Home Information Pack (H.I.P.S)

vinylmusic

I don't know if I have missed something.
I have searched the site and the forums and cant find a mention anywhere about Home Information Packs
Were obliged to get them by law before putting a house on the market so I'm suprised not to find even a mention

Estate agents ask nearly £400 including VAT for a hips yet I have found numerous ones online for almost half that much
I have understood that there is no obligation to use the estate agents to purchase one and they must accept ones purchasesd online

I thought before purchasing one myself I would brinh it up with this thread both to inform others and to learn from any discussion

I would apreciate to hear from anyone their experiences of online hips

Doozergirl

There's plenty of talk about them. I don't know whether 'hips' is too short a phrase for the search function but I can assure you that we haven't forgotten about them. I'd say there's a thread most days with someone asking something.

There's quite a few posts that look pretty spammy from new members so you have to take them with a pinch of salt. I guess in theory it would be nice to have a sticky regarding HIPs but knowing how much spam the other stickys get on this board, it would be really hard to police.

david29dpo

Most agent HIPs are online ones with a 100% mark-up. You are correct in saying there in NO obligation to buy one from an agent. Be warned some agents will try and charge you a fee (£50 ish) to "look though" a HIP you have bought yourself. There reason is because they may be liable for mistakes in a HIP they have not done themselves. They "may" have a point because some cheap HIP are appalling.

vinylmusic

Doozergirl wrote: »

There's plenty of talk about them. I don't know whether 'hips' is too short a phrase for the search function but I can assure you that we haven't forgotten about them. I'd say there's a thread most days with someone asking something.

There's quite a few posts that look pretty spammy from new members so you have to take them with a pinch of salt. I guess in theory it would be nice to have a sticky regarding HIPs but knowing how much spam the other stickys get on this board, it would be really hard to police.

I did a searech through the site and forum with both hips and home information pack. I tried H.I.P.S too
All searches produced 0 results. Perhaps the search facility on this site is not up to scratch

vinylmusic

david29dpo wrote: »

Most agent HIPs are online ones with a 100% mark-up. You are correct in saying there in NO obligation to buy one from an agent. Be warned some agents will try and charge you a fee (£50 ish) to "look though" a HIP you have bought yourself. There reason is because they may be liable for mistakes in a HIP they have not done themselves. They "may" have a point because some cheap HIP are appalling.

I read Martins article on house selling, haggling and playing one agent against the other.
I noticed the 2 agents that already viewed the property were very keen so if they try that on with me I may say this whole thing is becoming expensive enough and if I must keep on forking out I may consider selling privately instead. I'm sure they are not going to pass on my property over 50 quid

jimc_2

Try typing "HIP" or HIPs" (Miss out your full-stops). 300+ hits to look at in 'forums' alone.

I thought we'd talked this one to death so I was a bit surprised at the comment about not finding it!

verytricky69

bump this

I cant find much info about HIPs either. I bought one from the estate agent (back when they 1st came out) about 2 yrs ish ago.

I see now you can get them online- is this safe? any recommendations?

vinylmusic

verytricky69 wrote: »

bump this

I cant find much info about HIPs either. I bought one from the estate agent (back when they 1st came out) about 2 yrs ish ago.

I see now you can get them online- is this safe? any recommendations?

Just as with any other internet transaction. be cautious
Basically I always make sure that there is a phone number and its easy to talk to a human being. I wont deal with anyone I cant talk to.
Good luck
Google the company name. Quite often if a company has a bad reputation it will appear in some forum posts and Google is quite good at bringing them up

delmar39

Plenty of info on HIPs on here and plenty of previous posts via this thread. Bascially hips4u website has had good feedback and they charge in the region of £200. We got our solicitor to do ours and they charged us £205. Our EA wanted to charge us over £400. You can do your own, which may work out cheaper, but that's if you have the time. One thing to remember is that you can advertise your house with a part HIP - it'll take a month or so for some of the searches to come back. Only other thing you need to be at home for is the Energy Perfomance Certificate. As soon as your HIP is in process this should be done within a week. Good luck with it.

delmar39

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2220585&highlight=home+information+pack

Above thread talks about doing one yourself.

Squish_21

I am currently trying to find a cheaper HIP myself as 1 EA quoted £330 inc VAT and the other quoted £385 inc VAT but advised me to find a cheaper on online. Its costing that bit more for me as its a leasehold we are selling.

Ive found a few cheaper quotes online from budget-hips, myhiphome and hipmanager but would like a recommendation from someone who has expierience of one of these compnaies. Or alternatively can recommend another online provider?