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0131 555 1234
Hello
We’re Cameron Stephen & Co, solicitors and estate agents Edinburgh.
What is a Home Report?
If you are selling your property, you will need to have a Home Report. And so, here is our guide to Home Reports for sellers.
Put simply, it is a pack of documents that gives your potential buyers information about your property.
The Single Survey contains:
The EPC gives your home an energy efficiency rating.
The higher the rating, the more energy efficient your property is and consequently the lower the fuel bills should be.
It also looks at such things as:
This is a form completed by you.
It contains additional information about your property which is going to be important to potential buyers such as:
Yes.
They are a legal requirement if you want to put your property on the market for sale.
The cost varies depending on the value of your property.
Typically if you are selling your first home with a value of between £100,000 and £200,000 the cost will be around £480.
You can get them cheaper than this and if you are cost conscious there are surveyors who will give you a Home Report for less than that.
However, not all of those surveyors are on the panel of approved surveyors for lenders (banks and building societies).
So you if you go down that route you may, once an offer has been accepted, be asked to pay for the buyer’s lender’s valuation report.
It has to be paid for when instructed and so it is an upfront cost for you.
Usually, your estate agent will be able to arrange this for you and they usually will have a preferred surveyor who they will choose.
Although you pay for it, it is mainly for the benefit of the buying public. As such the surveyor is independent of you and your interests.
So, whilst the draft of the Single Survey and the EPC will be sent to you, it will be more to check for inaccuracies.
The surveyor will agree to make corrections for inaccuracies but will not make changes if they feel that these are not justified.
For example:
This is up to you.
The Home Report does not impose any obligation on you to fix a problem highlighted.
Some “problems” are more significant than others and may affect how long it will take your property to sell and at what price it will then sell for.
This is best illustrated by a couple of examples.
If there are significant structural issues with your property then perhaps obviously, those issues are going to be important.
They are likely to put off the majority of buyers and might lead to interested buyers having problems getting a mortgage.
In that case, you are probably best to hold of marketing your property until the structural issues have been addressed.
If there is a small area of dampness (a common enough thing) , you can do nothing in which case in a strong selling market that is unlikely to put off many buyers.
For peace of mind, we would recommend you get a Damp Specialist Report to give you (and buyers) more information as to the extent of the problem and the costs of carrying out the required treatment.
Any potential buyer is entitled to be sent a copy of the Home Report for your property.
And since the Home Report is usually available as a download from the property marketing portals (such as the ESPC) more or less anyone can download a copy of your Home Report (including your neighbours).
No.
The buyer is entitled to have their own surveyor carry out an independent survey and valuation but this is rare in practice.
A small number of lenders (banks and building societies) insist that as part of the mortgage application process insist on their own independent valuation.
If that is the case, then the valuation will be paid for either by the buyer or their lender and not by you.
We hope you have found this information useful.
Just a reminder that we are firm of solicitors and estate agents based in Edinburgh offering a great value fixed fee for our estate agency.
We are also members of the ESPC so your property would be marketed there as well as on other portals.
There are some links below so that you can find out a little more about our services.
If you would like us to give you an idea of what your home's current value is, then we offer a free, no obligation home valuation service.
If you would like us to give you an idea of the costs and fees involved in selling your home, then that is not a problem
If you would like find out more about our service, you will find out all about our service and what we can offer here