Home Information Packs

The Home Information Pack is coming to a house for sale near you.

After much dilly-dallying, Home Information Packs (HIPs) will be launched on 1st June. After this date anyone selling a house will need to provide one for prospective buyers to look at. HIPs were initially flagged up as a way to speed up the home buying process but many critics believe that the opposite will occur and consider them to be just more government red tape.

The pack will now consist of proof of title of the property, local searches, but primarily the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). Gone is the Home Condition Report and information on flood and subsidence risk. The energy performance certificate is expected to cost the homeowner around £200. An inspector will check a property’s energy efficiency and award a performance rating of A to G. In this way the government hopes to comply with a European directive on energy efficiency. However, this legislation only requires that a certificate is renewed every 10 years, not each time a property is sold.

Most people will find it hard to understand the necessity of an inspector to compile such straightforward survey. Why couldn’t an EPC be a tick-box form that’s completed by the vendor? Do homeowners really require "an expert" to tell them that their home has loft insulation, a tank-jacket and double-glazing?

The government maintains that this an important part of a drive for increased energy efficiency but there is no obligation to take action on the findings of a report. And if they really want to speed up the way we buy and sell properties why not implement the Scottish way of doing things where the buyer has to leave a deposit on making an offer?