This will include the energy report (perhaps 100 pounds) the council search which previously the buyer would have paid for, this can be anything from 1-200 pounds and you'll need a copy of the draft contract which you would have had to have paid your solicitor for anyway.
A HIP has a limited life, I think 3 months. I wouldn't pay £600 as there is no guarantee the house would sell within that time scale, as will be the case, increasingly, as the market slows down. Why not say to the estate agent that if he finds a buyer who wants a HIP then he should get one at his expense.
Sorry, that wouldn't work. If your property has 3 bedrooms or more (and is in England & Wales, etc) you can't put the property on the market without either actually having a HIP (or in certain circumstances having requested one).
Sorry, that wouldn't work. If your property has 3 bedrooms or more (and is in England & Wales, etc) you can't put the property on the market without either actually having a HIP (or in certain circumstances having requested one).
See
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be precise you can, if you wish to take a chance on getting caught.
Hmm, what about properties with two bedrooms and an office? If a bedroom is a room with a bed in it, then I'm living in a single bedroom property currently - and it would be a zero bedroom property if I hadn't borrowed a bed from a neighbour. The link given does not shed light on this.
No that's not the criterion (or how would you define it for a completely empty property?)
HMG's take on this, which is probably correct, is that why would someone try to advertise and promote their property for sale with one bedroom less than it really has, just to save a few hundred quid on a HIP, when the potential losses on the sale price are far more than that. I mean, I'm selling a 3-bedroomed property, and expect to get a price based on that... if I choose to market it as a two-bedroom place then either I will have to ask a much lower price, or put it on at a higher price and hope that (a) buyers who want a 3-bedder will spot the 'subterfuge' and go for it. But then there's the risk of missing lots of potential buyers eg who just search Rightmove for 3 bedders...
(Still hoping to hear from anyone who's compiled their own HIP!)
The price is more likely to be around £300 plus VAT for up-front payment, alternatively some providers will let you defer payment for up to about 10 months and then charge about £50 extra for the privilege.
Lawpack do offer a DIY hip-pack, but I would be surprised if you could save much more than about £50 that way, as you will still need to pay for searches, EPC etc, you will just be paying yourself for the time and effort in compiling everything and taking on the risk that you c*ck it up.
On Tue, 9 Oct 2007 13:46:24 +0100 someone who may be " snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net" wrote this:-
The energy performance certificate is a pile of s**te, dumbed down to the level of a meaningless box ticking exercise. I certainly wouldn't pay the sort of fool who works of a solicitor or estate agent a penny for that sort of simplistic exercise unless forced to. Neither would I be stupid enough to pay any attention to such a dumbed down pile of s**te if I was buying a house. I suppose its most useful use would be to put in the compost bin.
On the other hand SAP, in its various forms, has enough detail to almost be useful.
The fact that party politicians, who don't know their arse from their elbow, insist on such things being done by the sort of fool who works for a solicitor or estate agent isn't going to change my mind. As with their other ridiculous ideas, for example the English Part P of the Building Regulations, it simply confirms that we would be better off getting rid of the party politicians, who are really only the representatives of lawyers. I like William Morris' idea of turning the Palace of Westminster into a store for manure. Most of the party politicians would no doubt make reasonable compost.
My mate had one done (£500 odd) and mostly a waste of space.
Boiler was mis identified as being non condensing as it was not on the inspectors list of known boliers, so negative on energy rating there.
Negative points for not having all thermostatic valve on all radiators (hallway and bathroom). The boiler instructions state at least one radiator must not have them to act as a bypass.
Misidentified the depth of insulation in the loft, said was 100mm, but was actually considerably more.
Phoned up to complain and inspector said "OK" and just reissued the HIP with one point higher energy rating, a B now instead of C (I think).
The buyers were not interested in the HIP at all, more interested in nice new kitchen and off road parking.....
Mind you he added £1000 to price to cover the HIP costs.
On Tue, 9 Oct 2007 16:18:38 +0100 someone who may be "Ian_m" wrote this:-
And an installation with just thermostatic valves would fail a number of other requirements of relatively recent years, including ones to prevent the waste of fuel caused by short cycling of the boiler.
