What does a Home Owner’s Passport mean for me as a seller?

Last updated: 8 September 2026

A Home Owner’s Passport is a digital record of your property that gathers, in one place and before your home goes on the market, the information your buyer’s solicitor is going to ask for anyway.  For you that means fewer questions arriving at week nine, a shorter gap between accepting an offer and completing, and a record of your home that keeps working for as long as you live there.  It is set up for you by your estate agent or solicitor.

What is actually in it

Not a brochure.  The documents and data a conveyancer works from.

Title deeds and plans from HM Land Registry.  Local authority reports and utilities searches.  The material information a listing has to disclose.  The Law Society forms your solicitor will complete anyway, including the TA6 property information form, the TA10 fittings and contents form and, for a leasehold flat, the TA7.  Alongside that sits a title issues report flagging anything a buyer’s solicitor is likely to raise.

Your logbook also carries a Property Vitals score out of 1,000, which is a plain summary of what is missing or likely to cause a problem.  Restrictive covenants, radon risk, an EPC that has expired, a gap in a warranty.  The point is not the number.  The point is that you find out in week one rather than in month three.

Why it changes how your sale goes

Most sales do not fail because the buyer changed their mind about the house.  They fail because something turned up late.

The government’s own assessment is blunt about it.  Once an offer is accepted, completion now takes around 120 days on average, and around one in three transactions fall through before they get there, at a cost to consumers of somewhere near £400 million a year.  Its diagnosis is that upfront information is often missing, late or inconsistent, so issues surface only after time and money have been spent.

Tenure, planning constraints, flood risk, service charges.  Those are the four the government names, and none of them is unknowable when your board goes up.  They are simply not asked for until later.

A passport moves that work to the front.  Your solicitor starts with a file rather than a request for one, and the questions that would have arrived at week nine have already been answered.

What it asks of you

Less than you would expect, which is the part sellers tend not to believe.

Most of the information is pulled from official sources rather than from you.  Your title comes from HM Land Registry.  Your council tax band comes from the billing authority.  What is genuinely yours to supply is the same set of answers you would have given your solicitor anyway, on the forms you would have completed anyway, only earlier and once rather than repeatedly.

If your home is leasehold, there is one thing worth doing early.  The management pack from your freeholder or managing agent is the single biggest cause of delay in leasehold sales, because it is usually requested after an offer from someone under no obligation to hurry.  Ask for it when you list, not when you accept.

While you own the home, and when you move

For as long as you live there, the logbook keeps watching.  It flags changes to your title deed, which is the first sign of title fraud.  It tells you about planning applications nearby.  It updates flood, radon and subsidence risk, and flags a council tax band review.  You decide who sees what and when, and you can share with an agent, a solicitor or a lender in a click.

When you move, your logbook closes.  It is not handed over with the keys.  It stays as the record of your time at the property, and the new owner opens their own logbook for the home they have just bought.

That is the pattern government expects to become normal.  It has committed to legislating to make digital logbooks and sales packs a standard part of every property transaction, describing a logbook as an online secure record of information specific to a property, owned by the homeowner.

How to get one

hop is set up through your estate agent or your solicitor, which is how most sellers come across it.

If you have already instructed an agent, ask whether they use hop, or whether they can prepare your property information upfront in any form.  If you have instructed a solicitor, ask the same of them.  If you have not chosen either yet, hop can point you towards firms that already work this way.

It is worth asking even if the answer is no, because the question tells an agent what you expect.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get a Home Owner’s Passport?

Through your estate agent or solicitor, who set it up for your property.  If you have not chosen either yet, hop can point you towards firms that already work this way.

Will it make my sale faster?

It moves the information gathering to before your home is listed rather than after an offer.  Government identifies late and missing upfront information as a leading cause of delay, so the intent is to remove that cause.  No product can control a chain, a lender or a buyer’s circumstances.

Does my logbook pass to the buyer when I sell?

No.  Your logbook closes when you move and remains the record of your time at the property.  The buyer opens their own logbook for the home.

Is a property logbook the same as a Home Information Pack?

No.  Home Information Packs were a paper based regime that ran between 2007 and 2010 and were abolished.  A digital logbook is an online secure record of a property, owned by the homeowner, and government has said it intends to make logbooks and sales packs a standard part of transactions.

Who can see my information?

You decide.  Sharing is controlled by you, with different levels of access for an agent, a solicitor or a lender.

Ask the question before you list

The information your buyer’s solicitor will ask for exists today.  The only real choice is whether it is gathered while your home is on the market or after someone has made an offer on it.

If you are choosing an agent, ask what they do about upfront information.  If you would like to be pointed towards firms that already work this way, get in touch.

This article is general information and is not legal advice.