Home buyers would pay more for better health and wellbeing

[Barney12]

I thought you might find the following release from the HBF yesterday interesting:

 

Home buyers would pay more for better health and wellbeing Almost a third of all home owners and renters would be willing to pay more for a home that will not compromise their health and wellbeing according to new research carried out by materials giant Saint-Gobain. The results of the survey of more than 3,000 renters and home owners are revealed in "The UK Home, Health and Wellbeing Report 2016" launched this week.  The analysis finds that 90% of respondents are concerned about the impact their homes have on their health and wellbeing.  Respondents were asked to select key features of their ideal home, with safety and security coming out on top ahead of running and maintenance costs, low energy bills, a low level of noise, good natural light and no damp or mould. Each of these factors was valued as three times more important than a home that will improve in value or have desirability when sold. "People are becoming more interested and concerned about their health, wellbeing and the positive choices they can make to improve their lives," said Saint-Gobain UK & Ireland regional ceo Mike Chaldecott. "Our homes have a strong impact on our daily lives. The results and conclusions (of this report) will give far greater insight into this area and identify opportunities for those with a role in developing, designing, delivering or managing housing." * The findings of the survey were debated at a Housebuilder magazine/Saint-Gobain round table this week - a full report will appear in the April edition of Housebuilder

[ToughButterCup]

Had a quick look at the study web page, and was delighted to find a link purporting to explain '... the reliability and validity of this study...'
Here is that page

Here is a website that explains what validity and reliability is

 

And here is an authoritative framework for assessing website content.

I was delighted to see  at least a delicate nod to validity and reliability in the Internet. There is some way to go.

 

Old lecturers don't die, they just smell as if they have.

Ian

[MikeSharp01]

The Edinburgh uni doc is for thinkers and students trying to impress their tutors. Sadly, or perhaps happily if you are one, several of the tabloids provide upto the minute validity for its readers. 

[joe90]

Then why aren't people ( mostly) interested in the efficiency of their home, SAP score etc.

[ToughButterCup]

Because it hits them right in the bank balance, @joe90

[joe90]

1 hour ago, recoveringacademic said:

Because it hits them right in the bank balance, @joe90

I think it hits them harder if they don't take notice. If they bought a house with a good SAP score their bills would be less. I think a lot of people in this country are better off than they make out! Like ST says energy is too cheap, if it were more expensive then people would be more interested in buying insulation, wearing a vest, and looking for houses with a better SAP score.

[AliG]

What the report says that Saint-Gobain seemed to neglect to mention was that until they were asked specifically about whether they would like a home "that doesn't compromise my health and wellbeing" only 10% of people mentioned that they were concerned about this.

 

This is the kind of question that nearly always elicits a positive response. It is somewhat vague and hard to disagree with.

 

The top concerns are that people don't want a house that is cold in winter and don't want noise from neighbours. People do pay for these things, single glazed houses without central heating are hard to sell. People understand no central heating means a house is hard to heat, whereas they don't understand SAP scores. Indeed many on here have discussed putting in probably not required heating in case their house is hard to sell. It might be easier to sell a C rated house with heating than an A rated house without as people will take some convincing that they won't be cold.

[Oz07]

2 hours ago, joe90 said:

I think it hits them harder if they don't take notice. If they bought a house with a good SAP score their bills would be less. I think a lot of people in this country are better off than they make out! Like ST says energy is too cheap, if it were more expensive then people would be more interested in buying insulation, wearing a vest, and looking for houses with a better SAP score.

Who moans about energy being too cheap?! Seriously! It's like moaning petrol is too cheap.

 

I'm not hating on your eco houses but i'm fine with cheap energy! Get down the pub and tell everyone its too cheap

[MikeSharp01]

As I mentioned last week somewhere else on this forum it is possible to see that the problem is not directly one of cost but perhaps one of relative cost. Energy is way down the average households list of costs below mortgage, council tax & car lease for start. So looking at things that way energy is too cheap to be noticed  as a place where serious concern needs to raise it's head.

[ProDave]

It's certainly true that energy is not the biggest cost in running a house so not the No 1 priority. It is still funny though now people will buy a better fridge to save £10 a year in electricity, but won't buy a better house?  Take out the mortgage because by the time you retire that really should be history, and still by a LONG way, the biggest cost of a house is the council tax. No amount of insulation, tripple glazing, heat pumps or mvhr will do a thing to reduce that.

 

Perhaps if air quality is seen as more important, then things like mvhr may become seen as desirable things to have in a new house?

 

Surely unless you buy a really old house, people are not concerned with damp and mould these days are they? Even our modest 14 year old house built to normal standards of the time does not suffer from either of those, not in the slightest.

[Ferdinand]

On topic:

 

One probem imo is that paybacks can be relatively long term.

 

I think that @AliG has something in saying that Double Glazing and Central Heating have now become essentials for most people. Around here it is very significantly more difficult to let out such properties unless you are well-down the market. I can see decent EPC numbers and other items developing that way. It just takes a generation to bed in.

