Home Information Packs - Another Waste plus TAX

[John]

What a waste of time and money these are.

They do nothing for the seller. They do nothing for the purchaser.
 
The only new document invented is an energy performance certificate. This is compiled by a person with a small pair of step ladders, counting light bulbs. I realise that there will be an attempt by someone involved in these to tell you how important all this is. Making money from it would not be a consideration would it?

If the purchaser was interested in energy performance, this could be added on to any survey costs.

There is also the direct tax, VAT on all of this.

This does not enhance or make the selling or renting process easier.

It is another financial burden introduced by this Labour government.

No doubt our honest and upstanding Members of Parliament claim the costs of these via their expenses. Flipping their homes to suit.

[Wrinkles]

Oh ye of little faith. are you so blinded by your bigotry that you can not see the big picture that has been so carefully painted by our illustrious leaders. For Shame young man for shame.
Don't you realise that these house buyers and sellers are all rich, yes rich I say and by the holy creed of the great Gordon the Gopher and his pedagogue the B-liar the rich shall give unto the poor (government)

So the plan was hatched you sell your house and out of your riches you will employ a little man with a step ladder and the iq of a pot plant who will tell you how many light bulbs you have and even if they are Low energy, he will ask if you have loft insulation, write it on his pad, then confirm it by reading what he has just written down "Says here you have loft insulation so it must be true" the same will apply to cavity wall insulation. After an appropriate period he will shoulder his step ladder and toddle off to his next victim er customer.
Leaving you with that warm glow that comes from knowing that you have contributed toward the lowering of the unemployment figures and have donated your hard earned to the worthy cause of Gordons spendathon.

So just be thankful that he hasn't got his hands on the proceed of your sale, yet. he does after all have the decency to wait until you actually sell the house

[Papaumau]

If any of you have ever went hunting for a house and have paid for survey after survey only to find that either your bid was not accepted or you were gazumped you will understand the reasoning behind the HIP.

The basic idea of the seller getting one valuation, energy standard and build-quality survey done by "independent" surveyors and allowing all interested parties to have a free copy of that survey whether their offer is accepted or not in the long run WAS basically a good idea.

It is just a shame that these surveys quickly get out of date and they are maybe not as "independent" as the prospective buyers might want them to be.

Like with many other such "good ideas" human nature very soon plays a part and the good idea unravels because of greed and a desire to make as much money on the deal as possible.

I am afraid that even when buying a house the old adage of caveat-emptor or ( buyer beware ) still stands true.

[John]

There is no 'valuation' included in an Home Information Pack.

They last for 12 months and then you get stung again (+ VAT)

There is nothing included that is new - it is another Brown Rip Off.

The 'Information' is as useful at the stage of the placing of a property
on the market as a chocolate teapot.

It is interesting that anyone can be an assessor - all they need is
£7000 for the course. No doubt that amount is promised as
a 'quick return'.

[Wrinkles]

£7000 for the course? I think not. A lady in the offices here tells me her husband who had been unemployed for 6 months was sent on a course for free by the Job centre and is now a fully fledged man with a step ladder

[John]

This was the average price for courses, perhaps I should Harvard Reference my postings?

As long as you do the same as your postings ooze with subject research.

That guy was very lucky to get one FOC. At least he should be earning and paying
the Tax Payer back for the privilege of charging people for something that is pretty
useless.

One of Brown's Stealth Tax Boys...

[Wrinkles]

Do I detect a touch of sarcasm in there dear boy?
I admit that I did not research the subject and imparted information that I knew to be correct in this particular case.
Again without researching but relying on urban myth as it were, as I understood it, the £7000 is the fee the trainers charge the government for each trainee they take on. The trainees can be, and are, subsidised by various agencies including the job-centres.

In actual fact I doubt the £7000 figure is accurate as a HIPS course can be a 1 day course and costs £295 +Vat or a City & Guilds 3 day course at £1990.
The courses are many and varied as can be seen from the links below which I'll post on the off chance someone reading this fancies a new career. Just one point, I believe in all cases you have to buy your own step ladder.

http://www.yourhipsearch.co.uk/pages/company/WhichHIPtrainingcourseisrightforme.asp?gclid=CJzqppynmZ0CFRaX2AodLgoUSQ

Or
http://energytrust.rtrk.co.uk/?scid=14604&kw=5831105&pub_cr_id=3891664662

Or even  http://www.dbtraining.org.uk/db-hipcourse

[John]

Obviously there is competition in the market place.

If you train a class of 10 - because of delivery, it is cheaper then training 5.

The point I wanted to make that this was another stealth tax and non job creation.

i.e. no step ladder, no job

Further criminalising people who do not have the right piece of paper.

While real criminals go about their business with impunity!

 

[Wrinkles]

Under labour it was ever thus 

[www.annuityarrow.com]

I agree they are a total waste of time.

No one trusts them. If you are committing to such a large purchase, you are not going to rely on information produced by the seller and neither is your solicitor.

Buyer beware.

[Wrinkles]

It's a pity really for even I can see the need for some form of HIP system to alleviate the problems that arise with house purchasing and/or selling. However it is also a shame that implementation of this was placed in the hands of the current administration who in their time honoured fashion took a sledgehammer to crack a nut and succeeded only in hitting the hand that held it. But then I would expect nothing else from them. 

[Papaumau]

There is no 'valuation' included in an Home Information Pack.

Hi John....

While I agree that there is no actual monetary value of the proposed property included in the HIP pack some information along these lines can be included in the "sale statement"

The contents of an HIP are as follows:

Home Information Pack Index
Property Information Questionnaire (PIQ)
Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) or Predicted Energy Assessment (PEA) 
Sale statement
Evidence of title   
Standard searces (local authority and dainage and water)
Sustainablility information (required for newly built homes)

Documents that are optional include:

Home Condition Report
Legal summary 
Home use/contents form 
Other documents like specialist searches (for example, the seller may choose to include a mining search in a mining area).

So in fact there is quite a lot of information provided for the interested buyer that will have to be found at some time or another. If any prospective buyer has to do this with a number of possible properties it is going to cost a lot of money and trouble for every property that the buyer might be interested in.

The whole idea behind HIPS was that buyers would save this money by getting only one such set of documents supplied by the seller and any further expense would be by choice.

Just because these so-called surveys have been devalued does not mean that the the basic idea is not a good one.