House Information Pack Discussion

shahidemran

Any prediction of house market before and after March 2007, Does it make any sense that about March 2007 seller may want their property to sell out before HIP implementation to avoid hassle while buyer just waiting for June 2007. What would be the effect on house price? Any expert opinion???

Jorgan_2

Many in the industry have serious concerns as to what effect HIPS will have, when a similar scheme came into effect in New South Wales, it killed the market for about 2 years. The ODPM originally said that they were introducing the scheme to cut out gazumping, what they have done is introduce a scheme that has the potential to make gazumping easier.

Many people do not have the spare funds available to pay between £700 - £2,000 to get their properties on the market. They may save some money when purchasing their next property, but many will independent surveys done for peace of mind. Will anybody on here accept the contents of a pack that was put together six months ago?

The ODPM press release was in response to an article in The Telegraph last weekend, unfortunatley I don't know how to post the link in here.

A major concern is the lack of qualified Home Condition Report Inspectors, I attended a meeting in November and was told that at that time there were 74 qualified Inspectors in the UK, a long way short of the 7,500 that the ODPM has said is required.

BobProperty

JUSTICE4ALLCONSUMERS wrote:

Surely the HIP will be good for potential buyers,as the valuation should stop over inflated pricing.Thus speeding the process up for all,and not finding you have purchased a liability ! Realistic pricing gives you a far better chance to attain
97%-100% of the asking price-this has to be good.
Thankyou.

Sorry but what valuation. The valuation element was dropped after the trial in Bristol as lenders won't accept it. Read the other thread.

BobProperty

Debt_Free_Chick wrote:

That rather depends ... if the seller gave me a copy of an AA report, then I'd be happy....

But if it were wrong you would have no comeback except the AA wanting to protect its reputation. The vendor paid for the report, the inspector supplied it to the vendor. The inspector owes a duty of care to the vendor, not you. Is it any wonder no insurer is prepared to quote for the liability insurance for HIPs inspectors.
Links by the way, now I've found then:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/22/nbook22.xml
and
http://www.hipfreehomes.com/

shahidemran

http://www.hipfreehomes.com

It seems like most seller would like to stay out of this MESS(Refer to above website), Keeping this in mind Can we assume that market may be flooded by House For Sale which result to property price drop?, Any EXPERT opnion?

Jorgan_2

As an EA I cetainly have concerns with regards to HIPS. The biggest hurdle will be educating the public as to what is involved in the house selling process, the ODPM has stated that they have no budget in place to inform members of the public about this process, thay assume the EA's will do this. Many EA's feel that in early 2007 the market will be flooded with properties for sale as people try to avoid the costs involved with HIPS, as to what effect this has on house prices, who knows, but the normal rules of supply & demand will still apply. You will then have a two tier system, were those properties marketed before June 07 are on the market without a HIP, selling alongside properties marketed after June 07 with a HIP. Buyers will be confused as to why this and eventually those properties marketed without a HIP, that have failed to sell in a reasonable period of time will have to have a HIP on the property to compete on a level playing field.

BobProperty

Coming back after doing a lot of reading, I will add the following:
There is a strong suspicion this is only a disguised set up to fit in with the EU energy directive.
The market will be seriously skewed by the advent of HIPs as has been said, with lots of properties coming on the market before July 2007. (I wonder if that is the "hipfreehome" plan, they will say anyone thinking of selling has already started to market their home before the deadline).
No one is going to rush to insure HIP inspectors. Having read more about it, they are in a lose, lose situation and anyone with a good legal team will be able to get compensation out of them or their insurer (hence there won't be any insurers).
There aren't enough inspectors to do the work in theory but the opposite may be true come July 2007 when nothing goes on the market and the few thousand of them already trained up will be sitting around slowly going out of business.
As no one has insured an inspector yet, no one knows the true cost of the HIP.

shahidemran

How destructive will 'Home Information Packs' (HIPS) be? :beer:

[Deleted User]

I am estremely surprised that The Consumer Association are in favour of the Hip scheme when everyone else incliding Estate Agents and the Law Society are very much against it - except of course the government who stands to gain the VAT element on the sale of the packs.

As for speeding up the selling/buying process, this is a complete mis-conception. As a buyer, I would not trust the information in a pack, particularly if it is old. Incidentally, I have not seen anywhere where it states that the pack may state a 'valid to date' Surely, with such sensitive data, the inspectors must include some guarantee date for the report, after which, it will not be valid. These reports cannot be valid for an indefinite period. And if it turns out at some later date, that the report may include wrong or misleading details, who does the buyer turn to for recompense - the seller or the firm who drew up the report.

In my opinion the whole scheme is very badly thought out, but then isn't everything that this government is involved in.