H.I.P. for selling home

davolandrover

I used MDA for my pack, I have been charged £426.21 for a 22 minutes survey taken last year, I have never seen the pack to date.
Close Payment Services acted as the financial agents for MDA and sent me a severe and threatening demand without any prior notice.
The Financial Ombudsman (after contacting them) tells me that Close Payment Services are not governed by their rules??
Be careful!
I have been unable to locate MDA at Companies House or through a Google search.
In summary, £426.21 for a worthless piece of paper in as much a purchasers solicitor probably would not accept the pack for its worth.
I hope you have better luck than me.
Regards

Richard_Webster

Anecdotally, asking around friends who have moved, and been forced to get a HIP done, and have looked closely at HIPs provided for their prospective purchases, not a single person has found them to be either useful, informative, helpful or time-saving.

Only the government ever said that the average buyer would find a HIP useful. Its only use to a buyer's solicitor is that the local and water/drainage searches are in it and usually will save a buyer having to pay for them.

Jorgan_2

davolandrover wrote: »

I used MDA for my pack, I have been charged £426.21 for a 22 minutes survey taken last year, I have never seen the pack to date.
Close Payment Services acted as the financial agents for MDA and sent me a severe and threatening demand without any prior notice.
The Financial Ombudsman (after contacting them) tells me that Close Payment Services are not governed by their rules??
Be careful!
I have been unable to locate MDA at Companies House or through a Google search.
In summary, £426.21 for a worthless piece of paper in as much a purchasers solicitor probably would not accept the pack for its worth.
I hope you have better luck than me.
Regards

MDA are MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, one of the biggest information providers in the world. http://pi.mdacorporation.com/
Have a look here for their HIP provider, http://www.mda-hips.co.uk/

monstereyebrows

If anyone has any questions about HIPs or energy assessments please feel free to ask as I am an energy assessor and provide HIPs. As I have benefited greatly from saving money on this site I an happy to help others with advise in saving money on HIPs/energy assessments.

jane07

Hello

Just to let everyone interested know, i was given a website from a friend - www.nethouseprices.com and they are advertising a HIP for £199 +vat = £234 - including epc report. On the site they even show you how you could do your own DIYHip, interesting i think. Anyway i ordered one for my house and all the documents arrived within a week and it was painless and cheap, recommend it to everyone, why pay over the odds!!

redsey

Richard_Webster wrote: »

Only the government ever said that the average buyer would find a HIP useful. Its only use to a buyer's solicitor is that the local and water/drainage searches are in it and usually will save a buyer having to pay for them.

There are other useful documents within the HIP. After all, currently the only additional required item in the Home Information Pack is the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), which in our experience has been widely welcomed by the public. The remainder of the pack is made up of the searches, details of title, lease, etc that would of had to be done by the property lawyer. The main difference now is that we have this information there at the beginning of the transaction.

MrsJ2008

hi, I was told by a HIPs company today that we can do our own! I'm now googling to find some advice on what I need to do so x

fluffymuffy

Richard_Webster wrote: »

£320 is fairly reasonable. Check what local solcitors charge - you will need one to do the conveyancing - they might give slight discount on their fees if they do the HIP too!

The estate agent offered us one for £350+vat and then I looked at a few cheap hip websites. But after reading your advice I rang my solicitor - who's doing it for £350 inc vat, and I know it will be alright. The trouble with the cheap web-based ones is that you can't really be sure you're getting what you need and that they'll be able to cope with any oddity that's thrown up. Also, my solicitor will be billing it with the conveyancing after the house is sold - so there's no cost up front.

AndysDad

SunnyBrighton wrote: »

Having recently sold and bought a house, I would suggest that you get the HIP done by the cheapest method possible. I didn't recognise my old house from the HIP (and it was done by a respected, recommended professional). Likewise, the HIP on the house I bought had little in common with where I now live. It seems to be a very generic, average, form of report. I still got my solicitor to carry out searches I wanted, and certainly didn't rely on something put together by a seller!
Anecdotally, asking around friends who have moved, and been forced to get a HIP done, and have looked closely at HIPs provided for their prospective purchases, not a single person has found them to be either useful, informative, helpful or time-saving. Indeed, our local paper published a report from estate agents, saying how great the HIPs were, and how they had speeded up sales by an average of - wait for it - 6 days!!
Having read the post by jangor, I'm now inclined to think that HIPs are not just another example of the govt's continuing total incompetence, but also there may well be another purpose to them.

I couldn't agree with you more.A complete waste of time.Whats the use of doing a local search for the HIPS if the property is on the market for a long time and then the vendor has to pay for the local searches again.In my view if the local searches are out of date they should be updated by the vendor at their own cost.