An EPC is short for an Energy Performance Certificate. This is a report that assesses the energy efficiency of a property.
The report considers things like how well insulated a property is and how much your bills might cost.
It will offer an energy efficiency rating of A-G and an environmental impact rating. The reports highlights an estimate of the energy use, carbon dioxide emissions, lighting, heating and hot water use per year, along with the potential annual costs for each.
Recommendations are made for improvements
It looks like this:
With the government now moving towards greater efficiency and wanting all properties to reach a ‘C’ standard by 2035 this will impact both owners and occupiers.
My current house (home) rating is a D which was completed in 2020 when I bought it. I have been working on improvements over the last year and half which has not been cheap.
I aslo have other properties which are D rated.
I suspect there is going to be large costs going foward for home owners, landlords, housing associations, etc
I guess that this is a really good thing overall but as an investor it has me thinking. Who is going to benefit from this flow of money into efficiency improvements? Any thoughts?
I guess appliance manufacturers, heat pump makers, whoever makes and installs insulation?
Someones always got to be first as early adopters usually pay the most. But who’s going to take the sting: landlords seem like an easy target for the government.
Landlords will likely have to abide by these rules from 2025/2028 (tenancy dependent)
For many small Victorian houses & conversation flats which make up a large part of a the rental properties in many towns and cities this will not be easy / impossible. Pre 1930’s had soild walls, not all are suitable for double glazing, flats can’t have heat pumps / solar panels.
I see one of the following happening
a. Landlords bite the bullet and pay £10,000+ to upgrade the property and in turn rents will rise to account for this
b. A large number of landlord will sell up instead of making the improvements which reduced the housing stock. With interest rates rising some might go for fixed products / bonds. As interest rates rise first time buyers will find it harder to get if the ladder so you’ll have more tenants looking for less properties and you guessed it … rents will rise.
Over 80% of landlords own less than 4 properties and this is a business / pension to many. Driving letting into the hands of larger companies and housing associations is not necessarily going to be good for tenants, many individual landlords don’t increase rents as much as the market rises when they have a sitting tenant - this is not the case of KPI focused larger prop co’s.
I’m not sure on that. I have some experience of living in NZ when ‘healthy homes’ etc came in. The quality of housing stock there is really poor and rents are mad. But… what the regulations actually did is stop things like efficient heating and insulation being differentiating. Suddenly every rental had to have them. That actually stopped landlords from being able to charge a premium for them.
This exact thing just happened to my friend. The landlord hated spending money and has now just sold as he didn’t want to pay for anything. Told them on Dec 20th as well, nice if him after 11 years and never having had an issue as my mate always repaired stuff himself as he is is in trade.
I’m only looking at things d rated now. There are exemptions that landlords can apply for after spending x amount…I do suspect like others that the costs will come down for the adjustments and will all level it self out. Mortgage companies are undervaluing properties with a lower energy rating more and more as they have to produce EPC statistics too. I have also read that some people don’t believe the EPC model is the correct model anyways so anything could change yet.
Unlikely - to move up to B rating, the certificate recommends I install solar panels (cost £3500 -£6000) which will save me £304 a year in energy bills.
I’m on wait list for solar panels as there’s a specific company I want to consult with. I’m not sure I’d really recoup the expense of solar. Well maybe after 20years but like to think I’m doing my part.
