MSE News: Home information packs 'more expensive' via estate agents

AMO

janewatts wrote: »

Hi AMO, I would first try your solicitor, if you have one you wish to use already, this was definitely the best choice for us. If not, or if they are trying to fleece you too, I found reallymoving.com quite good as local people put their quotes to you, you can also haggle a bit with them ;o)

Best of luck!

Thanks. Now I need to find myself a solicitors. Not sure the best way.

Used one a long time ago to buy the house, but can't remember who they were.

AMO

AMO

janewatts wrote: »

Here's my experience with this so far:-

- Fridays HIPs - cheap but if you don't want them to do your conveyancing it will be 28 days before you can market your property. I said they should maybe have this on their website whilst receiving the quite hard sell on their conveyancing and was told it was on there and had been for weeks - well if it is, I can't find it! :cool:

They did say that if I didn't want their conveyancing I should ask our long-standing solicitors for a HIP quote, as much of the documentation is needed by them, which I thought was a good tip so am waiting for a callback now and will update this later!

- hipmanager.com was the cheapest I could find online at £168.73, even cheaper than Friday's unusable quote of £177, when I tried to call them to ask timeframes there was no answer, and not even an answerphone. I then tried sending an IM, which they said they would try to reply to within 1 working hour...nearly 3 hours later still nothing...

- so now also trying some people who have contacted me from the various websites I have been to, reallymoving.com provide instant quotes from local people and at £180 and £189 they have been quite competitive. Just waiting to talk to a real person now having again left an answerphone message...

So, it seems to be you can definitely get a lot cheaper than the EA HIPs but if you're busy and can't be bothered with the hassle you might want to pay the extra - or even use it as a haggling method as principa said, think I might call them now

Did you hear from Hip Manager in the end? I know you went with your solicitor, but are Hip Manager dodgy?

AMO

Got this quote from Fridays:

Home Information Pack, payable Now:
£148.94 plus VAT (£26.06)
Conveyancing, payable upon Completion*:
£291.26 plus VAT (£50.97)
Total payable:
£440.20 plus VAT (£77.04)


I get the HIP cost rebated at the end though so conveyancing and HIP totals:
£291.26 + VAT (£50.97)

Seem like a good deal?

strongeyecontact

Hipmanager called me back the next day but I'd gone elsewhere by then, and they couldn't explain both why there'd been no answer on their phone number and why it had taken them so long to respond. They may well be ok but if a company fails like that, to me, I'm not that interested in trying them again.

For the same reason, I don't particularly trust the very cheap online conveyancing services, but that's because we like buying houses with weird clauses and legal problems (our solicitor's usual opening line when we ask him how he's getting on with one of our houses is "Haven't come across this before/I've done one of these in 17 years"!), so we need someone who really knows his stuff.

As mentioned in one of my posts above, conveyancing can be done in a matter of hours if someone knows what they're doing and isn't fannying around, and the only reason most take far longer is because they probably think people wouldn't pay their hundreds of pounds fees if they didn't make it look complicated and long-winded, or because they have so many low-paying cases they need to have low-paid staff doing all the legwork (very slowly) rather than doing it themselves.

Any service which takes weeks if not months, chasing the other side by letter only when the case makes its way to the top of their pile again, and god forbid they use a fax or pick up the phone, is just a false economy to us. Should be ok for very easy standard cases though, just don't expect a very fast or proactive service. Not having used Fridays specifically, I can't comment but their offhand, and I think misleading (if not outright wrong) response when I called about the HIP was enough to put me off.

That's the easy part, then you just need a proceedable buyer - best of luck!

AMO

AMO wrote: »

Got this quote from Fridays:

Home Information Pack, payable Now:
£148.94 plus VAT (£26.06)
Conveyancing, payable upon Completion*:
£291.26 plus VAT (£50.97)
Total payable:
£440.20 plus VAT (£77.04)


I get the HIP cost rebated at the end though so conveyancing and HIP totals:
£291.26 + VAT (£50.97)

Seem like a good deal?

Oops - I misread the quote. The £440 plus VAT is including the HIP rebate. Once you add the VAT the cost is £517 for both conveyancing and HIP. Hmm.....might need to shop around.

Janewatts, thanks for the post. What do you think is a competitve price for both services? Thanks.

strongeyecontact

Couldn't say for a bog-standard sale really AMO, I'm the wrong person to ask as we usually pay over £500 for conveyancing alone. It's like comparing Harrods with the corner shop... it doesn't really work

Others on here would know better, maybe browse around some of the other posts talking about conveyancing rather than HIPs because although you do want a reasonably-priced service, you don't want your overly-cheap solicitor to hold things up, or even ruin a sale for you.

I would say it's more important to have a great solicitor when buying as opposed to selling, as there are absolutely loads of things a cheap service could miss which would cost you thousands - on one of the very first houses I bought, the solicitor missed the fact that part of the garden wasn't included in the deeds as years before it had been an electricity sub-station! :eek: Took me years to sort that one out...

You live and learn the hard way in property

John_Pierpoint

Nothing quite beats knowing the system yourself, even if you have to pay the "professional's" clerks to do the work for you.

robpeter_2

Hi

Saw all the good information here about getting a cheap HIP pack organized. My story is we just put our flat on the market in Weybridge two weeks ago and on May 11th we got a required Hips done for £350 plus VAT, now as of today its not needed!!!

We told the estate agent Austin mead that we couldn't afford it but they insisted if we wanted to put it on the market to do it then and there, no delays, turns out that the main saleswomen's husband has his own HIPS company which is what they used. I have no redress even though the work was only done a week and a half ago and now is no longer required, arrrrrrrrgh!!!

Any recourse?

Thanks
Peter

AMO

We paid £200 for our HIPs. Just a shame. I was told that it would take 100 days to discontinue HIPs just before the election, but they put it through emergency budget so it happened overnight. Still £60-£100 would have gone onto the energy certificate anyway. You win some, you lose some. We lost, but that's the way it goes.

John_Pierpoint

100 GBP - That is an expensive EPC.