The Home Information Pack - HIP

The Basics

A Home Information Pack, or HIP, must be provided by the seller for most properties advertised for sale from 14 December 2007. A list of exceptions can be found here. Until 1 June 2008 it is sufficient to have commissioned a HIP in order to put your property on the market: you then have until exchange of contracts to supply the Energy Performance Certificate but there is no set time period for the delivery of the rest of the HIP. From 1 June 2008, however, you must have a complete HIP available before marketing begins.

All HIPs must contain the following information:

• An index of contents
• Evidence of title
• A local authority search
• A drainage search
• An Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)
• Property sale particulars

In addition, if the property is leasehold or commonhold, additional information must be included, details of which can be found here.

Michael J. Wey & Co. and HIPs

We provide all of the components of a HIP with the exception of the sale particulars, which are usually provided either by the seller or by the seller's estate agent. Our philosophy is to minimise the cost to the seller of providing a HIP and we do this in two ways.

• We obtain the individual components of the HIP at the least possible cost. For all freehold property, the components are gathered electronically. We also attempt to gather electronically the additional information required for leasehold and commonhold property. However, due to the nature of this information it may not always be possible to obtain electronic copies and some documents may have to be supplied on paper.
• We treat the cost of preparing a HIP as a normal disbursement and, as such, we apply no markup to the costs we incur.

Because we take this approach, the advantage is that the client owns the HIP, leaving you in control of the subsequent sale process.