Surrey Energy Ratings Ltd is proud to announce that it is now a member of the Surrey County Council Trading Standards Buy With Confidence Scheme. Our customers can now have even more confidence in our service being of the highest standard and quality with the backing of Surrey County Council.
We are listed here on the Approved Traders website.
Buy With Confidence
We’ve just added specific prices for full Home Information Packs for Sutton in Surrey.
Freehold HIP in Sutton, Surrey: £249.00. Order one here.
Leasehold HIP in Sutton, Surrey: £279.00. Order one here.
We’ve just added specific prices for full Home Information Packs for Hounslow.
Freehold HIP in Hounslow: £249.00. Order one here.
Leasehold HIP in Hounslow: £279.00. Order one here.
So we’ve passed the 6 April. The changes to home information packs have been introduced, the main one being the Property Information Questionnaire. But another change has occurred and this is one that will affect the price of HIPs. It’s the abolition of insurance covering any omissions from the Local Authority Searches.
This means that these searches must be complete with no gaps in order to be included in a fully compliant HIP. With the councils we have worked with so far, an additional Highways Search has been required. But of course every council is different, with differing charges and searches.
We have fixed price HIPs for the following council areas in Surrey: Mole Valley, Reigate & Banstead, Epsom & Ewell and Guildford. For all other areas, we ask potential clients to contact us directly or complete the HIP quotation request form here.
The Home Information Pack is being made more useful from 6 April 2009. From this date a property can not be placed on the market until the following basic documents are available: index, Property Information Questionnaire, Energy Performance Certificate, Sale Statement and Evidence of Title. The other parts of the HIP must be in place as soon as possible, an definitely within 28 days.
The Property Information Questionnaire, or PIQ for short, is the major change to the HIP documents. This gives a potential buyer a ton of additional information such as Council Tax band, parking, utilities & servicing, any changes or alterations to the property that the current owner has completed and additional information about leasehold properties.
Whilst supplying this information upfront will possibly be a minor headache for sellers, it is information they would have to provide to their solicitor at some point during the selling process anyway. So this should prove a minor obstacle.
Due to the current financial situation and other local factors we have decided to reduce our Home Information Pack prices. The total HIP price for a freehold property of any size is now £209.00. For leasehold properties of any size the total HIP price is £239.00.
My name is James Money and I am managing director of Surrey Energy Ratings Ltd. We have been providing domestic energy performance certificates and home information packs since May 2008; and commercial energy performance certificates and display energy certificates since November 2008.
Work was fairly steady in the early days. Whilst waiting to become fully qualified in the early months of 2008, I was able to get the website up and running. So we hit the ground running, so to speak, rating quite highly in Google’s rankings. Most of our work was sourced locally, coming from one independent estate agent in particular. We have had no luck whatsoever breaking into the national estate agents.
Thinking of becoming an Energy Assessor? I would certainly advise against it. And I’m not just saying that because I am one! There simply is not enough work to go around. I am certainly not making enough to live on and it’s a real struggle actually finding the work. Many ‘panel’ companies have set up to distribute the work nationally to local energy assessors that register with them. The trouble is, because the panels haven’t got enough work they have been driving the price paid to the DEA’s right down. Meaning we have to find even more work to make it pay.
That’s the end of my first blog post. Sorry if it got a bit ranty at the end there!
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