Too HIP...?

I went looking for info on HIPS and found hips instead....ok, loose link, but what I'm trying to snake my way to is a short para on the subject of Home Information Packs, or HIPS. They've just become mandatory in the UK when you sell your property and comprise of a set of documents you need to start preparing before you can market your property. The documents cover areas such as energy efficiency, leasehold info and local searches and is supposed to give buyers immediate access to the sort of information they'd usually need to get themselves after entering into discussions about an offer - sounds good, I mean this at least means that buyers can quickly check the basics before making a decision - but, and I mean BUT, would you trust the seller of a property to commission a document without doing your own checks? If you're spending a few £100'k on a place I certainly would want to make my own checks which means they're all been done twice.......and someone, somewhere, is getting paid to do the checks twice....nice little earner if you can get it!! Costs are around £350 - another area where some people's reactions have been a little extreme. If you're spending, say, £200k on a house, you've already got to cough up stamp duty, solicitor fees, moving costs etc.etc.... a few hundred quid extra on a HIP really isn't going to break the bank - and if it does you shouldn't be moving at all!!! This is where the whole HIP thing has been a bit of a mess; in principle it sounds good and you can actually compile it yourself so you don't need to pay an estate agent or solicitor to do it. By getting a HIP it also means you're serious about selling and not just probing to see what you could get (a problem in London...). I'm sure it'll all settle down but for fucks sake STOP MOANING ABOUT THE COST - if you can't afford £350 on top of your existing moving costs then you are not in a position to consider the risk of moving - you're very likely to come up against other unexpected costs which make the HIP pale into insignificance.