OK - so my understanding from that internet thing is that these are now a legal requirement if a house is on the market.
However after viewing a house the estate agent tells us that the house in question "does not have a HIP" despite having been on the market for 2.5 years.
Additionally a colleague at work tells me that when they bought and sold their last houses they neither saw the HIP for where they bought nor were they aware of whether one was done for the place they sold.
Can anyone distil for me what the deal is with HIPs please?? TIA as always.
Could be that the house was under the value set for HIPs at the time it went onto the market, and as it has remained on the market it doesn't need one.
Same reason for your mates who have bought and sold, probably came in under the value (or number of bedrooms, I can't remember what made a house exempt) required for a HIP.
At some point they extended the scheme so a HIP is required for everything.
I could be wrong, but it must be something like that.
Hmm, cheers, can't seem to find what that value is/was however. Do you know?
Sorry, can't remember...all I know was our house (2 bed, £145k) didn't need one when we bought it.
Gotcha. Will have to dig around a bit more I guess, cheers for responding.
Here you go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Information_Pack
Hips introduced Aug 07 for 4 bedroom properties and above, Sept 07 was extended to 3 beds, since applied to all properties. Doesn't have anything about properties needing a HIP if they were marketed before they needed a HIp, you'll have to do some more Googling for that.
[i]There are claims that the packs have contributed to the 2007-09 housing crisis by deterring vendors from marketing their houses due to the extra costs involved in the survey[/i]
So true...we want to sell now but we can't afford to sell under a certain amount, don't want to spend £400 on a HIP then find we can't get what we need to move!
Yeah, cheers, have already scanned that page but there's no mention of the value. House in question we are looking at is 4 bed so should have needed a HIP on that basis but maybe it isn't/wasn't pricey enough!
One's assumption is that regardless of all that it should have a HIP by now if it is on the market but who knows.
A HIP will contain info on title, searches, an EPC and a description/home condition report type thingy. I wouldn't rely on any of those things being current if a HIP had been drawn up 2.5 years ago anyway, so you're no worse off really than if they handed you a HIP of that age. Better off really as you're unlikely to get suckered by something that's out of date leading you to the wrong conclusion. I suppose an EPC would be handy if you're buying it to let.