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The Home Information Pack is to help speed up the process by ensuring critical property
data is made available up front. By providing the data at the start of the sales
process, unnecessary delays and deals ‘falling through’ due to the lack of available
information should become a thing of the past. A major component of the pack is
the Home Condition Report (HCR).
In November, the Housing Act 2004 received Royal Assent. It contained, amongst other
matters, a provision that all homes to be put up for sale (with the exception of
those specifically excluded in future regulations) must have a Home Information Pack
(HIP), formerly known as the Sellers Pack before marketing of the home commences.
This legislation was brought in to solve numerous issues that were facing the housing
market, some being:
• To improve the home purchase process:
The HIP aims to improve the efficiency of the home purchase process in the
UK. The current process is slow and stressful and has a high failure rate. Approximately
30% of offers made accepted fail to proceed to complete (4 out of every 10 of those
cases are caused by the late discloser of defects within the property). The HIP
aims to reduce the transaction failure rate by making the home purchase process
faster, more certain and more transparent. It will provide buyers with the information
they need to make informed decisions earlier in the process and enable the buyer
and seller to negotiate terms from an informed position.
• To improve household energy efficiency
As each property will have energy rating, prospective buyers/tenants will be able
to compare homes in terms of energy efficiency and may be attracted to a more energy
efficient house, due to its lower fuel bills and environmental benefits. Including
an energy rating may also encourage sellers to improve the energy efficiency of
their home before putting it on the market as high energy efficiency may be a unique
selling point.
Home Condition Reports (HCR) are included in the Home Inspection Packs (HIP)
and these need to be carried out by qualified Home Inspectors, who have been licensed
under the Home Inspection Certification System. It is the intention that all HCR
will be electronically filed on a national database and will be lodged and allocated
a unique reference number.
The Home Condition Report (HCR’s) are commissioned on behalf of the vendor.
These reports include assessing the property’s overall condition and functionality,
pointing out any defects and advising on matters which require further investigation
and satisfying the requirements of the EU Directive 2002/91/EC on the Energy Performance
of Buildings through the Reduced Data Standard Assessment Procedure (RDSAP).
In additional to providing the HCR’s, Davis Brown can also provide specialised
advice on building matters and can undertake full building survey’s, undertake schedules
of conditions, deal with party wall matters, together with all matters relating
to buying and selling a residential property.
Newly built homes will require Hips from the first of 6th April 2008. Up to date,
all homes built post-2006 were exempt from these new regulations, as the initial
EPCS was not suitable for sales of homes built to the most recent Building Regulations
(Regulation 17C, Part L, 2006). However, there are now some variations to the scheme
of these new properties, particularly focusing on the way that energy performance
information is presented.
Please note that properties which are described as new builds pre-2006 were not
exempt and do require a HIP. For off-plan” properties which are to be marketed before
the build is completed, there can not be an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)
carried out and issued. This is based on the fact that the EPC can only be executed
by a physical inspection of a finished building. The aim in such cases is to have
a HIP that will include a Predicted Energy Assessment (PEA).
Hips News: From the 1st of June 2008, all properties must have a HIP in place before
marketing can proceed.
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