Is anyone happy with HIPs ?

Agents have consistently criticised HIPs, initially citing them as the cause of the downturn in the property market. Understandably, agents have seen the HIP as a potential obstacle to placing a property on the market and taking the speculative vendor out of the market. However as time has gone by agents are slowly but surely getting used to the idea of HIPs. As and when they are abolished it will be interesting to see how agents tolerate conveyancers giving the time old of excuses of delay to a transaction that have long since disappeared since HIPs were introduced. I am talking here of the type of excuses such as “ we are waiting for searches “ or “ we are trying to track down a copy of the lease”.

In a recent poll by the leading estate agency magazine the Negotiator it was found that estate agents we a negative as one might expect.

Since the Conservative Conference the Association of HIP Providers have been unusually silent in declaring the merits of HIPs. This is all the more surprising since just a couple of days before the Conservative Conference the MORI poll revealed that 65% of people surveyed indicated that they found the documentation in the HIP useful.

In our experience very few buyers or sellers look at the HIP. The is also the opinion of the Negotiator who put this figure at less than 5%..At the moment there is a distinct lack of substantial evidence  to suggest  that HIPs have had their desired effect.