When the home information pack (Hip) was first proposed by the incoming Labour government a decade ago, we were promised that it would transform the way we buy and sell houses for the better. For its opponents – and there were many, including the Conservative party, industry bodies and homeowners – it was a bureaucratic irritant that would contribute red tape and hundreds of pounds to the cost of selling a home, and might dissuade some people from even putting it on the market at all.

After a couple of false starts, Hips were finally made compulsory at the beginning of last month – albeit only for properties with four or more bedrooms, which account for just 22% of the market. Within three days, the first pack had been delivered to Alan Bartliff, former managing director of Aga stoves, and his wife, Hilary, who were putting their four-bedroom home in the Warwickshire village of Long Marston on the market for £750,000.

From Monday next week, however, Hips will be extended to cover three-bedroom properties – which, according to the property consultancy Hometrack, means more than 70% of housing stock in England and Wales will come under the legislation.

So, a month on, what has happened? Did sellers rush to market large family homes to avoid paying for a Hip before the deadlines? Have they been trying to disguise fourth bedrooms as large playrooms or spacious upstairs studies? And what will happen when the scheme covers smaller and cheaper homes as well?

The picture across the country is patchy. As predicted, Hips appear to have put off the “speculative sellers” who have traditionally put their houses on with agents to “test the market”; in the past month, the number of four-bedroom homes on sale has dropped considerably.

At the Chester office of the estate agency Jackson-Stops and Staff, Nick Withinshaw, a negotiator, has received just one instruction that required a pack. By contrast, Savills in Reigate, in the heart of the Surrey commuter belt, says it has a dozen properties in its window with Hips.

Christopher Lacy, a director of Savills, based in Salisbury, who has monitored the introduction of Hips across the country, says things have not been as bad as the doom-mongers predicted – but he has yet to see any benefits, either.

“Sellers have a wearied, resigned acceptance,” he says. “They view it [a Hip] as a nuisance, causing further delays at an extra cost.” And buyers appear largely uninterested. Lacy says he knows of only one occasion when a buyer asked to see a pack.

Trade bodies and lobby groups, meanwhile, are continuing to insist that the packs are having a detrimental effect on the market for four-bedroom homes, and have called on the government to hold off making them compulsory for three-bed properties as well. The government was too quick to broaden the scheme, they say, and should have waited to analyse how it has worked in practice.

Jeremy Leaf, housing spokesman for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, believes the extension will have a “devastating effect on the market and the wider economy”. Although he does not believe serious sellers will be deterred by the packs, his main concern is the effect on “speculative” vendors – some of whom end up selling.

“A large proportion of our business comes from those who are just thinking about moving,” says Leaf, himself an estate agent in north London. “They may not end up moving and want the option of pulling out.” To win them over, many agents are offering free packs, but most will demand agreements whereby they can reclaim the cost of the pack from any client who backs out within a set period of time.

Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA), claims to know of one agent who has not received an instruction for a single four-bedroom home since August 1. “If these anecdotes prove to be widespread, and follow through into three-bedroom homes, our worst fears in terms of lack of supply will be realised,” he says. “It will do nothing but help house-price inflation.”

The packs also continue to be plagued by teething troubles, the most recent of which concern searches – information relating to issues such as planning consents and building regulation approvals, which has to be included in the pack. Last month, HSBC, one of Britain’s biggest mortgage lenders, warned that it might not accept the searches if they had been conducted by a private company, and would require buyers to pay to conduct their own search. “If a person wants to buy a house from someone who has a Hip containing a personal local search, we would tell their solicitor that we would not lend to them unless they commissioned their own search,” it said.

“Hips are to do with marketing the property,” says Nigel Ewart Evans, a property lawyer and chief executive of the Society of Licenced Conveyancers. “Rules that apply to providing material for marketing cannot be adopted for those acting as conveyancers. The materials required for marketing are not the same as those required by lenders.”

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers