Helping Innovate Property (HIP) – Blog, Housing Market News and Articles

One of the ‘cheapest’ Home Information Pack (HIP) providers who were favourably named in last months edition of Which have ‘withdrawn’ from the HIP market.

This demise has been inevitable for many of the cheap HIP providers including Promise Home Packs and we highlighted concerns last month in the article ‘Be aware of cheap, budget HIP & EPC providers‘. Promise are not the first HIP supplier to have left the market and certainly will not be the last.

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The Body that represents the interests of solicitors, the Law Society, has recently published a consultation paper entitled ‘Improving Residential Conveyancing’. The purpose of this is to invite the views of its membership on ideas/proposals it has for improving the home buying and selling process.

The timing of this consultation paper is questionable, given that apart from the radical and some would say brave introduction of the Home Information Pack Regulations, no significant change to the selling and buying process has happened since 1925. So why after all this time is the Law Society looking to review and seek the thoughts of its members on possible reform?

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The Conservative party has made no pretence about its desire to ‘scrap’ Home Information Packs (HIPs) should as is likely it gain power in spring of next year. Is this a credible policy which can be backed with intellectual argument or is it simply an easy way of trying to win the populist vote?

In this article I will look at both sides of the argument and will, despite my vested interest in seeing the HIP retained, try and provide a balanced analysis of the issues.

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Cheap Home Information Pack (HIP) and Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) providers in the market place, are unfortunately not delivering the promised service or product at times, within the timescales agreed. It has been brought to our attention that a number of companies are taking excessive time to deliver or arrange EPCs, some have not received their HIP or EPC at all as the company has gone into liquidation and ceased trading.

Recently, we have received numerous calls from anxious concerned people who were looking for advice on what they could do in their specific problematic scenarios plus people who thought they had instructed us to carry out their HIP and/or EPC, when infact they had opted for a ‘cheap HIP provider‘.

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For my first article I have decided to focus on something very close to my heart – information provision, or in our case, the lack of it when it comes to selling, subletting or parting with possession of a leasehold flat.

Most leases have a minimum requirement that compels leaseholders to serve notice and these are known as assignment conditions.

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So you are about to sell your property and are looking to choose an estate agent. It is imperative that you make use of the services of an informed, professional estate agent to get the best out of your deal and ensure the process is smooth and without problems.

We are all aware of the challenging financial situation most are currently encountering and the negative impact this has had on the property market. It has never been as important to carefully select your estate agent as it has at present.

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Recently it was reported that industry professionals are recognising the benefits of Home Information Packs (HIP). This is against the general negative slant the main stream media seem to want to promote.

HIP-Consultant.co.uk have been providing Home Information Packs for over 18 months and have witnessed numerous situations where Home Information Packs have benefitted the home buyer, home seller and the process itself. Without Home Information Packs; sales would have quite likely fallen through and at best would have held up proceedings to an extent the majority of people would be very unhappy with.

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Home information Packs have received a positive response from associated industry professionals who are utilising and seeing the benefits of the legislation.

A recent poll which comprised of over 150 housing industry professionals, ranging from estate agents to mortgage lenders and property investors voted in favour of the Home Information Pack legislation and continued development at the Land Data Great Housing Market Debate.

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As of today we now have some subtle changes to the Home Information Pack legislation that could bring added benefit to the exisiting HIP via some modifications including the Property Information Questionnaire (PIQ) which is now a required document.

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The commercial EPC legislation came into force on April 2008 and now the large majority of commercial properties require a Commercial Energy Performance Certificate before marketing of the property can legally commence.

Whereas the domestic equivalent do vary slightly they are generally under a £100; whereas the commercial EPC is generally £350 and upwards and very much dependant on the individual property. The similarity between commercial and domestic energy performance certificates names can give people an impression they will be similarly priced. The difference in cost is due to the much increased time and expertise required to produce the commercial EPC both on-site and off-site.

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The Property Information Questionnaire (PIQ) will be shortly rolled out after the draft version was produced and the related consultation was completed and added to the legislation.

There does not seem to have been vast modification to the document and legislation since we published the last article regarding the Property Information Questionnaire in August. However, the planned implementation of the PIQ was intended for the the 1st January 2009 however this has been delayed to 6th April 2009 to allow the industry to prepare for the addition to the Home Information Pack Legislation.

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