Home Information Packs.......

OR,

House/Home Information Packs.....

My Mum is encouraging me to get involved in this initiative....in the employment sense.

Again, has any one any experience of this over here...have any comment?








cheers,


David

 

yeah, a colleague mentioned this the other week - seemingly there isn't enough people who can do this presently an he read (web?) that it cost something like 7k to get trained up...
I guess one the one hand it's worth getting trained up quick so you can reap the benefits - but what if the governmen scrap it in a few months time tho..?

 

Very much the conversation I had with my Dad earlier today. We/he came to the following points;


1) This is largley an environmental issue....global warmimg is unlikely to go away.

2) Dad worked as a civil servant for many years ..till that got privitised in the mid 80s. He lived witht posible job loss costantly...but it never happened.

This is some thing you can't avoid now.

3) If you have gained the knowledge (and thats rarely a waste) you probably ahve the potential to do some thing else , related.



This going to be tricky one as its would be a BIG, life changing decision.





D.

 

I recently got 'accepted' on to a training course to become a home inspector (pathetic sales bullshit, of course I was going to get on the course if I had the money required, their 'aptitude' test was a joke), but I've decided not to go through with it. The full course offered by 'HIT Ltd' costs £8,800 plus other costs that would take it to about 10k, and trains you to perform the energy efficiency survey and the home condition (HRC) report. The problem (for me) is that the main survey is the HRC but the govt dropped that from the HIPs as a mandatory item about a year ago after lots of trainees had already paid to do the course, which seems to display a lack of conviction or determination from the govt in the whole thing to me, and there's unlikely to be much voluntary demand for a HRC, if any. It's a shame as the HRC sounded like a good idea, but there was a lot of opposition to it particularly from RICS (not suprising as it was intended to replace the valuation and home buyers survey, and would only need to be done once per house and be available to anyone who was considering buying it). Allegedly most mortgage lenders also said they wouldn't accept it as a reliable guide as to the value of a property. So, at this point in time the HRC looks like a dead duck, which only leaves you with the energy efficiency survey, and to be honest from what I've read I wasn't convinced that the gamble on potential earnings from doing these surveys was worth the risk of all my savings, and tbh the job wouldn't appeal to me just doing that. And as mr cat already mentioned, the govt might scrap the whole thing eventually anyway if it doesn't pan out - I also read somewhere that the conservatives said they'd scrap HIPs if they got back into office.

It's up to you, but personally I'll wait a few months to see whether HIPs are successfully rolled out before shelling out serious wedge to train up.

 

Interesting.

i've been thinking quite a about it the last few days and have pretty much dismissed it, for a variety of reasons.....not the least of which the financial one you mention.

I think maybe he enrgy concept will survive but just in a differnent form, especially with global warming such a hot patato (no pun intended)

BUT...


"It's up to you, but personally I'll wait a few months to see whether HIPs are successfully rolled out before shelling out serious wedge to train up. "


....I think thats about right..



Thanks for that LT.

 

I have to say I am wary of promises of salaries of £50-75K.

Very wary.

 

Absolutely, the sales/recruitment bloke I spoke to casually drops in figures like £48,000 pa for 24 surveys per month which should only take 3.5 days a week....and I'm sitting there thinking 'these are aspirational earnings for 90% of the population, where's the catch' and it's not until he's churned out all the potential income you can generate if you work 'x' number of hours per week that he tells you how much the course costs, so that you are supposed to be so overwhelmed by your future financial security that ten grand seems a reasonable price to pay for training! Oh yeah, and none of the figures are guaranteed and at that point in time no-one had done a survey in anger so timescales and weekly workload are just optimistic guesses at best.....and unless you tie yourself into the training company's sister company for 4 years with no guaranteed work the price of the course is 4 grand more!

 

I can well beleive it.

So its back to the hammer+chisel is it?

 

Round here I've already seen one Estate Agent offering HIPS for free.

Which means there's unlikely to be a significant revenue stream for those who've coughed up that £10K for a full course.

 

Perhpts I won't be rushing at that one.

 

Actually I think that may be a bit of a red herring, as we're only talking the surveys here, which are just part of a HIP. The estate agents will have to pay to have all the bits gathered together and will recover the cost through their fees. I would expect any agent offering free HIPs to insist on being the sole agent through to the completion of the sale, as that way they won't lose any money unless the property fails to sell, and I wouldn't be at all suprised to see some fine print in the agreement you sign that would oblige you to pay for the HIP in that eventuality. The HCR's (if they ever come in) can only be completed by an appropriately qualified 'home inspector' - which is why RICS were so arsey about the whole thing, as surveyors too would have to complete the same course on top of their existing qualifications to be able to carry out a HCR. Not sure about the energy performance cert. though.

EDIT: Just checked: "HIPS must contain an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) - Only Home Inspectors/Domestic Energy Assessors can carry out an EPC"

 

That may not be the bad news it suggests, as far as I understand the HIP cost is added to the fee upon sale so the inspector will be paid as normal, though whether he/she has to wait for the sale too is hard to say. I can't imagine Estate Agents will fork out for it.

 

Could be....

From my own personal pont of view the idea is on the back burner for now........

Taking this on most certainly stuffs everything else I am doing just now......including helping my Mum and Dad on their garden/small holding.

That angle is not insurmountable...just something I don't want to do.... they live miles from anywhere, so getting any other help to them will be a PITA.

I just feel its not got my name on it + the times not right.