08 March 2007

Trevor Kent

How HIPs Won't Work

TEN THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT HOME INFORMATION PACKS, BY TREVOR KENT

AS A SELLER :

1. You will have to pay for a Pack (average cost £500) before you can put your home on the market from June 1st this year.
2. You, or your agent, will be a law-breaker liable to a daily fine of £200/500 if caught trying to sell your home without a Pack, or for the first 14 days if your Pack is ordered but hasn't arrived (this means no advert, no board, no flyers not even a chat in the pub).
3. A new Jobsworth has been created by Labour, called an "Energy Inspector" who will visit your home at your cost, but before you are allowed to market it. The Inspector will prepare an Energy Performance Certificate by poking around your home from basement to loft, ostensibly assessing your home's 'green credentials' .  This EPC report will be put in to your Home Information Pack.  Remember - no Pack, no marketing.
4. The 8 page EPC report on your home (that you've paid for) along with legal information about you and your home, will be centrally recorded by government and will be available for inspection electronically by goodness knows who, for goodness knows what purposes.
5. If your Home Information Pack (HIP) doesn't arrive for 14 days (perhaps because of lack of Energy Inspectors countrywide) and you have therefore been unable to market your home, you may lose the next property you wished to buy.  If you lose it, there will be  no refund of your HIP costs AND the government will keep all the details on you and your home that you have paid for, on their database.

AS A BUYER:

1.      The arrival of Home Information Packs is likely to reduce the choice of properties on the market by 30% as sellers won't risk the loss of the cost of a HIP just to 'dip their toe in the water'.  Reduced stock could mean increased prices.

2.      When you look at the HIP on the house you're interested in making an offer on (if you can be bothered) it may not have legal searches in, or even details of leaseholds as these can take weeks to arrive, so what help will it be?

3.      The government think the Energy Performance Certificate within the HIP, which will tell you things like "if you buy a new boiler for £3000, it'll save you £42 a year in running costs" is important to your decision-making, and that you are at a disadvantage without the report. Will you agree when you wade through 100 pages of a full HIP, when all you want to do it secure your purchase? 

4.      Your solicitors and your mortgage lender will tell you they still want you to pay for a mortgage valuation survey and up-to-date searches because the vendor's HIP is no use to them as the contents cannot be relied upon. Thus it has saved you 'not one penny'.

5.      Of course, you may not even have your offer accepted on your proposed purchase anyway, because you haven't got a HIP on your own house yet.  Remember, you can't start marketing yours for 14 days without your own HIP unless you break the law. Chains will become even more of a problem with the advent of HIPs, and sellers may prefer buyers with 'nothing to sell'.

There are plenty more problems with HIPs, all of which have been spelt out in words of one syllable to government over the last few years by professionals, but they won't listen.  Maybe it's because the prospect of a stealth database of the inside details of two million homes a year is just too appealing.

End

Trevor Kent is former president of the National Association of Estate Agents, and has been a constant critic of Home Information Pack legislation.

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