Half a HIP

Buying and selling your home isn’t always as easy as everyone thinks it should be. Just when offers have been made and accepted, tentative removal dates discussed and everything seems to be going along fine, quite often something goes wrong. This can lead to a quarter of sales falling through, with time and money wasted on both sides.

In an effort to put a stop to this, for the last nine years the Government has been working on a plan and the decision was made to introduce the Home Information Pack (HIP). Designed to remove many of the problems faced by buyers and sellers, the whole proposals were well publicized throughout the early part of 2006 and many would-be inspectors had started the training needed to carry out the Home Condition Report, which was seen to be an important part of the package. Surprisingly, however, the decision to drop this part of the whole package has been dropped “for the time being” as it was realised that the time-scale for training had been badly misjudged. This took the industry by surprise and disappointed many buyers.

The pack has been the subject of many alterations and is now looking sylph-like compared to the original version. The proposal is that HIPs will come into force in June 2007. Already a slimmed-down version of what was first proposed, due to the removal of the above mentioned Home Condition Report, the Government has now decided packs will no longer have to include local building and planning searches. This was announced after it was discovered that councils in trial areas were taking on average more than four weeks to supply the information. 

What will be needed, however, is evidence of title, copies of planning, listed building or building regulation consents. Guarantees for any work carried out on the property and an energy performance certificate. The Energy Performance Certificate is very much like the labels which are issued with new household appliances. It will offer suggestions on ways to improve the energy performance of the property alongside appraisals of what has already been achieved. In this way buyers will be able to assess the cost of any energy improvements and take this into account when considering the valuation.

If sellers decide to include a Home Condition report with their package, there is nothing to stop them.  This should speed things along somewhat as the seller will already put part of the necessary paperwork into action by gathering information and arranging the energy performance certificate. If he then has to wait for a potential buyer to arrange a survey, the whole procedure will be lengthened and no one is going to be any better off.

The cost of an energy performance survey and certificate is likely to be around £300. It appears that the cost of a survey on a mid-price home should be in the region of £350 but if the two could be combined then it is likely that a considerable saving could be made.

At present then, if you find the home of your dreams, rather than the promised information pack showing the condition of the property, proof of ownership, planning consents and guarantees on work carried out, local building and planning searches and the energy performance assessment, what you will be presented with is something which saves neither time nor money. Many people may think the whole thing should be abandoned until there is some consistency and until the HIP can become a valuable tool.