Future epc’s

[Pocster]

I was thinking about this . Forcing LL’s to meet a specific epc but not the rest of the house owning population always seemed unfair .

Labour ‘pledge’ now is rented epc’s to a as yet unspecified rating by 2030. Also no gas boilers by 2030 .

Unachievable ?  Yep

 

What about when a property is sold it has to be a C minimum . If it’s not the seller is given a loan to make it a C . The cost of that loan is repaid to the government via the solicitor doing the sale . Sounds fairer .

Of course that could cripple the housing market potentially and there would have to be some exemptions .

[ProDave]

Until recently, house buyers largely ignored EPC's and bought a house because it looked nice. Then complained it was draughty, cold and cost a fortune to heat.

 

Landlords are the low hanging fruit, easy to say you can't let a property unless it is an EPC C, a lot harder to say you can't buy or sell one below EPC C.

 

In recent years a lot of poor EPC properties will have been sold by landlords as they don't want or can't afford to upgrade them.

 

What is really needed is a mechanism to make poor EPC houses genuinely be worth less than good ones.  Quite how you achieve that without being "unfair" is difficult.

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> What is really needed is a mechanism to make poor EPC houses genuinely be worth less than good ones.

 

I suppose an easy way is to point out, say in the EPC docs or on the .gov epc site, how much it'll cost to run vs. a well insulated house. Capitalise that annual amount to a lump sum today i.e. extra annual expense / discount rate. So, if the discount rate is, say, 5% then extra annual expense x 20.

 

e.g. 'This dwelling is estimated to cost an extra £2K a year in heating bills to run over an identical house rated as EPC B. That will be £40K total lifetime cost and therefore it should be £40K cheaper than if it was insulated to EPC B standard.

[JohnMo]

It's a business renting out property, so why shouldn't you give people a minimum standard of accommodation and utility bills that are affordable? If your picking up the utility bills that may be different - but pretty sure you would make changes quite swiftly to limit your outgoings. The renter, can't do it themselves, it's not their property they are not in the same position as the rest of the population.

1 hour ago, Pocster said:

but not the rest of the house owning population always seemed unfair

Unfair for your bank balance, but if you don't like it, sell up! You have a choice the renter doesn't.

 

16 minutes ago, ProDave said:

What is really needed is a mechanism to make poor EPC houses genuinely be worth less than good ones

In Scotland they charge extra taxes for buying a second home administration is done by the buyers solicitor. To sell you have to have a current EPC, so tax the seller in the same way if they don't produce an EPC at C or better admin done by the sellers solicitor, charge 10% of the house sale value. That may get them to sort things out. I would allow planning on a property either unless the whole property was C or above after work was completed. Except on listed property which are different ball game and need a little extra thought.

[saveasteading]

36 minutes ago, ProDave said:

mechanism to make poor EPC houses genuinely be worth less 

Education of the masses. 

An indication of the extra running cost compared to a standard (B?). Sue any corrupt or incompetent epc assessors.

[LSB]

one of my family is looking at buying a house with a budget of circa 850, she doesn't want new as the gardens are too small.

So, not one of the properties that she's looked have an EPC rating and it isn't something she particularly cares about.

Of course listed houses don't have to have an EPC, so that also limits the control.

 

I live in a rural area with lots of old cottages, most inhabited for decades by the same people, now retired.  I doubt any of these meet EPC C+ rating and increasing them will be extremely expensive and impractical in many cases as they are single skin with small rooms.

 

I think it's admirable to want all properties improved, but I think this needs to start with properties being built, renovated, extended when the homeowner is already spending money, but expecting people who have a low income or are retired or just don't have enough money to do this is unlikely to happen.

 

[JohnMo]

7 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

Sue

Or maybe send to jail, and possibly the same for the home owner where it can be demonstrated, they knowingly went that route - jumping from E to C and little or no work done to improve things on the property.

[JohnMo]

12 minutes ago, LSB said:

Of course listed houses don't have to have an EPC, so that also limits the control

Not true in Scotland, all property requires an EPC listed or not. You cannot list the property it until complete. It's part of the sellers pack. Maybe that should be rolled out across the UK (another thing cancelled by the Tories)

 

12 minutes ago, LSB said:

but expecting people who have a low income or are retired or just don't have enough money to do this is unlikely to happen

There are lots of grants for those people available now! My wife's sister had external insulation and PV on her roof via the council, government are throwing £7500 at people to install heat pumps. They are also paying for upgraded gas/oil boilers. People just need say YES come and do my house. Sitting on hands doesn't get you anywhere.

[garrymartin]

EPC is severely flawed and can be "gamed" very easily. See the below for just one example from https://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/UserFiles/File/research papers/EPCs/2020.04.17-EPCs as efficiency targets-v9.pdf

 

[Pocster]

35 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

It's a business renting out property, so why shouldn't you give people a minimum standard of accommodation and utility bills that are affordable? If your picking up the utility bills that may be different - but pretty sure you would make changes quite swiftly to limit your outgoings. The renter, can't do it themselves, it's not their property they are not in the same position as the rest of the population.

I pay the bills . So whether it’s an A or D makes no difference to the rent .

 

36 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Unfair for your bank balance, but if you don't like it, sell up! You have a choice the renter doesn't.

That’s exactly the problem . That is what’s happening which causes more shortages of rental properties.

 

As @ProDave points out - targeting the low hanging fruit . Then what ? For the rest of the house owning population?

 

 

[JohnMo]

2 minutes ago, garrymartin said:

EPC is severely flawed

Are they not using the 2020 EPC yet which account for the changes in electricity CO2.

[Pocster]

42 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

It's a business renting out property

No it’s not ! . It’s treated and taxed as an investment. Treated completely differently….

It *should* be a business like any other - but as lockdown proved it isn’t …

[saveasteading]

1 minute ago, garrymartin said:

EPC is severely flawed and can be "gamed" very easily. See the below for just one example

Yes it can, but not significantly. My business rented the programme for a year and we played with it a lot. It had lots of flaws, which i hope have been sorted. And nonsense such as assuming that heat pumps were used for cooling regardless of the setup, and a bad thing altogether.

 

But you need something so it needs to be this.

 

[garrymartin]

5 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Are they not using the 2020 EPC yet which account for the changes in electricity CO2.

No idea.

 

To be honest though, I thought it was recognised that EPC was flawed. At least before the changes this week, the government was consulting on a new Home Energy Model...

 

[Pocster]

I think my point of my original post was ignoring LL’s now - we will pretend they all cough up and their properties are ‘C’ ( or meet whatever minimum is required ) . It’s the rest of the homeowners that need to be ‘forced’ to upgrade 

[Alan Ambrose]

My hairdresser remarked recently that in Japan (she’s Japanese), with the exception of some historic buildings, they plan for 50 years lifetime for dwellings and then expect to re-build.

 

The epc calc should be open-sourced (code and calculations) and put up as a free web app. Trying to meet government targets that are both mysterious and flawed is complete and utter nonsense. Imagine if the tax laws worked like this.

[SteamyTea]

1 hour ago, Alan Ambrose said:

Imagine if the tax laws worked like this.

They do for deputy PMs.

 

I keep saying, for every law we have that states you must do something, we have another law that makes it illegal.

[saveasteading]

4 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

They do for deputy PMs.

You're being ironic i hope. ? It was a fabricated fuss which was sexist and elitist.

No politics zone.