From August 1st, all sellers of 4 bedroom houses will need to have an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) and Home Information Pack (HIP). The hole the government digs with this scheme seems to get deeper and deeper....
From August 1st, all sellers of 4 bedroom houses will need to have an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) and Home Information Pack (HIP). The hole the government digs with this scheme seems to get deeper and deeper....
Comments
What do we mean by "scrap"?
I went with scrap both of them, on the assumption that this meant "make them voluntary, not mandatory". I wouldn't "scrap" them as in "prohibit" them. In a market where domestic-energy values were not suppressed by government, buyers might value an EPC and place a premium on properties that provided them. Perhaps the same would go for HIPs. But demand for them should be generated by customer-pull, not government-push.
Just illustrate how long
Just illustrate how long this has been going on, look at the Savills website from July 2006 - a year ago!
Hips
Why not scrap the whole HIPs thing altogether after all most of the information in the pack is incorrect.
Most pack providers cannot even get the correct local searches in the packs, which will case further delays as the buyers solicitor will want new ones.
Which you would have to pay for
Chris
How do we know?
Chris,
You'd know more about this than me, so I was going to ask how you know that they cannot get the correct local searches, when we haven't even started yet. But I checked your site and found the answer. The same question may occur to others, so for their information, I thought it would be useful to link to your post that explains this conclusion. Would it be fairer to summarise the position as: cheap pack providers are unlikely to include the correct searches?
Local searches in hips pack
Hi bgprior
Yes sorry about that, you are quite correct, that the cheap packs for eg £299 are unlikely to provide the correct searches.
For eg a pack at say £299 if you live in Barnett the local search will cost over £200.
If you do not have the correct searches then the buyers solicitor and there building society will want new searches causing further delays.
Something Hips was supposed to avoid..
Chris