Negotiating a lower price for my incorrect HIP

darrenratcliffe

I’ve been a bit stupid – I agreed to get my HIP via Halifax and ouch - £500! This was via LMS and they claim that Halifax independently recommends them – they don’t make a fee out of referring you.

We changed from Halifax to another agent, and under the terms of our contract with LMS we had to then pay the balance of our HIP pack – which was £497. As we hadn’t sold our house at that point I didn’t want to pay – and when I read through the HIP I realised that the energy report was out of date – they said they would look into it and get back to me.

We have now sold the house and I think the HIP is over three months old – I am going to call up and say that I want a reduction in cost given the inaccuracies in the energy report... but given that my HIP has expired and they produce it in a nice glossy bound folder you can’t just replace the report...

... do I have any consumer rights meaning that I can refuse to pay for the HIP?

Thanks everyone in advance

Darren

lynzpower

Id assume so under the sale of goods act. the item is not fit for purpose

Id speak to TS.

david29dpo

Dont quite get this. A HIP is valid for 12 months and you say yours is over 3 months old and out of date? The oldest HIPs pack is only 6 months old, introduced last august.

david29dpo

Sorry, A HIP is valid until the property is sold, An EPC for 10 years.

Jorgan_2

david29dpo wrote: »

A An EPC for 10 years.

Or until the the property is sold again, i.e. if a property is purchased today with an EPC & re-marketed in two years time, it will require a new EPC as part of the HIP.

pink_muppet

Yes but most mortgage lenders will only accept the information in Hips that are less than 3 months old, over that and they ask for new searches to be done!!!, I know this as this has just happened to me, my HIP was done in August but my buyers have had to have new searches done for their lender

BTW, mine is by LMS but only cost £350?

Jorgan_2

How was the HIP incorrect?

I'd be surprised if LMS did not offer a commission to the agents, I had several meetings with the local rep & they were quite keen to push the commission angle.

Busa

A hip should contain information no older than 3 months old when the property is first put on the market. i found a site with a pdf of the actual legislation on it and had a gander. so if you get your hip done and put it on the market over 3 months later - most of the documents will probably be out of date and technically illegal.

darrenratcliffe

Hey all, really sorry for not updating this post sooner - the searches are only valid for three months and then have to be done again.

(Jorgan) Halifax claim to not get a single penny from LMS but I highly doubt that - if I were the HBOS group I would have a company that was paying me for the pleasure of having all my customers.

I contacted the Dept. of Buildings, who put me onto another company. I was advised to ask LMS for a copy of their official complaints procedure (2 weeks ago) and guess what.... they've gone very quiet.

As it turns out solictors really dont care about hips packs! My solicitor doesn't want mine, or the one for the house I'm buying... and neigther does the solicitor of the person buying my house! I would suggest if you can get around needing a HIPS to put your house on the market, you just don't bother getting one because in my experience nobody cares about them.

The problem with the EPC is that it staes I have no energy efficient lighting - which I do. A miniscule point in terms of the report, but if you're paying for a service, you want it right!!

Jorgan_2

darrenratcliffe wrote: »

Hey all, really sorry for not updating this post sooner - the searches are only valid for three months and then have to be done again.

(Jorgan) Halifax claim to not get a single penny from LMS but I highly doubt that - if I were the HBOS group I would have a company that was paying me for the pleasure of having all my customers.

I contacted the Dept. of Buildings, who put me onto another company. I was advised to ask LMS for a copy of their official complaints procedure (2 weeks ago) and guess what.... they've gone very quiet.

As it turns out solictors really dont care about hips packs! My solicitor doesn't want mine, or the one for the house I'm buying... and neigther does the solicitor of the person buying my house! I would suggest if you can get around needing a HIPS to put your house on the market, you just don't bother getting one because in my experience nobody cares about them.

The problem with the EPC is that it staes I have no energy efficient lighting - which I do. A miniscule point in terms of the report, but if you're paying for a service, you want it right!!

Do you have a contact number for the Energy Assessor who came to your property? If so contact them & tell them you want it re-evaluated due to the incorrect information. Of course, you could remove the energy efficient bulbs after the assessor has been, just to make a real mockery of the whole situation.

Richard_Webster

You have to look at what is in the HIP - apart from the verbiage in the index and sale statement it is down to four items:

1. Proof of title - this doesn't get "out of date" because the buyer's solicitor will do a search to check that nothing has happened since the official Land Registry copies were issued if the title is registered and do slightly different but equivalent searches if the title isn't registered.
2. EPC - these last a long time and hardly anybody looks at them so it is usually a waste of time worrying about what they say!
3. Local Search - this is the only one that can really get out of date - 3 months is the normally accepted "shelf life". If the search is out of date the buyer will have to pay for one himself - tough. At the moment properties are still being sold that don't need a HIP because they were marketed before the critical date so a buyer often has to be prepared to pay for a search anyway - so I don't think it is a big deal. As HIPs become more universal if it is obviously a buyer's market then may be buyers will want a seller to pay for renewed searches but if it isn't that, a canny buyer will think of some other thing he'll want a seller to pay for! Search validation insurance is available at a lower price to "extend" the effective shelf life of a local search to 12 months and is generally cheaper than repeating the search. Most lenders will accept this.
4. The drainage search. The water companies persuaded the government that this was vital, but I'm not sure that it actually is. All the lenders seem to require is that we establish that there is a connection to the foul main drainage system. The CML Handbook 6.7 talks about establishing that the roads and sewers immediately serving the property are adopted...This is a nonsense because if it was taken literally there would be no mortgages given on thousands of post war estate built properties that have private sewer runs! I do the search generally because it can give useful information, but this has to be taken in context, and there are a number of crucial things a drainage search does not tell you. In realistic terms I can't see the problem with say a 6 month old drainage search. If it proves the fact of a foul drainage connection to a modern house in an urban area, are the owners going to disconnect their property and install a cesspit instead? I can imagine some jobsworth solcitors would be getting all keen repeating a drainage search, but frankly I can't see the point.

So as far as I can see the real issue is the local search which may have to be repeated. If I was acting for a seller and the buyers solicitors started saying they wanted my clients to pay for the cost of a repeat search, I would offer validation insurance - I can get this for £22 for cover up to £250,000.