How do I arrange a Home Information Pack?

How do I get a HIP? Should I let the estate agent arrange it?

You could do it yourself, but most people will prefer to have someone do it for them. Estate agents will be very keen to organise it for you, and they will do that through their pet HIP provider or solicitor. Once the HIP has been provided in that way, you could lose your choice of solicitor and could end up with the estate agent's solicitor, who may well be at the other end of the country and could be quite expensive.  

You may be told that the HIP will be "free", but you will be tied to the estate agent, and the commission charged will probably reflect the additional cost of the provision of the HIP.

Or use an apparently cheap "on-line" company?

If the property has a single registered freehold title, this might be a worthwhile saving. Anything a bit more complicated such as unregistered titles, leasehold, or "shared freehold", is going to make it more likely they will get something wrong, because of lack of legal training.

Now, without legal input, a seller could run into trouble with the new Property Information Questionnaire.   This can be a minefield. It could sometimes cause sellers to be held liable for seemingly innocent mistakes in the way they complete it.  There is one badly worded set of questions, which if answered in a literally correct way, could confuse buyers and cause them to suspect problems that were not there.   A HIP company is not going to look at these questions and answers at all - or provide any guidance in answering them - it will simply add the form as completed by the seller to the HIP and the seller will be left with the consequences. 

We can do it...and give you a discount on your sale conveyancing costs...

We can arrange this for you and the cost is much less than some estimates in the newspapers have predicted.  You will need a solicitor to deal with the sale eventually.  If we arrange the Home Information Pack, we can sometimes spot problems with the paperwork which can be dealt with at that point, rather than delaying a sale when you find a buyer.

You may want to contact us to Get A Quote and we can then tell you about how we arrange a HIP and the costs of doing this.  If we also deal with the eventual sale conveyancing then there will be a reduction in our professional charges if we have also arranged the HIP.