Comments on: Home information packs

by: Manuel - Domestic Energy Assessor in Bath

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:04:52 +0000

As a non British (I’m Spanish from Barcelona) living in England (in Bath to be precise) I’ve been always surprised that about the fact of not showing house/flat sizes in square meters, especially when some estate agents call a double room anything where they can feet a double bed, even if you have to jump over the bed to get to the other side of the room. In Spain, property prices are given per square meter and you pay more for a bigger house and less for a smaller one (of course there are other factors involved, like quality and most important location), doesn’t it make sense?

By the way, there’s already a date for the 3 bedroom homes to need a HIP, that is from the 10th of September 2007.

Editorial comment: Absolutely right. I recommend readers to make this point to local estate agents and e.g. Rightmove website, pointing out that this information (gross floorspace in square metres) is now available from the energy audit part of the HIP.

by: epctruth

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:13:28 +0000

I think you will find that there is enough legal grounds for defining what is a 4 bedroom house, please see my blog entry and others on the same 4-bedroom loophole tag.

BTW: Wonderful blog I support your ideals 100%

epctruth

by: Martin Vlietstra

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:39:17 +0000

On 11-Jun-2007, legislation was laid before Parliament to formally postpone the introduction of HIPs until 1st August for 4-bedroom houses. The legislation can be viewed at http://www.homeinformationpack.gov.uk/pdf/Hips_Order.pdf.

It appears that the Minister ignored the advice from the House of Lords (see above) and also from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors that there was no legal definition of what consituted a “four bedroom house”. After all, a couple nearing retirement might well have a house with four upstairs rooms which they use as “Master bedroom”, “Guest room”, “His study”, “Her study”. It becomes even more confusing if they had a large bungalow where there is no clear-cut distinction between bedrooms and reception rooms.

We will wait and see what happens on 2nd August 2007.

by: Martin Vlietstra

Tue, 29 May 2007 11:33:36 +0000

Since this was posted, the Government announced a delay in its implementation - HIPs would only be required for houses with four or more bedrooms after 1st August. There has of course been considerable discussion as to what constitutes a “4-bedroom house”.

There was a debate in the House of Lords on the matter. (See http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/ldhansrd/text/70522-0006.htm ). In particular, Lord Tebbit brought the matter up and it was Baroness Gardner of Parkes who suggested that “square footage” be used as the cut-off point. hopefully if this suggestion is taken up, then the legislation would require that the area be specified in square metres.

by: Peter K

Sun, 27 May 2007 13:54:11 +0000

The whole Home Information Pack scheme looks likely to descend into farce following the announcement that HIPs will initially be required only for properties with 4 or more bedrooms.

The fact that there is no legal definition of a “bedroom”, means that sellers of 4-bedroom homes will be able to make up their own descriptions for their properties, such as “3-bedrooms + 1 HIP-replacement room”, in order to avoid the cost of providing a Home Information Pack.

How much more sensible it would be if homes were legally required to be described in terms of total floor area (in square metres). It would then have been a simple matter to set the value for total floor area of a property above which a HIP would be required.

by: Dave Brown

Wed, 16 May 2007 13:25:39 +0000

UK estate agents have never quoted floor area for residential property, in imperial or metric units. The main unit of housing in the UK seem to be the “bedroom”, or “bed”. No other headline information is ever given about the size of a property. Room sizes are given as length and width (even for L-shaped rooms). It can therefore be hoped that when they do start calculating area for the HIP, the public are not going to start demanding square feet or yards, but are just going to get used to a single measurement in m².