The Property Information Form (TA6): what sellers are signing, and what is changing

At some point in every sale, usually just after an offer has been accepted, the seller’s solicitor sends a long form to fill in. It asks about boundaries, neighbours, building work, guarantees, flooding and much more. Solicitors call it the TA6. Its full name is the Property Information Form.

If you bought your home ten or twenty years ago, you may never have seen it. It went between the solicitors, the buyer’s side read it, and it was quickly forgotten. Now you are the seller, and your answers carry weight.

What the form is

The TA6 is the Law Society’s standard questionnaire about a home for sale. The seller completes it, usually with guidance from their solicitor or conveyancer. It covers, among other things:

• boundaries and who is responsible for them
• disputes and complaints, past or current, including with neighbours
• notices and proposals that might affect the property
• alterations, planning and building work, and whether the right approvals were obtained
• guarantees and warranties, for example for windows, damp-proofing or a new boiler
• insurance, and any difficulty obtaining it
• environmental matters, including flooding, radon and Japanese knotweed
• rights and informal arrangements, such as shared drives or access across a neighbour’s land
• parking, services and utilities, and who lives in the property

There are companion forms too: the TA10 lists the fittings and contents included in the sale, and leasehold homes have a separate leasehold information form.

Why your answers matter

The buyer’s solicitor reviews the form before exchange and raises questions about anything unclear. The buyer is entitled to rely on what you say. If an answer turns out to be untrue, the buyer may have a claim for misrepresentation, and that can arise long after completion.

Two points catch sellers out:

• “Not known” is a legitimate answer. It is far better than a confident guess. A guess that turns out wrong is the answer that causes problems later.
• The answers must stay accurate. If something changes before completion, a new dispute with a neighbour, say, or a notice from the council, your solicitor needs to know.

Where the delays come from

The questions themselves are not the problem. The problem is the paperwork behind them.

Take a seller with a £650,000 house and a loft conversion completed some years ago. The form asks whether building regulations approval was obtained and whether the work was signed off. If the completion certificate cannot be found, the buyer’s solicitor will ask about it, the buyer’s lender may want it resolved, and what should have been a simple answer becomes weeks of correspondence. There are recognised ways of dealing with missing approvals, but which one is right depends on the work and the buyer, and late in a sale every option costs time.

The same applies to guarantees that were never kept, alterations made by a previous owner, or informal arrangements with a neighbour that nobody wrote down. Found before the home goes on the market, they are paperwork. Found after an offer has been accepted, they can become a renegotiation, or a reason for a nervous buyer to pull out.

How the form changed in 2026

A new edition of the TA6 became mandatory for law firms in the Law Society’s Conveyancing Quality Scheme for new instructions from 30 March 2026. It is designed to be completed once an offer has been accepted, so the buyer has the seller’s information before committing.

Alongside it, the Law Society introduced an optional Material Information Form, which some conveyancers use before a home is listed. It helps sellers gather the information their estate agent is expected to include in the listing. Under consumer protection law, agents should give buyers the material facts they need to decide whether to view or buy, such as tenure, council tax band and other known issues, and National Trading Standards has published guidance on what that means in practice.

The direction of travel is clear: more information, earlier in the process.

The history: Home Information Packs

None of this is new. From August 2007, sellers in England and Wales had to provide a Home Information Pack before marketing their home, containing documents such as searches, title information and an energy performance certificate. A compulsory home condition survey had been planned as part of the pack, but was dropped before launch.

Home Information Packs were criticised for adding cost and delay without giving buyers the information they actually wanted, and the requirement was suspended with immediate effect on 21 May 2010. The energy performance certificate was the only part kept.

What is coming next

In June 2026 the government published a roadmap for reforming home buying and selling. It commits to:

• mandatory sales packs, including property searches and a condition report, provided at the point of listing
• digital property logbooks as a standard part of every transaction
• earlier binding contracts, to shorten the period in which either side can walk away without consequence, but only once sales packs are embedded
• qualifications and a code of practice for estate agents

The roadmap acknowledges the criticisms of Home Information Packs and says this time will be different: gradual, digital and developed with the industry. Much of it needs legislation, which the government says will come when parliamentary time allows. For now, the TA6 remains the document that matters in a sale, and it is the seller who signs it.

Where an independent view helps

Conveyancing is complex, and this form is one of many points where a sale can slow down or come under strain. A consultation is a chance to step back and look at your sale as a whole, what is likely to be asked and where the risks sit, with someone who has spent more than 35 years around property transactions and whose only interest is your sale going smoothly.