Of course the sort of bod who works for a solicitor or estate agent is not going to even be aware of such things, let alone understand them.
Just revisiting this thread as in the end I just let the estate agent get on with doing the HIP - price was 295 plus VAT.
As everyone says, including the EA - total and utter s**te.
There's a flat roof area, which got identified as "Very poor" as no insulation was assumed despite my having put 2" Kingspan in there. I flagged this up and the EA rectified it, however, the official software they use makes no distinction between different types of insulation, so with 2" of apparently Rockwool my roof was still poor... I think in the end the guy just bodged it and said it was a pitched roof with 6" Rockwool or something!
My new CH system came up as "Average" despite having a new condensing boiler, wall-to-wall TRVs and roomstats, and apparently that's a bug in the software - no matter what you enter in the CH section, it's impossible to better "average"...
I got "Very Poor" for the electric lights, which we were fully expecting since all the fittings are bog-standard bayonet type, fitted with incandescent bulbs... but the EA (who is qualified to conduct the energy survey) has just told us that if we'd simply fitted CFL bulbs throughout, it would have boosted our rating. Bzzzt!
Finally, I've already accepted an offer on the property and the EA tells me the prospective buyer (nor anybody else who viewed the property) has shown even the slightest interest in seeing the HIP.
There are two very separate matters here, which I think some of the posters to this thread are mixing up.
The Energy Performance Certificate is undoubtedly a complete waste of money and paper. The methodology is fundamentally flawed, the assessors inexperienced, and the software is ill-designed, so the results are ignored. I know everyone seizes on the low energy lamp nonsense, but I gather these have only a tiny effect on the ludicrous scores. Draught proofing doesn't even get a mention. I've just had one done, and apart from enabling me to say I'd complied with the law, it was a waste of £60. The only good thing is that so many people were duped into paying enormous amounts to be "trained" that there's nothing like enough work for them all, so the prices are far lower than predicted. I enquired through localsurveyorsdirect late one evening, and I had the first (illiterate) email sent to me at 03.10 the next morning, followed by a phone call at 7.50.
The rest of the HIP, now that a building survey is not required, is quite innocuous, and may even do some good. Sooner or later, someone is going to have to do a Local Authority Search, and get Official Copies of the land registry entries, so it might as well be the vendor who does it when time isn't of the essence. Similarly, a Water and Drainage Search is required, I believe, by the CML handbook. The Home Use form and Home Contents forms are only what the vendor would eventually have filled in as part of Enquiries before Contract, so, again, why not do them at the start and avoid paying your solicitor to act as a post office between seller and buyer? The index form and sale statement are trivial.
My criticisms of these parts of the HIP are therefore mainly concerned with the appallingly designed forms - there seem to be several versions kicking around, none of which have any indication of their version number. The Land Registry, by contrast, make well-produced forms easily available for download in .doc or .pdf format, they deal with them rapidly, and they answer any questions helpfully and knowledgably.
My HIP cost, in total £229 (EPC £60, Local Searches £114, Water £43, Land Registry £12): a local estate agent wanted £350. The estate agent would have used a personal search company - in this neck of the woods, it would have been slower than getting an official local authority search, and runs the risk that the buyer's mortgage provider might insist on an official one anyway, delaying matters by another couple of weeks.
How exactly does a Con29R form submitted to a Local Authority differ according to who submitted it? Or the LLC1 form? Or do the LA's answers vary? Some people who trust their solicitor sufficiently to hand over the whole process of house buying and selling may not be aware that it is quite a common practice for Local Authority searches to be passed from solicitor to solicitor as buyers fall by the wayside. Whether each solicitor then charges his client for them...
The Land Registry Official Copies (formerly known as Office Copies) are what they say - copies of the definitive register. In any event there are two further safeguards in this area: the usual forms of contract require the seller to show good title, and the buyer conducts a further "search with priority" between exchange and completion.
And is the information previously provided on a "Property Information Form", and now on the Home Contents Form, any more "arsewipe" than it used to be? Even with a solicitor relaying the information, I think it is still likely to be the vendor who answers the question of which lampshades are included - and solicitors do like to ask these things.
So the chances of the information being out of date is the same as it ever was? Seems to me HIPs would be a good thing if it weren't for the ridiculous green component.
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