 

Our rate of newbuild of 1/3 of eg Germany doesn't help either.

 

I think the energy explanations have political factors too, which obscure the common sense rationality.

 

Energy is relatively cheap. Energy is required to be portrayed as expensive because people need to prove that a market-based-as-possible system doesn't work, in order to justify their renationalisation dogmas.

 

I think what will happen is that we will get a huge moral panic, then the politicians will mandate whatever flippity-flappity-flop idea from Think Tank 642 has their attention that week, and we will have to live with a less worse, but half-baked, solution. See EPCs and rental regulation for examples of the process.

 

It needs differential Stamp Duty, and perhaps a small but niggling "nudge" discount on property taxes .. say 10% for very good houses, down to 2% for better than average. And somehow to bring visibilty to efficiency stuff in the rental market.

 

Off topic:

 

Ditto railways.

 

It is also like Zero Hour contracts being required to be evil for political purposes, despite the inconvenient fact that about 70% of people on them repeatedly poll as saying they like them.

 

@recoveringacademic

Quote

 delicate nod to validity and reliability in the Internet

 

Unfortunately not in the mainstream media. Beeboid website stirring up about the Emma Watson "seethrough blouse on Vanity Fair Cover" this week, first in their Trending section and then with wee Emma rabbiting on about heaven knows what. Except it just wasn't true, and you just had to see the VF website display of the cover for a nice fashionable blouse. BBC idiots. I can't claim that they made it up, because that would require the people to have sufficient competence to make it up.

 

I am going to get some comments for that last one, aren't I?

 

Ferdinand

Edited March 11, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Oz07]

Was thinking of buying a new fridge myself last weekend. As you say though it might save me a tenner a year but will be worth half what I paid in a year. Decided to stick with the oldun!

[SteamyTea]

4 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

I am going to get some comments for that last one, aren't I?

I shall let you know after she has popped out for a cuppa at mine

Edited March 11, 2017 by SteamyTea

[AliG]

Time and again if you do the calculations, because energy isn't that expensive, buying energy efficient devices doesn't make financial sense. A few years ago I was comparing a plasma and an LED tv for the kitchen. This was when there was still maybe a £1-200 premium for a LED. Plasmas use quite a lot more electricity than an LED, but it wouldn't cover the additional cost of the TV in 20 years which is less than the lifespan of the TV. You often get the same answer whether you are looking at fridges, cars, PIR insulation, heat pump tumble dryers, etc.

 

Where efficiency really pays for itself is in high utilisation industrial and commercial devices. Airlines will switch a 767 for a 787, a 10-15% seat/mile fuel saving is massive on an aircraft which is used 16 hours a day for the next 25 years.

 

Often for consumer devices there needs to be another advantage, e.g. thinner TVs, or the volumes have to reach the point where the price falls to a reasonable level. This is also why this is one area where government regulation is often helpful. If changes are mandated, volumes increase to bring the price down, without this the price may never get reasonable.

 

The initial study we were looking at was 50/50 owners and renters, somewhat more skewed to renters than the housing market. Renters were very concerned about being cold. I suspect that in the world of renting there are still a lot of houses that haven't been upgraded, why care if you don't suffer the discomfort or the high bills, just the extra cost of the improvements. These still have problems of cold and damp and thus this remains a big issue for renters. Hence the regulation for a minimum EPC for rentals may well be a good thing.

[Ferdinand]

Quote

Time and again if you do the calculations, because energy isn't that expensive, buying energy efficient devices doesn't make financial sense.

 

Ye-es. Sort of.

 

But it has to be marginal changes that can be achieved rather than revolutions. Various climate-change wotsits and energy intervention gewgaws have destroyed our aluminium industry. 3 billion turnover nearly gone at a time when our vehicle industry has expanded significantly. There may be some disagreement on this one, and the industry was something of a "Linwood", but green measures were an important cause.

 

Political interventions are *crude*, and *big* *huge* interventions are trumpeted as beneficial, while really that is a jump from one position of overegged ignorance to another, so that politicians can placate their base and demonstrate the huge swinging size of their political penises. Perhaps political party members need to stop being impressed by penis size, for one thing.

 

Higher energy prices will never be accepted for themselves. When Ken Clarke put VAT on fuel to get money in the early 1990s after Norman Lamont who made the original proposal was defeneestrated from his bathroom window for singing while the pound burned, it only lasted until 1997 until Gordon Brown reduced the rate. Lab 1997 Manifesto:

 

Quote

The tragedy is that those hardest hit are least able to pay. That is why we strongly opposed the imposition of VAT on fuel: it was Labour that stopped the government from increasing VAT on fuel to 17. 5 per cent.

 

That will always happen. Ramp up prices too much; poor people can't afford it; political pressure will turn the clock back or introduce a measure to mitigate which puts costs on the other side and undermines the aim. So increasing prices alone is too crude. People who are 'victims' are enough so that no such measure will work.

