Garbage in, garbage out!
Rental properties and new EPC rules
- Thread starter Doug71
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Our rental property was an E without much scope to get it to C unless we invested in expensive upgrades, so we put it up for sale. My thinking was that the housing market will be flooded with these inefficient old properties in a couple of years and their value will start dropping sooner rather than later.
Unfortunately for us, it was advertised for sale just before the infamous Mini Budget so we're currently stuck with an empty house and no tenant until it sells...
Unfortunately for us, it was advertised for sale just before the infamous Mini Budget so we're currently stuck with an empty house and no tenant until it sells...
Our mid terrace victorian rental property just fell short of C, by one point, on the last inspection. Since then we have fitted LED bulbs so we are probably going to make it next time. We are in the process of buying a similar property or one of our other other girls so I will make sure it can meet C before we exchange contrats as the daughter will only live there while she finishes university.
When we were selling our house earlier this year, we were one point off a B. I spoke with our agent and with the people who did the EPC and asked them what we needed to do to get a B rating. They went away and came back with a B rating after about an hour. For a reason that nobody could explain to me, by not including the 3.5KW of solar panels in the calculation, we went to the higher category - I'm not sure I follow what appears to be flawed logic in the EPC software.
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
For those who choose to imagine that there is no problem: Reports like below have been cropping up regularly for several years. Getting worse, turning into a crisis for ever increasing numbers of people, even when they have two jobs to pay the rent.
https://www.theguardian.com/society...ordable-for-private-uk-tenants-research-shows
Blackswanwood
Still Learning
What this research fails to consider is whether those renting properties would be any better off if they owned a property instead of renting one. There are many homeowners facing similar increases in mortgage interest payments.
Phil Pascoe
Established Member
Your property EPC apparently gets downrated for having a heat pump. Odd.
The way it’s going, lenders will not be interested in providing mortgages for housing stock with low EPC ratings. This will devalue these houses which will become more affordable for the least well off. Sounds great? No! the least well off will become trapped in homes they cannot afford to improve the EPC of, they won’t be able to sell and loose out every which way, the houses will become worth only brown development land, a fraction of what they have paid. The most vulnerable in society will be hit once again by policies not thought through.
Middle England will take another savings bath for those with low EPC rated homes and the wealthy won’t care and be immune to it all.
EPC criteria evolves and has done so already since conception so everyone at some stage is going to be hit. It’s not just landlords it will be every home owner. We all need to hope we don’t live too long in retirement as we watch our castles loose value or it cost us a fortune to keep ahead of the EPC game. All done in the best virtue signalling ethos on our behalf!
Alternatively we can pump a load more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere and the UK will become a Mediterranean climate so we won’t need to heat our homes at all! We already have vineyards established in Staffordshire and West Yorkshire which when I was s boy would have been unfeasible!!
Middle England will take another savings bath for those with low EPC rated homes and the wealthy won’t care and be immune to it all.
EPC criteria evolves and has done so already since conception so everyone at some stage is going to be hit. It’s not just landlords it will be every home owner. We all need to hope we don’t live too long in retirement as we watch our castles loose value or it cost us a fortune to keep ahead of the EPC game. All done in the best virtue signalling ethos on our behalf!
Alternatively we can pump a load more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere and the UK will become a Mediterranean climate so we won’t need to heat our homes at all! We already have vineyards established in Staffordshire and West Yorkshire which when I was s boy would have been unfeasible!!
Its a bit out of my way, but I'll give you 50 quid for it
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
Yes definitely by a very large margin. Property owners have become wealthier by far. House prices and rents have increased much faster than incomes. Owners get wealthier, renters poorer as the chance of them owning gets ever more remote.
There will be many temporarily put out by higher mortgage repayments and even hitting negative equity, but in the longer term (since WW2) it has always been worth hanging on, however high the mortgage in the short term.
It's basic trickle-up theory at work and wealth distribution has shifted massively in favour of the better off.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/jan/07/richest-uk-households-worth-at-least-36m-eachHouse price to income ratio is historically highest since about 1900.
https://www.schroders.com/en-gb/uk/...us-about-house-price-affordability-in-the-uk/https://www.theguardian.com/society...-us-the-tenants-hit-by-huge-hikes-in-uk-rents
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Jacob
What goes around comes around.
I'd snap his hand off! Prices are going down fast though nobody knows quite where they will end up.Its a bit out of my way, but I'll give you 50 quid for it
Phil Pascoe
Established Member
Without mortgages how will they become affordable to the least well off?
Sorry, poor explanation. The properties are becoming less desirable and prices are falling. Lenders are still providing mortgages, but increasing less willing. We appear to be in across over, how long it lasts will determine how many get caught
Phil Pascoe
Established Member
Richest 1% of UK households are worth at least £3.6m each?
Yes, because they count the value of the house. For the purposes of taxation etc. it doesn't necessarily mean their occupants are wealthy. There are loads of £400,000 - £500,000 properties around here whose owners haven't a halfpenny to scratch their rrrs with.
Yes, because they count the value of the house. For the purposes of taxation etc. it doesn't necessarily mean their occupants are wealthy. There are loads of £400,000 - £500,000 properties around here whose owners haven't a halfpenny to scratch their rrrs with.
It's like those stupid 'California cancer labels'- you got hit with fines if you didn't have them, so now 'everything' has them, and now everybody totally ignores them... (my sliding glass door in Australia came with one of them...- oh noes, my doors gunna give me cancer!!!!)
Sheer bloody stupidity....
Phil Pascoe
Established Member
I had a Power Commander for my bike, it came with an option of a Californian race map ...................... which was apparently illegal to use in California.
niemeyjt
Established Member
Our rental is a C - and we had two suggestions to get the two points to move to a B. Firstly to get 1 of the two points:
So, we can spend £4k to save £27 pa - and still stay in band C.
Assuming no repairs it will only take about 150 years to pay itself off.
And we are supposed to take EPC seriously.
So, we can spend £4k to save £27 pa - and still stay in band C.
Assuming no repairs it will only take about 150 years to pay itself off.
And we are supposed to take EPC seriously.
niemeyjt
Established Member
You cannot repeal the laws of unintended consequences - playing bash the landlord just results in fewer rentals available and higher rents.
As for a rental being sold - when it does it is more likely to be a single family - replacing a rental for two or three singletons - certainly from my experiences - exacerbating the housing shortages. My daughter has had to move back home as a result - others pay extortionate rents.
As for a rental being sold - when it does it is more likely to be a single family - replacing a rental for two or three singletons - certainly from my experiences - exacerbating the housing shortages. My daughter has had to move back home as a result - others pay extortionate rents.
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
So more landlords would mean lower rents?
Doesn't seem to have happened over the last few years. Quite the opposite - a free market has driven rents and property prices as high as they can go.
You cannot repeal the laws of market forces - fewer potential landlords as buyers means lower property prices. In general this can only be good news for all who merely require homes to live in.
Holdstrong
New member
As others have said rubbish in, rubbish out. The program (I am sure) is sound, its the simplified assumptions.
The primary purpose of the EPC was for the government to get a survey of the country’s housing stock (probably an EU inititive) without bearing the cost themselves.
Whilst the aims are (probably) good intentioned I could not have put it any better than Deema
“Done by the incompetent for the illiterate and pushed by those who know less than nothing “
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