thinking of moving house for the first time ever.
what are they all about? how much do they cost?

They are about taking money from you and passing it on to some pointless B Ark non-entity.
How much – too much.

We used hips4u and they'd done it within a week for £199+VAT. You will find some negative reviews on the internet for them but I found them to be fine…

HIP basically contains the vendor's questionnaire, energy performance certificate and some basic local authority searches from what I can remember… Not too painful although you need to be in for the EPC lady.

"need to be in for the EPC lady"

is this a euphemism? 😯

Well our EPC was done by a lady. Aren't they all?? 🙂

If you look at a property on say Rightmove, you'll find links to the HIPs in a lot of them (to give you an idea of what they contain). Your property can't go on the market without one, so needs doing before you can sell. Have a chat with the estate agent, they might have an arrangement with a local inspector. Think we paid about £200 for ours

Further to my answer on your other related thread, it was before HIP/EPC (although both me and the buyer are surveyors so it wouldn't have been an issue 😉 )

Having just been through a training course on Energy Assessment, I can tell you that the EPC is just part of a Government-run scam to make it look like they're doing something to meet the EU "carbon footprint" target.

It's a worthless document full of advice that you could have figured out for yourself. The statistics are derived from nonsense measurements filtered through inadequate software, that serve no useful purpose.

On top of which, the "industry" (totally unregulated by the "Communities for Local Government" and it's quango offshoot) continues to take money from trainees when it has known since 2008 that the number of assessors needed has long since been over-supplied, to the extent that all those qualified since that date cannot find work and even those early qualifiers with contacts and a client base are just hanging on by their financial fingertips(but that's another story)… 👿

what does epc mean?

Energy Performance Certificate. A highly scientific and meaningful way to decide whether the house is efficient or not, is that right Mr W? 8)

I remember a few guys who worked at my old company who quit to become HIP assessors quoting how much they were going to be earning etc. Thought it was too good to be true and by the sounds of things it was.

munkster – Member

Energy Performance Certificate. A highly scientific and meaningful way to decide whether the house is efficient or not, is that right Mr W?
Munkster, the "Ironist of the Month" award is yours. 😐

Munkster, the "Ironist of the Month" award is yours.

In accepting this award I'd like to thank my family, my friends, our estate agent and the nice lady what done the EPC. I'm honoured. 😀

I'm in the process of moving house at the moment. I know that the people who are buying mine, have never seen a HIP for it, and I am really not interested to see the HIP for the house I am buying (through the same agents I am selling with) but I have asked for copies of both anyway because otherwise I am fairly sure that the agent wouldn't actually have produced either documents. As for the EPC rating, does ANYBODY look at it. According to the geezer who came to do mine, I could have signifcantly altered the EPC on my house by changing a few lightbulbs to Eco ones. He never went in my loft, just asked when I had it insulated and whether it met current regs!!!!

A pointless, useless and expensive process. I could understand if we all had to get a full survey done on a house before putting it onto the market but these are just money for old rope if you ask me

Some of the searches on our HIP are informative in my view; whether there are any nearby traffic schemes being planned, for instance. I'd want to know if there was anything like that imminent although I presume you can't legislate for what might happen further into the future.

[edit]I suspect someone may be about to tell me tell me that you can find all this out for yourself, and yes I'm sure you can but if you're considering a handful of properties that would take longer than downloading a HIP for each one…[/edit]

Complete utter waste of time, energy and money but you cant escape them! The odd thing is that they are not comprehensive and solicitors still need to do additional searches.

Do people still get their own searches? I bought my house before this malarky came in and never really saw the point – it was originally to include a survey and I wondered if lenders would have been happy trusting that.

Complete utter waste of time, energy and money but you cant escape them! The odd thing is that they are not comprehensive and solicitors still need to do additional searches

Fazackerley

so where is the cheapest place to get one if i have to have one??

generally much cheaper if you get your solicitor to organise it (not your estate agent)

mine has just cost me £182, as the solicitor i use includes it in their service – the £182 figure is simply for the disbursements (i.e. searches, energy assessment etc)