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i-luv-free-stuff

we are looking to buy a bigger house and the house we have found has been on the market for 2 years but we cant find out why.
will the hips reveal any suspicious going on with the property ie bad building work , bad debts etc or will the solicters searches do that?

harryhound

In my humble opinion, if a buyer cannot understand enough of what is in a HIP, to at least ask questions of his professional advisers; then he should stick to renting.
Having a mortgage and owning property is no "flower garden" it can be a dangerous and expensive responsibility.
Where is the sewer? That is a good question, especially when you find it runs behind the row of cottages UNDER half a dozen other people's extensions and you have the problem if it gets blocked.
New Bypass? Ah now we know why they are selling! Do they have to move? Make a really cheap offer and remember a year after the bypass opens it will be you that collects the compensation (Personally I don't think I would want to even view it but each to his own).
Restrictive Covenant? You bet you need to know. Will your solicitor bother to mention this to you?

I've bought a few houses in a lifetime and I've always tried to do my own homework - the hip makes it easier. Looking back, even I have had some unexpected pitfalls, which I would at an older and wiser age have recognised as possibilities.

The link below, explains a bit of the registered restrictions against doing what you like with your property. One thing I did discover was that this attractive but expensive corner property looked out over an orchard; beautiful at this time of year. The orchard was accessed by the lane down the side of the property. Over the other side of the lane from this attractive "modern" end of terrace, was a big detached house and it owned the orchard! It was linked to the terrace by mutual restrictive covenants filed in its entry. So I paid my extra fee and discovered that it also had a restrictive covenant preventing it from developing the orchard until the end of 2007, unless it wanted to give a big chunk of the profit to its previous owner.
Guess what, there is now an application to develop the orchard, currently wrangling its way through the Council.

Similarly, I needed to buy a property in a bit of a hurry to avoid having to rent, about 10 years ago. I was sent the details of what turned out to be an ex council house that had been extended and generally improved. The seller could not give a sensible reason for wanting to move from such a nice house, looking out over public open space. So I checked with the Land Registry. I could have been stitched up nicely. The house was being sold because the Mortgagee was pressing on the arrears BUT it was another 4 months before the seller could sell without having to repay monies to the council.
The HIP makes it easier to do your homework! It is not rocket science.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=6395212&highlight=gazundering#post6395212

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=890303

But a HIP is not a substitute for chatting up the neighbours.

chickmug

i-luv-free-stuff wrote: »

we are looking to buy a bigger house and the house we have found has been on the market for 2 years but we cant find out why.
will the hips reveal any suspicious going on with the property ie bad building work , bad debts etc or will the solicters searches do that?

Why not take a look at Rightmove as some agents upload the HIP for you to download and read. I was looking at some a few weeks back. 50/100 plus pages and most really boring reading.

i-luv-free-stuff

but the problem is as it has been on the market for nearly 2 years it doesnt have a hip. thats why i wanted to know how deep the soliciters dig

harryhound

Sorry, I was not really trying to address your question at all.
There must be something wrong with this property or the people trying to sell it.
Perhaps it is just over priced, but I doubt it.
Even with a HIP you still have to use your own judgement, or pay someone to tell you what you might have worked out for yourself.
Is it the title? Look up everything on the Land Registry including any links to the neighbours. That will take an evening and may cost 6 to 20 GBP ish. Go to the council and identify the site on the development plan.
Is it the building? Get a book out of the library on what to look for and then have a good long look at it, preferably in the rain and during the rush hour. You are the customer don't be fobbed off with a half hour visit. Stay all day. Take a flask, telescope, levels plumb lines a ladder if you have one and have a good look at it. With luck the neighbours will ask what you are doing and they will give you a second opinion.
Is it the People? As above ask yourself if you will be happy living next to these people? How will you get on sharing a right of way (for example) with them.
Are you going to be a spectator for months while the sellers work out their marital problems?
When you pay fees for Conveyancing, if you are lucky someone intelligent may know the general area of the address. They are most unlikely to get of their office chair and go and look.
If YOU pay several hundred pounds for YOUR survey, try to survey the surveyor.
A good surveyor can work out what is going on in minutes that may take you all day to realise or worse 6 months of ownership.

Good luck

i-luv-free-stuff

its definitly not over priced.
i just dont trust the seller for some reason but i dont know why! just a hunch

harryhound

How can I put this:- Does the seller come from the same sort of cultural background as you do?

i-luv-free-stuff

maybe. what is your point exactly?

harryhound

There is an old joke that "Ethics" is the home county of London, where I live.
If you are from a different "culture" from the seller, you must find it more difficult to trust him/her.
I could quote examples from the real estate market but to keep things neutral here is an example of "floating real estate":
I went to a lecture given by someone who had to commission the construction of a ship.
Britain had become a daft place to build ships because both management and unions were not able to put their steel where their mouths were.
Japan became the place to build ships in the 60's & 70's but in due course during the 80's their appreciating currency made Japanese ships too expensive.
The business moved to Korea.
This executive had just taken delivery of his first Korean ship and he had obviously had a stressful experience. Builders get you like that.
It was not so much some of the stupid inexperienced things they did, partly because they could rely on opressing cheap workers that got his goat BUT that he could not trust them.
He maintained that the reserved Japanese were perfect gentlemen. Every would be reasonable, eventually everyone would agree, everyone would shake hands and the decision would be implemented at once no iff's no but,s. What they agreed happened on time and on cost.
A similar meeting with the Koreans would be full of histrionics, but eventually, probably late at night, an agreement would be reached and documented BUT a couple of days later some one somewhere had objected to the deal and everything would be back in the melting pot again.

i-luv-free-stuff

whooooosh straight over my head