Home Information Packs (HIP)

This week has been eventful for sure in the continued life of Home Information Packs. HIPS are now 1 year old and news headlines continue to be made from the debate on Home Information Packs (HIPS). Recently, significant reports of non-compliance of the legislation have come to light and been acknowledged by leading figures involved within the industry.

Yesterday, it was widely reported by many news agencies including the BBC that some agents, I must stress only ’some’ agents; are flouting the law and are proceeding to market properties without the legally required Home information Packs.

By law the Home Information Pack must be commisioned prior to the marketing of the property. This should be done by the individual home seller or the estate agent acting on behalf of the home seller. At present the HIP pack needs to have been ordered, with this confirmed  marketing can commence whilst the HIP is compiled. This exception is under review and will probably be removed in December meaning that the Home Information Pack would need to be in place as per the Home Information Pack regulations before marketing would legally be allowed to start.

HIP-Consultant.co.uk would welcome this exception being removed. This ‘tweaked’ legislation has given room for it to be abused and the benefits of the HIP pack to home sellers and buyers affected. HIP-Consultant.co.uk currently complete HIPS, on average within six working days, delivering direct to the client, estate agent or both.

The BBC reports (the following is an excerpt):

However, in the current troubled housing market, it seems some estate agents are not commissioning Hips when the property goes on the market, something which by law they are supposed to do.

According to Paul Marsh, president of the Law Society, the practice is common across England and Wales.

“The evidence we’re receiving from right across the country, be it Cornwall, London or the North East England, is that solicitors are not receiving a Hip when the deal is struck.”

“You would have expected that the Hip would be available immediately the agreement [to accept an offer] is reached.

“We’re not getting a Hip until three to four weeks later, sometimes not until exchange of contracts.”

Action is now being considered by trading standards; it is important to remember that potentially a fine of £200 per day can be applied for marketing of a property without following the Home Information Pack legislation.

It appears that the delay in solicitors receiving the HIP could be a direct result of the agents in question only commisioning the Home Information Pack once the property has received a confirmed offer and then supplying to the clients solicitor once received; which negates the benefit of the HIP speeding up the process.

If the legislation is followed there is no reason why the HIP pack can not be transferred to the solicitor almost immediately; HIP-Consultant.co.uk can do this easily and efficiently as we store and deliver the components electronically as standard.

HIPS are far from ‘dead’ as some organisations would like you to believe. The National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) have consistently been against Home Information Packs since their introduction and would like to see them removed from the process. The Conservatives continue to use HIPS as a ‘political football’ with no viable alternative suggestions in how they would address the issues within the housing market that HIPS, if correctly applied are helping improve.

HIPS are developing, progressing and providing benefits to the house buying and selling process. Just this week it has been announced that a Property Information Questionaire (P.I.Q.) will be included in the future which will add further benefit to the packs current usefulness.

The Home Information Pack continues to have it’s critics and those resistant to allowing the HIP achieving the improvements it was designed to make. There are rogue elements within most industries and these reports do nothing to help improve the reputations of ‘estate agents’ in general. It is hard not to see this as a shame particularly for those that HIP-Consultant.co.uk work with, whom take meeting their legal obligations seriously.

Home Information Packs (HIPS) are now a year old this week. The past year certainly has been controversial at times for HIP packs as the legislation has been rolled out; which lets be honest was to be expected. Home information packs have been reported upon as often is the case in the UK press with a negative slant. The legislation has unfortunately become a ‘political football’ with the debate showing little signs in slowing.

Home information Packs were designed to provide information to the home buyer, speed up transaction times and reduce the number of failed completions. Home information Packs or as they will be known Home Reports are due to be implemented in Scotland from December this year.

Some of the headlines connected with HIPS over the past year have been at times pure fantasy and showed little grasp of the contents within the packs and the true effects they are having within the housing market. Do we truly believe providing information at the start of the house selling process rather once an offer is accepted at an average cost of £350 can affect the housing market in the way we are experiencing at present.

Lets remember; currently the only additional required document in the Home Information Pack is the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) with the remainder of the pack being made up of the searches, details of title, lease, index and a sales statement that would of had to be done by the property lawyer. The main difference is that we now have this information in place at the beginning of the transaction which enables us to have a better insight into the property in question and allows a more informed decisions in whether to make an offer. Our homes are in most cases the biggest purchase of our life, what other item do you purchase or make an offer on without any information? This is what we would return to doing without the HIP.

