Home Information Packs: your experiences

we have just had one done to the cost of £500 the man came and after talking to him i then found out that the company paid him £250, is this another rip off britton set up by the gov, i would say to anyone getting one done find an indepentant as they are half the price of these companices, that get actualy indepentant person to come and do it for them anyway, If i had of know this i would of saved myself £250

Would you buy a car without an MOT? No!
Why do you agree to buy a house WITHOUT a HCR? (Home Condition Report). Wouldn't you like to know what you are really buying upfront? An idea of a HCR with Energy Performace Certificate is very good and should have been included with every sale a long time ago. I would definately ask for it next time and I wished I had seen it before I bought my house 2 years ago!

What is not being questioned here is the fundamental purpose of HIPs. It was promoted - as far as I recollect - as a means to simplify and speed property purchases, because sellers would be required to have a property surveyed, where the buyer would have done that before. I still wouldn't accept a report provided by someone whom I do not know for their real skills. The HIPs thing must be just energy saving; if it were speeding a tedious legal process, the US concept of "Title Insurance" would suffice.

How many people have considered that those in favour of HIPS either have a vested interest in promoting Global Warming ,or are "Plants" to give a favourable impression in the same way as political activists are used to write letters to the press ,posing as ordinary citizens .

Dear, dear, dear, one would suggest to the panicking fraternity that they do their homework. We are currently enjoying an interglacial period which generally last approx 20,000 years.
Yes, we are experiencing rises in average temperatures but this is due to the end of the last 'mini ice-age' stretching from 1500-1900AD.
Changing from carbon to renewable energy is laudable from an economic perspective but please don't ram the 'save the planet' hyperbole down our throats. CO2 levels have been much higher and supported an abundance of life until a cataclysmic event resulted in mass extinctions.
HIPS serve no purpose in saving resources when the environmental costs of producing several hundred copies of the report for the consumption of all and sundry is taken into account. In fact, the carbon footprint due to processing of trees to paper, transport, production of toner, photocopying electricity, collection and disposal of waste reports (they end up in the trash) far outweigh any mythical savings a low energy bulb produces.
Use common sense and take the current politico-gobbledegook with a pinch of salt. Politicians and ex-politicians (Al Gore) need an agenda to pay the bills and to satisfy their enormous egos. Such people and their associated pressure groups prey on the fears of well-intentioned people in order to make a soft living; they do an enormous disservice to people who really do care but are disinclined to panic.

I'm selling a house; my agent says not one purchaser has looked at the 400 HIPs they've done so far. Solicitors look at them, but it doesn't seem to be making a blind bit of difference to the speed of transactions: there are still chains that assemble or break down or have to wait while someone puts their property on the market. Approval for a mortgage still takes as long as it ever did, which is when searches were normally done, so no time saved there. It's also possible for searches in a HIP to expire - I'm in danger of this at the moment because I put my house on the market in October, found a buyer, the buyer dropped out after two months, then there was Christmas, and we effectively had to start remarketing in January.

HIPs also include the ridiculous EPC - I have eight energy-saving lightbulbs in the principal rooms of my house but I still got a "poor" rating because I didn't have them in places like my downstairs WC, used for about once a month at nighttime. I'm expected to spend £5 on an energy-saving lightbulb for a toilet! The assessor missed my cavity-wall insulation and recommended tearing out my rare Crittal windows in favour of double-glazing: so there goes Britain's architectural heritage.

Then there's the interminable environmental report, which basically said "you're on a hill, no danger of flooding", you're 5 miles from the council tip, a mile from a pylon, and 500 yards from a sub-station. Whatever happened to house purchasers using their own eyes?

I do up/convert property. My last project needed a HIP and I was happy to work to making the property as 'efficient' as possible and was pleased to receive a high 'C' and no recommendation for improvement on the Victorian cottage. So thats good, however, doing the searches etc seems to be a waste as every buyer with a mortgage is forced to do their own searches again as the lender will not rely on my HIP searches. Not one viewer has seen the HIP or indeed wanted to.

I agree that it is right to reduce consumption of resourses but thats for resources purposes rather than global warming. I am not convinced it is human made altho clearly we must be making a small contribution. I have read Samuel Pepys Diary and in the 9 1/2 years (1660 - 1669) he witnessed frozen Thames, hot dry summers and horrendous storms and then in 1703 was a hurricane. Sounds familiar doesnt it?

Ness of Sutton seems to have forgotten or didn't know that in Roman times in Britain it was hot and many acres of Vines were grown and the Vines were not the hardy types we get now. Also is Ness aware that the Thames was frozen over between 1550 and 1750 and fairs, stalls and people walked over it and which lasted for three months some years. I can't see many cars or heavy industry here at that time. It is a natural happening during the Earth cycle round the sun and global warming would happen anyway. I agree with Mandy it's a rip off

I welcome the introduction of HIPs, they can only speed up the process, and it is clear that estate agents are not making them clear to potential buyers. After all, how can you ask to see it, if you do no know it is there.
The Energy certificates are a good idea, and the lady who said that the only recomendation was light bulbs, is missing the point, that her house is almost as efficient as it can be.
But let us not forget the original idea of HIPs, was to include The Home Condition Report. This if it were handled correctly by The Government, estate agents, and mortgage providers, would aid the selling process.
After all it is successful as a voluntary scheme in parst of the USA.
Lastly, house prices are far too high, this is simply down to agents, and especially mortgage lenders, lower prices, and we can all afford a home, and have money left over for a decent living.

I left a key with estate agents so they could show people round the house while I was at work with instructions to ring me and knock before coming in. The HIP report guy got the key with instruction to ring me. Instead of ringing me he decided just to come straight in, as it was saturday my lodge was there still in bed and quite shocked to see this guy poking round the house. He is lucky I was not there I would have thought he had broken in and hit him with something. The whole HIP thing is a RIP off, the Gov should give a way a guide to writing your own. I mean its not rocket science. Its just the Govs way of creating a new industry.