HIPs contains Important Information about the Property
It is legal requirement that you have Home Information Packs in place on the day you put the property on the market, if you are selling your property in England or Wales. The estate agent will not be allowed to market your property unless the HIPS are available, from 6 April 2009. Your estate agent, your solicitor or a HIPs provider can prepare HIPs.
Important information about the property is contained in the HIP. As potential buyers can see essential information about the property at the beginning of the process, free of charge, the HIP is aimed to help speed up the convincing process. This means at the end of the process there is less chance of a buyer becoming aware of any surprise and thus resulting in the transaction falling through at an expense of the buyer.
Since 2006, no less than 12 sets of legal Home Information Packs rules have implemented. When different requirements came into force, there are different dates and some of these regulations repeal earlier ones. The latest changes came into existence on April 6, 2009. Many of these regulations relate to exceptions to the requirement for Home Information Packs.
On a weekly basis we are still asked at Fridays to advise whether a seller needs a Home Information Pack as their property has been on the market for over a year.
To require a HIP there have always been some specific exceptions, even dating back to the introduction of Home Information Pack in the housing Act 2004. Before the relevant commencement dates in 2007 did not need a HIP, one original major exception was that a property that was on the market. Guidance to Trading Standard officers warns them to look out for sham arrangements where the sellers has only nominally kept the property “on the market” since 2007. Therefore you have to prove that your property has continuously been on sale for the whole of the past two years.
Initially The Government declared that this dispensation “drop dead date” would be temporary and once market conditions were favorable. The “drop dead date” is yet to be determined. The aim was to set a date by which all properties would require a pack – a date that was described in official department guidance documents as the “drop dead date”. It would be careful, if you are currently marketing your property for sale without a HIP that you make sure this is not seen as detrimental compared to newly listed and equivalent house which will have the HIP pack available.