Home Information Packs (HIPs) are Here

HIPs (previously called ‘Sellers’ Packs’) have been in the public eye for several years now, first having been rolled-out on a trial (voluntary) basis in November 2006.

From the 1^st August 2007 HIPs became a legal requirement. Home owners in England and Wales must produce a HIP before marketing their home.

By way of Government concession, until June 2008 people will be allowed to market their homes for sale as soon as they have commissioned a HIP. They will not have to wait until they have received the HIP.

HIPs will contain legal property documents together with search results and an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). If you wish to sell your property, please contact this firm as early as possible so that we can take your instructions and commence preparation of the HIP for you without delay.

Naturally, we are able to work with your estate agents and will provide them with the HIP for their use in marketing the property.

Before finalising your instructions to commission a HIP you will need to make some choices about how it is to be done.

• You MUST have an EPC for your house. This requires an inspection of the house by a qualified person – usually a surveyor with additional qualifications. We can arrange this for you. The fee varies depending on the size of property.
• You MUST have applied for Local Authority, Water and Drainage searches against your house. The house can go on the market before the results of these searches have come back (the results are then added to the HIP when they are received) but the actual applications for the searches must have been made before the house goes on the open market. This means that the fees for the searches will have to be paid. The fees vary depending on the Local and Water Authority areas.
• You also need to choose whether to have a full Local Authority search carried out or to rely on what is known as a "personal search". A personal search is cheaper by about £50 but the advantage of a full search is that we MAY be able to recover the whole cost of it from the buyer of your house if the buyer can make use of the search result for mortgage purposes
• You need to choose whether to meet the cost of the EPC and search fees yourself at the outset or whether to take advantage of the deferred payment scheme. The deferred payment scheme gives you what is in effect a loan to meet the costs of your HIP. The loan can remain outstanding for up to nine months, by which time you ought to have sold your house. We do not make a charge ourselves for arranging the deferred payment scheme for you but the scheme itself will make a charge to you of about 10% on top of the inspection fees and search fees which you will have to pay in any event. Furthermore, the scheme is only available for the more expensive MDA–llinked HIPs. Details will be provided on request.

For guidance only, our estimated cost of a HIP with a full search for a freehold property in the County Borough of Conwy is £235. This is on the basis that we are instructed to act in the sale.

So the choices you need to make are:

1. Do you want us to put together the HIP for you?
2. Are you going to meet the cost yourself at the outset or are you going to take advantage of the deferred payment scheme?
3. Do you want to go for the cheaper personal search with the local authority or do you want to go for the full search in the hope of recovering the cost of it from your eventual buyer?

You can tell us what you choose in each case by completing our HIP request form.