With the implementation of HIPs we have seen positive impacts being made including:

• Reduced transaction times - Connell’s solicitors have reported by an average of 12 days
• Less people testing the market with no real intentions of selling
• Lowered search costs and speeded up response times of these providers
• Information lessening the chance of a nasty suprise at the last minute preventing the sale completing

The average cost of £350 per HIP is generally asked for as an upfront payment by most providers. HIP-Consultant.co.uk can offer substantial reductions on the average cost and now also able to offer a 9 months deffered payment option, please feel free to contact us for further information.

HIP-Consultant.co.uk continue to see the benefits to the housing market as do many professional organisations involved with the process. We believe that there are areas that could be improved as with most things and we are actively involved in highlighting and addressing these areas.

The Uk property market has a solid base with Home Information Packs (HIPS) in providing information to the home buyer, now is the time for this to evolve further and add to its offering and reap further benefits.

The Carsbergy Review, written by the author Sir Bryan Carsberg is recommending a  number of reforms for the property buying and selling industry of the residential property sector in England and Wales.

The Carsberg Review was commissioned by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) and the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA). This fact has brought into question the independence of the report and the following findings contained within it.

Within the report which makes 30 recommendations; it criticises the system of voluntary regulation in the residential property sector for being inadequate and some aspects of the report claims that the introduction of Home Information Packs (HIPs) has not provided the improvements to the home buying process that were intended.

This is contrary to Connell’s solicitors research amongst others, who have stated the positive impact HIPS are having. Ross Bowen, director of their Survey and Valuation department recently said “We recently conducted some research revealing that HIPs have speeded up the time between instruction to sell a property and the exchange of contracts by an average of twelve days.”

Sir Bryan Carsberg, is in agreement with the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) who believes that HIPs should be made voluntary. Both believe that individual house sellers should decide on whether or not to commission a HIP pack to market their property with. This should come as no surprise as the NAEA have been consistently opposed to the Home Information Packs (HIPs) legislation. It would be of interested to poll individual NAEA members to find out their views nearly a year down the line since HIPS came into place; as many agents now see them as another revenue stream. This is obviously appreciated by many agents in the present housing market as many are currently going out of business.

The reports research found that the average cost of a Home Information Packs (HIPs) is around £350.

Sir Bryan Carsberg is well aware of the impact to the planned compulsory Home Condition Report (HCR) being made voluntary had; little or no uptake and this would surely be the case for the HIP too. HIP-Consultant.co.uk feel that if the introduction of Home Information Packs becoming voluntary was introduced it would cause the packs resignation to the tried and failed pile.

Would it not be better to develop the packs current benefits further overtime and use the existing structure as a solid base to move forward from?

Are we expected to return to making offers on properties which are in most cases the biggest purchases of our lives with little or no information? To then find out twelve weeks down the line that there is a problem which could have been identified within the Home Information Pack at the start.

After all, currently the only additional required item in the Home Information Pack is the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), which in our experience has been widely welcomed by the public. The remainder of the pack is made up of the searches, details of title, lease, etc that would of had to be done by the property lawyer. The main difference now is that we have this information there at the beginning of the transaction.

The HIP provides the buyer with a good informative description of the property prior to making an offer. With the HIP pack in place it means that once there is an agreed sale the process to exchange can be a much quicker process.

The domestic energy assessment seems to still hold myths about what is and is not invloved. We receive questions and concerns from owners fairly regularly. So we have written this post to help explain what an Domestic Energy Assessor (DEA) will be looking at during the visit.

Read the rest of this entry »

A new £10 million package of measures to support home owners who may be facing difficulties with their mortgage, is announced today by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling and Housing Minister Caroline Flint.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Government today announced a package of measures to help ensure consumers are seeing the vital information in Home Information Packs and are receiving a higher standard of service in the home buying and selling process.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Association of Home Information Pack Providers (AHIPP) has welcomed today’s statement by Housing Minister, Caroline Flint.

The extension of the transitional arrangements covering first day marketing and leasehold documentation is a sensible move. It is encouraging to see that government recognises the issues around timely procurement of searches and leasehold information that Home Information Packs (HIPs) have highlighted, and are taking steps to address these issues by the end of the year.
Read the rest of this entry »

As anticipated the 1st day of marketing exception has been extended for HIP provision.

Read the Home Information Pack news release which details this amongst other proposed measures.

I would have welcomed the exception being removed as we are able to produce HIP packs efficiently and fairly rapidly as alot of independents are. I felt we may have won additional business without this exception. Organisations and individuals would have valued the service and quick turnaround to a higher degree if the exception had been removed as planned.

However, it has been almost common knowledge it was to be extended, so comes as no suprise.