According to solicitors Walker Morris, Hips are not required if exchanging houses, unless it is a newly built house and it’s the builder selling directly:
Part-exchange properties
The requirement to produce a HIP is triggered when a property is first put on the market, or where the fact that the property is on the market is made public. A residential property is put on the market when ‘the fact that it is or may become available for sale is, with the intention of marketing the property, first made public in England and Wales by or on behalf of the seller’. The definition goes on to clarify that a fact is made public when it is advertised or otherwise communicated to the public or to a section of the public. It would seem, then, that the only way of avoiding the requirement to produce a HIP is by selling the property on a private basis to a person without any marketing at all. This ought to include the situation where a person buys a new house and transfers their old one to the builder in part-exchange but the situation is not yet clear. Even in such a scenario, however, any on-sale of a residential property taken in part-exchange by a builder will trigger the requirement to prepare a HIP.
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