Seller & Buyer - A Seller's Story

A Homeowner Describes Buying & Selling with a HiP

Home owner, Mr Anderton, was looking to sell his two-bedroom home in Southampton in February 2007. With a Home Information Pack, Mr Anderton sold his property in just four days.

"We were contacted by our estate agent, Enfields, to see if we would be interested in participating in the Area Trials of Home Information Packs. We'd heard vaguely about HIPs but initially weren't exactly sure what getting a Pack would involve. We thought that anything that would help the sale of our property was definitely worth a try.

Our Pack provider, explained everything to us in detail - what the process would entail, every step that we'd take. We were kept involved the whole way - we knew when the different elements of the Pack would be undertaken and who would be doing them.

The Energy Performance Certificate, which detailed the energy efficiency of our house, was very easy to understand. Our property was only 14 years old, so we thought that it would be quite energy efficient in any case, but the EPC still identified a few areas where improvements could be made. So it gave us the choice to make improvements during the selling process, or to at least detail these potential improvements that could be made to prospective buyers.

We also had a Home Condition Report as part of our Pack, which we found very informative and fairly easy to understand. The detail included was like having a MOT done on our house!

Prospective buyers thought that the information included in the Pack, including the Home Condition Report and the Energy Performance certificate, was great and very useful. It gave them lots of details and showed that we weren't hiding anything - and assured buyers that they wouldn't be buying into any problems."

National Association of Registered Home Inspectors