 

(One counterfactual is that that "90bn subsidy to business every year. Oooer Missus!"  report from the Political Economists at Sheffield University two years (?) ago alleged that the low rate of VAT was a subsidy for business.)

 

The same thing happens with huge subsidies. When we had 44p/kWh solar subsidies we ended up with solar subsidy-farmers just as we did with food subsidy-farmers under the C.A.P.

 

Then when the subsidy was reduced because solar power was cheaper, the Greens and some mainstream politicians (eg Lisa Nandy) went to market squealing about "attacks on environmental measures", when in reality it meant a reduced amount of subsidy per unit meant that more green measures could be subsidised with the same money. Problems there: the originators didn't think it though, and Greens are a fringe enough party that they don't understand the power / efficiency of markets to deliver benefit. See also the Arlene Foster fandango - a new dance involving holding a cover over your backside while singing La La La Boom Di-Eh.

 

It has to be set up to deliver a wide benefit via relatively small change imo.

 

Quote

The initial study we were looking at was 50/50 owners and renters, somewhat more skewed to renters than the housing market. Renters were very concerned about being cold. I suspect that in the world of renting there are still a lot of houses that haven't been upgraded, why care if you don't suffer the discomfort or the high bills, just the extra cost of the improvements. These still have problems of cold and damp and thus this remains a big issue for renters. Hence the regulation for a minimum EPC for rentals may well be a good thing.

 

I agree with a lot of that. It is the old thing about people buying or renting property on bathrooms and kitchens, not energy bills, and the latter therefore not being visible in the market. A lot are not upgraded, but it will make a real long-term difference.

 

Minimum EPC is a good move. I am not sure about C by 2030 though ... that may force poor properties to pool in the Owner Occupied sector as many may not be upgraded economically. There is also an issue with EPCs being redefined every few years .. criminal offences based on movable goalposts is questionable.

 

Next we need minimum EPCs for Owner Occupied properties too.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited March 11, 2017 by Ferdinand

[ProDave]

A very good example of people not caring in the slightest about running costs of a house is our Solar PV system.  Most of you know we have been trying to sell our house. We have solar PV on the original (now >50p per KWH ) rate. the income from that just about pays for all our electricity used (even though it is only a small solar PV system) making the running cost of this house for the next 20 years very low. Not one of the people who have looked at the house have showed the slightest bit of interest in the solar PV and how it makes the running cost of the house so low. Not one.

[Steptoe]

Its all very good talking about houses with low running costs,

But people want to see a return in their money, as someone mentioned, why buy a new fridge to save 10£ a year, when it will be with half its cost in that year,

So why spend £100k more for an energy efficient house that won't save £100k over the next 20years,?

People want ri save money in their energy bills, but telling someone X house is £500 a year cheaper to run than Y house isn't going to make one bit of difference if Y house has a 10k kitchen in it, that's 20years worth of energy savings to the average person.

 

Edited March 12, 2017 by Steptoe

[Ferdinand]

7 hours ago, Steptoe said:

Its all very good talking about houses with low running costs,

But people want to see a return in their money, as someone mentioned, why buy a new fridge to save 10£ a year, when it will be with half its cost in that year,

So why spend £100k more for an energy efficient house that won't save £100k over the next 20years,?

People want ri save money in their energy bills, but telling someone X house is £500 a year cheaper to run than Y house isn't going to make one bit of difference if Y house has a 10k kitchen in it, that's 20years worth of energy savings to the average person.

 

 

The answer to that has to be because as a country we have decided it is the desirable thing to do, and we want low energy usage in our economy but people to live in pleasant, warm, desirable houses, and so we adjust the balance of desirables.

 

And that we cannot guarantee cheap energy for the next 100 years continuously.

 

You could apply the same argument to the last 4 lots of Building Regs improvements and we would still all be thinking about whether it was worth putting in 50mm of rockwool in our lofts.

 

In the comparison you cite I hope that X House would be significantly more valuable than Y house. I would like to see some extra Stamp Duty and Council Tax on Y House, and perhaps a small surcharge on any mortgage.

 

I don't believe in big governmet, but would not have a problem with this. Most people do not have a problem with Building Regs and Safety Calculations.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited March 12, 2017 by Ferdinand

[ProDave]

7 hours ago, Steptoe said:

Its all very good talking about houses with low running costs,

But people want to see a return in their money, as someone mentioned, why buy a new fridge to save 10£ a year, when it will be with half its cost in that year,

So why spend £100k more for an energy efficient house that won't save £100k over the next 20years,?

People want ri save money in their energy bills, but telling someone X house is £500 a year cheaper to run than Y house isn't going to make one bit of difference if Y house has a 10k kitchen in it, that's 20years worth of energy savings to the average person.

 

The point is, my solar PV system I find adds no value to the house at all, so they are getting a money saving feature for nothing, and still they are not interested.