Home Investigation Pack (HIP) Will Apply To 3-Bedroom Houses

From the 10th of September Home Information packs will apply to 3-bedroom homes. It was introduced on the 1st of August, and is currently only applicable to 4+ bedroom homes.

I was under the impression that the only reason it applied to 4+ bedrooms is because not enough energy assessors had been trained to cover all homes in England and Wales. It’s only been a month and already enough assessors have been properly trained so the packs can apply to 3+ bedrooms. That’s a pretty impressive production rate.

That poses a question, are the government really training people ‘successfully’ at an excessive rate, or are they just trying to rip people off at a quicker rate? You be the judge.

However, there’s an apparent loophole, which has made the cynics even more cynical (if that was possible). There is no legal definition of a bedroom, so if you call your 3rd “bedroom” a “room”, you essentially have a 2 bedroom home, which means your home won’t need a home information pack. Same principle can be applied to any home with any amount of bedrooms, just to avoid the home information pack.

The argument against that principle is that, “Marketing as a 2 bed, to save the cost of a HIP, could be costing 10K – 15K on the sale price.”

Yeah, good argument. I’m sure buyers are too stupid to use something called a “brain” to comprehend the fact that they can change a “room” into a “bedroom”
I guess inserting a small disclaimer into their property ad, like, “2 bedroom house, but has an upstairs study which is big enough to convert into a bedroom” is errr…too confusing?

Regardless of my bitter notion towards the scheme, the latest news is that they will apply to homes with 3+ bedrooms from the 10th of September.

Great.

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