HIP Information

It's a new legislation which has caused a lot of anxiety and confusion. What do you need? How much will it cost? Which HIP providers do you trust? Below are the answers to lots of the question you might have.

Do I need a HIP?

Most probably yes. If you are selling 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?

We charge £264.38 (inc VAT) for a freehold property and £327.83 (inc VAT) for a leasehold.

Are there any add on fees afterwards?

No. Once you have paid the above price, there is nothing more to pay, you own the HIP. There are no hidden fees.

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 from MagnoliaProperties.co.uk 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?

Yes we are nationwide. We can provide HIPs in any part of England and Wales.

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.

How do we know which HIP company to use?

There are lots of HIP providers out there, and like choosing any other type of company we would recommend that you pick a company that looks professional, that has been established for some time, and one that offers a reasonable price. A lot of HIP providing companies have emerged very recently, where as MagnoliaProperties.co.uk has been established for three years, and began providing HIPs as a necessity to our many customers.

Why are your HIPs so cheap?

The main reason is that we make the HIPs ourselves, we don't resell somebody else's. So we are effectively cutting out the middle man. We are also making a lot of HIPs and so benefit from lower costs.

Are your HIPs as good as the ones that cost up to and over £300?

Yes our HIPs will contain exactly the same documents as any other HIP.

Are we obliged to use MagnoliaProperties.co.uk for any other services?

No. You can simply buy a HIP from us and nothing else. However if you wish to advertise your property on our site, it is completely free, there are no commission charges and there are no catches.

Do you provide a paper copy of the HIP?

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.

HIPs contain between 50-80 pages, so in order to save trees we recommend that you do not print them out.

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 MagnoliaProperties.co.uk 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.