Home Information Packs are now mandatory for anyone selling a house of three or more bedrooms in England and Wales.
The aim is to speed up the often tortuous process of buying and selling houses by forcing the seller to gather together in one pack various strands of information about the property like local authority searches and title deeds.
Providers of HIPs naturally love them but estate agents say they are slowing down the market by putting off potential sellers.
Do you have a view? Let us know.
Trackback
10 comments so far
HIP is wast of money and wast of time. If I buy a house, I would like my solicitor to do the search. Why should I trust the search done by the seller? Will they do it properly? There are so many problems needed to be sorted out, but the government wasting tax payers’ money and time to creat more problems.
I have to say that they have provided more jobs for the HIP providers, so that they can publish the new job numbers and get elected again.
- Posted by Yongyi NeathercoatIn an already ineffective/inefficient real estate market, unlike US/SA where within 21 days surveys, proof that buyer can proceed and exchange completion is required, this is an additional, unecessary, costly, irrelevant exercise which congests the process, as effecient solicitors should already ensure sellers action such informationj packs commencing the property being placed on the market to sell. UK property law requires critical review to ensure more simplicity and efficiency is created.
- Posted by FionaI believe they are great.
The thing that it actually slowing down the market is estate agents still giving unrealistic valuations to bump up their fees.
- Posted by Dave DuvalHe’s right you know
- Posted by Dave DuvalYet another bit of pointlesss bureaucratic nonsense. Goevernment needs to concentrate on correcting real problems not add to peoples workloads.
- Posted by R SoperA total waste of time, a client can check their Land Registry docs for only £3.50. A survey of your own house, bizarre. What happenned to buyer beware
- Posted by Ian CruickshankThe govt will use these packs to help them increase local govt tax
- Posted by MarkHere in France they have a broader version of the HIPS. During our recent house purchase it provided a considerable amount of information, the energy efficiency of the house, who’d worked on the house recently, flood risk, subsidence risk etc. It even suggests costs of energy saving improvements. On the whole I feel for the UK market it’s a good idea, so what if it takes another two weeks to complete a transaction if there’s greater transparency in the process?
- Posted by Peter KnivettFor home buyers, I believe HIPs can be a useful amalgam of much of the information necessary to assist the buying decision - a sort of property log book.
The main challenge for HIPs is the acceptance by mortgage lenders and solicitors of the essential legal information they contain. Unless there is acquiescence by all parties to the transaction HIPs will be seen by home sellers only as an additional financial burden, where much of the information can be obtained at a far lower cost than from an accredited HIP provider.
It could be asserted that from the Governments point of view, HIPs are a useful means of gathering information on properties that will enable Councils to increase Council Tax by stealth!
- Posted by TONYDave Duval is obviously a seller of HIPS. There is no logic of having to go to such expence and having a market place which quite clearly does not understand the content. A property will shown as defective if say one double glazed window has lost vacuum. That is plainly stupid
- Posted by Ian Cruickshank