Property Investing

Now I don’t know about you but since the Housing Minister announced that they are abolishing HIPs I haven’t known how to react.

On the one side this is great news for homeowners as it means that they won’t have to pay at least £500 to create them, but on the other, this pack actually contained some really valuable information for property investors…

Sure Energy Performance Certificates will still be available – despite their terms of issuing being relaxed – but other important documentation will be lost.

Take these for instance:

• Sale statement – contains all your basic property info such as whether your potential property investment is a freehold, leasehold or commonhold and why it is being sold
• Evidence of Title – these are documents from the Land Registry pertaining to who actually owns the property
• Standard property search – planning decisions and road proposals, your properties drainage capabilities and water services etc

Admittedly, many of the optional HIP documents are also incredibly useful when homeowners decide to use them i.e. Home conditions report, legal summary, environmental hazards searches (flooding) etc, but just looking at these 3 alone, it is easy to see that they are not a complete waste of time.

After all, whilst a homeowner may not want to pay for these searches/surveys on their own properties; this doesn’t mean that when they come to buy they wouldn’t mind knowing if the property has got structural problems or is located on a flood plain. The only difference now is, they will have to pay for these searches themselves on every property they are interested in buying – meaning they could end up paying out thousands of pounds before they even buy!

Part of me is still hoping that a compromise will be found by the time the Emergency Budget arrives on the 22^nd June; however I highly doubt it… For instance, if Scottish Home Reports are still considered valuable, why hasn’t the Housing Minister made a move to adapt their system for property investment? Exactly! They have no intention to…

Wendy xx