Home Information Packs ditched... hurrah!

[Ewe]

Finally! I am not a Tory or a Lib Dem but I do think this is a good decision all in all.

Sad for the inevitable loss of jobs there will be but on the whole I think they were a waste of time and money and will be glad to see the back of them!

Hear, hear. I sold 2 houses in the period that HIPs were compulsory, the packs sat on the kitchen table in each house and NEITHER of them was even OPENED. I could tell because the packs' bindings were tight and the pages were not creased back. Nobody asked the estate agent for them either. The biggest waste of two £350's I've even spent.

i have had my flat on the market since before hips so have got away with it. was told by my estate agent that i need an epc. have been putting it off but finally booked some one to do it. they were due at 3.00 today but has just text me to cancel due to the dicision to cancel hips. i thought the epc was due to european law. will i still need one..

I have just been talking to my solicitor and estate agent about this. We were just about to start the process of having the HIP done- so that's £293 saved. The EPC is still required, but that's usually about £50-60 so considerably cheaper.

This will bring speculative sellers back which should lower prices as more competition

I had the HIP done 2 days ago, at a cost of £380. Arse. Even more of a complete waste of money than it would have been otherwise

Only 3000 job losses!! Great for multiple property owners though...

When we bought this house I asked the estate agent for the HIP before we put our offer in - he said we were the ONLY people ever to ask to see the HIP at that stage, and most people only got round to it when their solicitor asked for it.

Good riddance I say!

People will obviously save money when putting a house on the market but it's likely you'll still have to pay for the equivalent of a HIP when you get round to buying a house, e.g. the drainage search, the local authority search etc. Perhaps people don't notice the expenditure at that point in the process as there are lots of large amounts of money to be paid by then (survey, stamp duty, removal van etc).

Apparently these searches aren't mandatory but most conveyancing solicitors won't act for someone buying a house unless the buyer agrees to have certain searches done, in order to cover their liabilities should something affect the property that wasn't picked up during the purchase and the buyer then wants to sue them.

So not necessarily a big money saver (apart from for people who own lots of properties and who aren't planning to buy a new house in place of the one they've just sold.) Oh and don't forget that for those people whose purchase falls through and they've only just paid for searches etc and they have to start all over again and pay for a fresh set of searches on a different house, not going to save them much money is it?

Not sure that the system worked as well as was intended but it was meant to bring certainty for people who are buying a house. I imagine most people's solicitors would check a HIP even if the purchaser didn't.

As noddyholder says it might mean more houses on the market and result in prices dropping but then plenty of people will be complaining when they can't get the price they expected for their house!

Should declare that my dh works for a company that provides searches but doesn't directly work with HIPs. I have formed my own opinion on them though from what he has told me alongside how the actual system works before anyone accuses me of being biased!

I thought the searches had to be done anyway as the HIPs only include the very basic ones and mortgage companies want more than the basics?

And yes, 3000 job losses is really shit but they never worked. We can't keep things that don't serve the purpose they were intended to just because they have people relying on them for jobs.

Personally I think a drop in house prices is completely necessary, even inevitable and if this aides that process then so be it.

Never bought a house but I think that HIPs should have been replaced with an obligation on the seller to provide all the necessary searches, a contract, floor plans and a ful survey at the moment thei rhosue goes on teh market.

Then buyers would not need to have one done and it would mean that a buyer would be able to contract instantly. Speed up the process enormously. Some countries have that sort of system.

This way, far too may speculative sellers who will be able to mess buyers about, accepting their offer, knowing full well the buyers are going to spend thouands on fees only to dump them at the last minute for a higher offer or even just take it off the market.

Seems to me we need some obligation on sellers if they are going to sell their house to actually make some financial commitment to follow through with an agreed sale.

Ausralia and Scotland have better systems for house selling and I think originally the plan was for the UK to adopt a similar system of ommiting buyers and sellers but we ended up with HIPs instead after heavy estate agent lobbying. In reality, the agents never stopped lobbying and now they have got rid of it completely.

ommiting = commiting

I sold a flat last year with a HIP (or whatever they call it in Scotland) and I thought it was a good idea. It seemed to speed up the process.

The problem with the HIP was that the buyer could not rely on it them. So, any searches etc that had been done, had to be done again by the buyer's sol so that the buyer could rely on them.

The HIPs were a real missed opportunity to reform the ridiculous English system of selling houses. Instead of a sensible, useful pack of information everyone was forced to pay for something, which as someone said, virtually no-one looked at, and certainly no-one could rely on.

I looked at the energy part of the HIP for our new flat and oh, surprise surprise, I was exchanging one draughty Victoria flat for another draughty Victorian flat.

I have been banging on for ages that HIPs have also been holding back anyone who was speculating putting their house on the market because you could no longer test the water without committing £300ish for a HIP. This, hopefully, will free up some more properties.

Also, commiserations for anyone who has lost their HIP job, but I'm afraid that can't say I feel too much for those not needed anymore. They can;t have been doing it for too long, and purely utilitarianly, it is in the greater benefit for more people.

Yes, I agree that in the UK things have potential to get messed up badly.

We have just bought a house here in Canada and am very impressed by the system. We saw a house we likes and got the estate agent to take our offer to the owners. They got back to us with a counteroffer that we accepted. We then paid a $1000 deposit to be held in a trust account. After which we sorted out the mortgage with the bank and arrnaged for a home inspection, which cost us £350. The survey is to be provided by the sellers.

We then paid an additional deposit of $19,000, again into a trust account and that was it. These payments go towards our deposit btw, so its not additional. Hired a solicitor to draw up documents and we are moving in next week. The whole process took 10 days. Not kidding... just 10 days. The estate agent actually did a lot of work on our behalf unlike those idiots in the UK.

When I compare it to the hassle we went through in the UK, we got gazumped several times after having shelled out fees, carppy estate agents, rubbish showings... it was a nightmare I don't ever want to go through.

The whole selling and buying houses in the UK needs a very serious review imo. To protect both sides.

The UK system of buying and selling houses is awful, but HIPs did nothing to solve the problem it was just an additional tax on selling your house. Totally pointless because the buyers' solicitors just redid the searches anyway, and the one thing that might have sped things up the structural survey -- was not included in the end due to industry lobbying.

SO glad it's gone. Total waste of £300.

Oh dear, a friend has just completed his HIPs training, which he had to pay for, and was going to set up his own company..
Its hard for grads at the moment, wish the government would take some responsibility for the investments they ask people to make (like degrees).

At least you knew that the seller was serious and not just testing the market to find out how much they could get. We had our heart set on a house that was being marketed last week without a HIP. Offered the asking price after to-ing and fro-ing, and then they decided not to sell.