Where can I get a HIP and how much will it cost me?

You can put together the information in a Hip yourself, or you can purchase one through a specialist provider. However, the overwhelming majority of people are expected to purchase their HIP through their estate agent. Ashley King of Simply HIP, a HIP provider, says: “Some agents will include the cost of HIPs in the terms and conditions of business, some will subsidise them and use them as part of their offering.”

Hamptons and Douglas & Gordon are among the estate agents that have already said that they will offer HIPs free to their clients – but note that if your agent provides the HIP, it belongs to the agent and not to you. If you decide to sell through another agency, you would have to get another pack.

The cost of HIPs has been another point of controversy, with estimates of the average cost of a pack ranging from £300 to £1,000. AHIPP insists that the figure will be at the lower end of this range, suggesting that someone with a three bedroom, freehold property could expect to pay around £400 for their HIP. However, critics say that while costs are likely to start out low thanks to the pressures of competition, they will steadily rise.

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It is worth noting that, with the exception of the EPC, most of the costs incurred in a HIP are not new – they occur under the current system although they are borne by the buyer, rather than the seller. HIP proponents argue that shifting the burden from buyer to seller makes perfect sense, and will prevent duplicated information gathering, which happens so often at the moment where you have multiple buyers targeting one property.

For how long is a HIP valid?

According to the latest information from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), any time-sensitive documents in the HIP – and that includes replies to searches – must be refreshed within 12 months if the property has not sold. This is another aspect of the plans which could be problematic, however, since lenders and lawyers are highly unlikely to accept searches which are more than six months old.

Can I sell my home without a HIP?

Only if you act very quickly. So long as your property is up for sale by June 1, you can continue to market it without a HIP until March 31, 2008. If your property goes up for sale after the deadline, then you must purchase a HIP within 28 days or face a £200 fine.

What will be their impact on the housing market?

In the short term, HIPs are likely to create some distortions within the property market, and if you are a buyer, now could be a very good time to look for a property, since there is likely to be an increase in the number of homes coming to market as sellers try to beat the June 1 deadline. Haart, the estate agent, predicts that the number of new instructions is likely to rise by 20 per cent in the run up to the introduction of HIPs, while the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) says that new instructions rose for the second month in April after the longest decline in seven years. “The fear of paying the upfront buying costs of Hips has pushed more property onto the market,” says a spokesman for the RICS. “This will continue throughout May but conditions should tighten on June 1 as sellers withdraw from the market.”

But the longer term impact of HIPs is unlikely to be dramatic. “A lot depends on how the HIP pricing structure evolves,” says Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack. He believes that if prices remain around the £300 mark, then there is unlikely to be a serious impact on the housing market. “However, there is a not insignificant number of sellers who put their homes on the market just to see what sort of offers they get. These aspirational sellers are less likely to put their homes up for sale once HIPs have been introduced, so that could exacerbate the lack of supply in the market.”

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