Well, a Home Report is a document that contains a valuation of the property, and also a survey. It is designed for potential buyers of the property to view. The Home Report is specifically composed of three elements, and these are: a Single Survey, an Energy Report and a Property Questionnaire.
In terms of the responsibility for both the report and the cost, this falls with the vendor, or person who sells the property. The cost is not fixed but rather will depend on the value of the property, up to about a total cost of £1,200, so it is not a cheap piece of documentation.
The document, in addition to the valuation and the survey, contains some other elements that will be of interest to the purchaser of the property. For instance it will include an energy report which gives details on the energy efficiency of the house and so forth. This energy report will contain recommendations made by the surveyor as to ways to improve the energy efficiency of the property - again useful information for the prospective purchaser. In addition the Home Report will contain information on various aspects of the property that will save the purchase having to ask those questions.
For instance the Home Report will contain answers to common questions such as how long the vendor has been in possession of the property, any notable problems with the house in the past and also other practical information such as the Council Tax band that the property falls under.
From December 2008 it has been the case that every house put up for sale in Scotland has had to have a Home Report.
If you are in England then you may wonder how the Home Report relates to the Home Information Packs, called HIPs, which have been suspended in England and Wales. The answer is that the Home Report is a completely separate thing and at time of writing there is no plan to suspend the Home Report in Scotland (it may be confusing for the system of house buying and selling is entirely different in Scotland to that in England).
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