HIPs? What on earth are they? A new brand of anti-size-zero doll my daughter is about to start begging me for?

If only. The government is introducing a new property regulation on June 1. Before you can put your house on the market, you’ll have to compile a pack with essential details about your home. Hence home information packs, acronym HIPs.

Sounds like hard work to me.

That depends on how organised you have been with your property documents. You’ll need an official copy of the individual register and the title plan to prove you own the property. You’ll need what are called “standard searches”: the local land-charges register; “local inquiries”, for example, planning decisions and road-building proposals held by the local authority; and drainage and water-services providers. There might be extra paperwork for leasehold and commonhold sales. You’ll need a statement verifying that the house is for sale, and an energy performance certificate. An assessor will inspect your home and rate its impact on the environment – just as white goods have a grading – then suggest improvements. The question really is, how green is your house?

Expert View

Hips have already won hearts and minds and will make us all greener, or so the Government says

Anne Ashworth

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Background

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Hips will make us greener, or so the Government says

• Hips have already won hearts and minds and will make us all greener, or so the Government says

Background

• Home Information Packs come under fire

• Q&A: home information packs

• Will HIPs pack a real punch?

• Home Information Packs branded as 'ridiculous'

Clever. So who pays for this HIP? Any chance, since it was the government’s idea, that it will foot the bill?

Don’t be ridiculous. The seller will pay, although some estate agencies will pay via their fees; Hamptons was the first estate agency to announce that it would offer free HIPs to clients. Official sites are sketchy on detail, diplomatically saying the cost will be “down to the market”. The Association of Home Information Pack Providers quotes a price of £300; others say it will be higher.

Are there any means by which I can, ahem, avoid such a fee?

You could put your house up for sale before June 1; agents predict a surge before then. But don’t try to be too sneaky: if you list it with an agent after June 1, but claim that you’ve been marketing the property yourself, and so are exempt from a HIP until December, they will want to see proof that you were really serious about selling, as they will be the ones fined if a trading-standards officials deems it to not have been honestly put up for sale. If you can demonstrate that you actively started marketing before May, you will be exempt for seven months.

So it is just a few documents?

I thought there was more to it. There was, before the government’s U-turn in July 2006. It was intended to include a home condition report, but mortgage lenders said they would not accept them as substitutes for the valuations and surveys that a buyer pays for anyway. It was thought that buyers wouldn’t trust them either.

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