider of HIPs, but in the beginning there are companies that are more capable of selling and marketing them.


Richard Barnett, founder of Southport-based Barnetts Solicitors, agreed that directly facing customers is not what firms like his are necessarily about. However, providing HIPs for lenders and estate agents definitely provides opportunities to maintain and grow conveyancing work. HIPs business may well be expanded in time to become an extra direct source of business from clients, he said, but for now Barnetts wants to see how the market develops.


Mr Barnett added that the work being done on PISCES - the standard being developed to allow the disparate documents involved in conveyancing to be plugged together automatically - would help make it possible to produce the 1.4 million HIPs a year the government estimates the property market will demand.


At Barnetts the view is that HIPs are a side business based on automating something the firm in essence already does, which might become an increasingly exploitable element through Web sales in the future.


The same goes for Hammonds Direct, which is investing heavily in IT having just bought a solution from Docucorp to help with the process of automation. Mr Hatjiosif said: 'In the HIP world, our technology must become leaner and even more focused on speed.'


However, inroads are already being made into reaching out to customers directly in new ways. Barnetts last week announced it was plugging into Sky's e-business portal system, meaning TV users will be able to access the firm's Web site on their televisions.


But, according to bulk conveyancers, with the cost efficiencies of full-scale automation, HIPs costs could even be offered to clients at a discounted price by lenders as a loss leader. It is moves such as this that need to be watched, they say, before they jump into the market themselves.