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JME1_2

Hi all,

I'm about to put my house on the market & wondered if anyone had any advice on a reputable supplier of HIP's online please?

The prices Estate Agents have quoted are excessively expensive (as much as £401 if bought up-front or £469 if deferred until sold!) so I’d like to buy one online as I’ve been told they can be much cheaper. Am conscious I’ll be paying a lot of money up front & need to ensure the searches are as thorough as they should be.

Any advice please?

Thanks!

Maisie11

I dont think you can buy them online. They have to come around to your house to assess it's energy rating etc.

david29dpo

Plenty of companies about and online but avoid the cheap ones, or try your solicitor.

botchjob

i'm in the midst of getting a HIP through hips4u. So far so good and I'll report back once it's done and dusted. They are certainly cheap.

david29dpo

But they dont use official searches, something the OP wants.

sarah_elton

Also used hips4u recently with no problems - £209 inc VAT for leasehold. Only just accepted an offer so I don't know yet if the buyer is satisfied with the information provided, but they got it done within the timescale they said they would and it was certainly the cheapest I found.

Lots of threads on this recently - some people have said that if you have an odd house (non standard construction, lots of building work done to it over the years, anything like that) you might be better off with a more expensive solicitor doing your HIP. But for my utterly non-interesting purpose-built leasehold flat, I couldn't see what the difference was going to be between the HIP I got from hips4u and the one my EA wanted to charge me £449+VAT for.

sarah_elton

david29dpo wrote: »

But they dont use official searches, something the OP wants.

None of the three EAs I had round to do valuations offered HIPS with official searches - all of them used insurance-backed searches. Hence me not seeing any difference between them and hips4u.

OP - if you want official searches then you should ring round some local solicitors and get quotes specifying that.

Richard_Webster

need to ensure the searches are as thorough as they should be.

I'm sure you would want to give the buyer maximum info, but you are selling and the buyer is buying, why are you so concerned about the searches being thorough?

JME1_2

Thanks all - sorry about delay replying - been away.

This is really useful. Am inclined to go through a website - been looking at MyHipHome,co.uk.

I know I shouldn't be too bothered about the searches being thorough as that's the buyer's concern - all I care about is that I don't find out I need to shell out more money after finding a cheaper HIP isn't legal.

My Solicitor's offering them for £299 but the website is offering them for £159. Big difference!

david29dpo

As with anything, check the quality as well as the price.

Richard_Webster

Lots of threads on this recently - some people have said that if you have an odd house (non standard construction, lots of building work done to it over the years, anything like that) you might be better off with a more expensive solicitor doing your HIP.

People keep getting all this confused. The nature of the construction is only to do with the Energy Performance Certificate and nothing else. These are provided by Domestic Energy Assessors who are normally subcontracted by the HIP provider. The solicitor would simply find a DEA to do the EPC and wouldn't know whether it had been done well or badly because solicitors are not generally qualified as energy assessors! As most people don't take a lot of notice of the EPC it would take some time for it to register that a particular EPC was inaccurate...

What I did say was that if there was an unregistered title, or the property was leasehold or "shared freehold", the HIP provider who was not legally qualified might put in wrong information about the legal title.