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EPC Targets - government tipped to give landlords an extra year

It’s being reported in the mainstream press that the government may give landlords an extra year to make rental homes more energy efficient.

This would shift the deadline for rental property EPCs to be a minimum of band C from 2025 to 2026 for new lets. The planned deadline for existing lets to be upgraded will stay at 2028.

In both cases, it’s still proposed that landlords who fail to meet the deadline will be fined up to £30,000.

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Lettings agency Hamptons says half of the rental properties in England are likely to require upgrading. But up to now landlords have not been told what assistance, if any, will be available for their improvements; indeed, even the extension of the year appears to have been leaked to the Daily Telegraph but not so far announced officially.

 

David Whittaker, chief executive of specialist buy to let landlord Keystone Property Finance says: “Landlords don’t need more time to make their homes more energy efficient; they need more financial help from the government.

“The cost of upgrading even a home from an EPC band D to a C can cost anything north of £6,000 – a substantial amount of money for most people at the current time. For those landlords who worked hard to get their properties to an EPC of E back in 2018 the costs can be several times greater.

“People often wrongly assume that landlords are swimming in cash, but the reality is that most are normal people, on modest incomes who have a few properties to bulk up their pension. 

“Therefore, giving them an extra year to upgrade the EPC rating of their properties will be of little use when the government remains strangely silent on the replacement to the Green Homes Grant, which was withdrawn this March with only a vague promise of something new in April 2022.”

The government’s formal consultation on EPC upgrades - which included the original 2025 deadline and a recommended £10,000 cap on upgrade costs - closed back in January this year.

Want to comment on this story? If so...if any post is considered to victimise, harass, degrade or intimidate an individual or group of individuals on any basis, then the post may be deleted and the individual immediately banned from posting in future.

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    What LLs need most is clarity! Until the bill is published it is just guesswork and until we are told what we have to achieve and by when, most LLs are not going to start taking any action.

    We are also told that the EPC assessment is due to be revised in 2022 to recognise the 'greenness' of electricity - so as well as as undefined target it appears the target is about to move!

    Who in their right mind is going to spend thousands on a property in this situation?

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    Agreed, no point doing anything yet until we know more, if there is a £10k cap most E rated properties will need more than this spent so will be exempt

     
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    Andrew - they will only be exempt if you spent the £10k !

     
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    You might be right Sandra I don't know, however I got an exemption on an F property and didn't spent the £3k cap, as it was then, on that one. Well if I spend £10k and increase the rent by £200 per month I'll have my money in 50 months, I expect that's what most landlords will be doing

     
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    Even if LL were prepared to upgrade their properties and knew what the requirements were to achieve an EPC C, there are not enough tradespeople to manage the work in the time scale. There are an estimated 4.4 million houses in the PRS of which some 60% will need upgrading. That is in excess of 2.5 million. I calculate that in order to achieve the requirements in time by the end 2026 10,000 properties would need to be improved a week starting 1/1/2022! Some of the changes will be minor but some will require retro fitting when tenants are not in the property and given the LL may only get 1 month's notice trying to tie the work with the void wont be easy. So dream on Government - I'm on an exit strategy

  • George Dawes

    For something that the uk contributes virtually zero to

    The whole thing is yet another scam .. just like You know what …

    ‘Wonder if they’ll delete this post ?’

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    Sandra

    There's ALREADY a huge shortage of good tradesmen, probably exacerbated by the punitive levels of stamp duty making extending cheaper than moving. This has also affected the balance in the housing market by reducing the number of starter homes ( now extended instead of sold to new first time buyers) and so increasing house prices in real terms.

    Let's just summarise the effect of Government interference on housing over the last 30 years:

    1. Tony Blair vastly increased the number of students, reducing the number of apprentices and thus tradesmen.
    2. Tradesmen flood in from the EU to plug the gap.
    3. Gordon Brown hikes up the stamp duty thus increasing the cost of moving house.
    4. More EU tradesmen flood in to meet the increasing demand for house extensions, now cheaper than moving house.
    5. Huge negative feeling to EU immigrants "stealing" UK jobs leads to David Cameron calling the June 2016 EU referendum.
    6. Boris pushes through Brexit.
    7.EU tradesmen go home, leaving a huge shortage in the building trades.
    8. In Scotland in December 2017 the SNP ban fixed term tenancies, removing the right of landlords to regain possession of their own properties other than for a very limited range of circumstances.
    9. Less prs properties available for rent in Scotland and market forces cause rents to increase by 30% virtually overnight.
    10. The Scottish Greens are now pushing for rent controls!
    11. What next? Who's going to do anything that needs done to meet anything further that the Government throws at us?

    One thing we DO know. The above list of failures won't deter them from continuing to interfere!

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    Rents in Scotland did not rise because of new rules, their are loads of get out clauses to get a property back, as their will be in the UK rents have risen because their is no rent control not for a lack of one, most landlords will charge as much as the market can bare without voids, maybe they keep some rents at the initial rented price but on a renter change over up the rents go. The rents in the rest of the UK have risen and we dont have new rules as in scotland on long term rentals, standards for rentals is very low as it is. I dont know many landlords that upgrade a property once its rented & when they leave most might do a lick of paint thats about it. I dont believe their are many that rent properties below market rates and upgrade as they go along.

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    David

    The major change in the Scottish rental market between December 2016 and my next property becoming available in May 2018 was the SNP prs legislation. I was advised that I could get 30% more rent than before and got it. Every subsequent property also got 30% more.

    The opportunities to recover a rental property in Scotland are now very limited and difficult. There are NOT loads of get out clauses!

    Rent controls will be as successful as Energy price caps, Bank interest rates for unauthorised overdrafts , banning sex discrimination and new customer incentives in insurance premiums etc.

    EVERY one of the above resulted in price hikes for everyone with initiative and common sense,

     
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    Dave Edmunds
    Who are you ?

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    David, regulation’s are a huge factor this last 10 years particular in driving up rent each cost placed on LL then add Council licensing Application fee for no in put, gone up from £560. to £1100. from start of Scheme for mandatory, but also thought of another charge/ £30 extra per habitable room on top, some Boroughs charge a straight £1400 if that didn’t get you they also introduced Additional & Selective licensing for good measure.This is tip of iceberg you have do all the work requirements on top many thousands more. So any LL that was required to get a license had plenty of upgrading to do Tenants in-situ or not at all own cost, not going to be possible to do EPC work inside like this when occupied whole walls to be insulated removing Kitchen units and bathroom fittings where you have 225mm solid brick walls & when not owning whole Building. Anyone not happy with renting buy your own the lender is not going to tolerate nonsense, enjoy your jam sandwiches next 25 years and when to crash comes which in inevitable you’ll love paying for a property that’s not worth what you paid for it.

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    The concepts stated by the "powers that be" originally was that this measure to improve the EPC rating of properties that are tenanted to a "C" in order that they are brought up to the same standard as the properties that are privately owned, which is absolute garbage. As with many other Landlords, I can categorically state that none of the properties in the vicinity of my properties have a better EPC rating than mine (D's and E's) indeed most will have a worse rating. Once again it is Government and their "advisors" who are totally misleading - indeed lying - to everyone on this matter. Just look on Rightmove and not the general EPC ratings stated.

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