HIP's
HIPs - FAQs
Do I need a HIP?
If you are marketing a property in England or Wales, with an estate agent or privately, regardless of it's age or number of bedrooms, you are legally required buy a HIP.
What actually is in a HIP?
A HIP or Home Information Pack is a document containing about 50 pages. It can be printed out or kept as an electronic document. It must contain the following official documents:
An Index of contents
An Energy Performance Certificate
A sale statement (summarising terms of sale)
Evidence of title
Land and Drainage Searches
A copy of the lease where appropriate.
Our HIPs contain all of these official documents.
What is the total price I will have to pay for a HIP?
Our prices can be found here: HIP Prices
Are there any extras or hidden costs?
No. The prices on this site are the total prices you pay. We operate a flat fee policy regardless of the size or location of your property.
Why are your prices so low?
We are an efficient, modern, Internet based company who sell a lot of HIPs in London. We therefore have relatively low costs and benefit from volume discounts. And given the state of today's housing market, we thought it best to pass these savings onto you!
Are your HIPs as good as the ones sold by Estate Agents and Solicitors?
Yes! Our HIPs contain exactly the same documents as those provided by Estate Agents and Soliciors.
How long will the HIP take to arrive?
We provide instant order confirmation when you place your HIP order. This proves that you have ordered a HIP, and allows you or your estate agent to begin marketing your property immediately.
We send you your HIP as soon as we have visited your property and produced your Energy Performance Certificate, this normally takes less than 5 days.
Your completed HIP, including the local searches is normally ready after two weeks.
Will I own the HIP?
Yes. Most estate agents will provide HIPs on the condition that you use them as your sole agent. If you wish to find a new agent, you may need to buy a new HIP. HIPs produced by us will be owned by you.
Will your HIPs allow me to sell my property with an estate agent?
Yes. As soon as you have placed your order, you will be sent an email confirming your order. You can show this to an estate agent who will be able to start marketing your property immediately.
Do you provide HIPs in my area?
Most of our HIPs are carried out in SE England, but we provide a nationwide service.
Will somebody need to visit my property?
Yes one of our trained Domestic Energy Assessors will contact you shortly after you have placed your order to arrange a convenient time to visit your property. The visit will take approximately one hour and will include tasks such as measuring your rooms, checking for insulation and examining your light bulbs and boiler systems etc.
Could our property fail the energy inspection?
No, you do not pass or fail the energy inspection. Your property will be assigned a grade between A - G depending on how energy efficient it is. You will also be provided with a report explaining how you could improve the energy efficiency of your home.
Do you provide a paper copy of the HIP?
No. You do need to have a paper copy of your HIP, and we recommend due to the size of the HIP (50- 80 pages) that you do not print it out. Our HIPs are sent to you in digital format as an email attachment (a PDF file).
This isn't as complicated as it might sound. When you receive your HIP email, you can read through it on your computer and then forward the email to your estate agent and/or prospective buyers with the click of the mouse. The government guidelines allow this and even state that if a buyer requests a hard copy, you are allowed to charge them a fee to print and post it. In this situation you may refer them to us, and we will charge the buyer £15.00 to post it to them.
Are you qualified to compile HIPs?
There are no qualifications for HIP providers, but we are registered with the Property Codes Compliance Board as a subscriber to the HIP Code. This is an independent regulatory board ensuring that our HIPs comply to the government guidelines.
All of our Energy Assessors are fully trained and accredited.
Our land searches are obtained from private search companies who are subscribers to the Search Code.
Do you charge extra for unregistered properties?
No we do not charge extra for compiling HIPs for unregistered properties. However we leave obtaining the "Epitome of Title" which is a required HIP document for unregistered properties, up to you and your solicitor. This is because this document can be obtained free of charge from the solicitor who carries out your conveyancing. If your solicitor does not offer this service free of charge, we have an agreement in place with one that does. Once obtained, this document must be made available to us for inclusion in the HIP.
How long will the HIP last?
Providing you are continually marketing your property, and you do not take it off the market, your HIP will last for as long as it takes to sell your property. If you take your property off the market and then put it back on again, you can use the same pack again providing the search documents are not older than three months, and providing the EPC is not older than one year.
If I own a share of the freehold, can I buy a freehold HIP?
No. In terms of the HIP it doesn't make a difference whether you own a share of the freehold, the whole of the freehold, or if a management company owns the freehold. If the property is leasehold then a leasehold HIP will need to be purchased. There is a lot of important information contained with the leasehold register, and that needs to be included in your HIP.