EPC proposed upgrades cost limit?

Reply to the comment left by northern landlord at 01/04/2023 - 13:37
It's really all about risk management and each person's decisions will depend on their appetite for risk. There are certainly challenges just over the horizon and there is a danger that some will not jump in time. To some extent this has already happened to those who ignored S24 and remained highly leveraged despite all the warnings. I suspect that most will be somewhere between ostriches and frogs, keeping up to date with developments and reacting in the way and at the time that they judge to be right for them. That's my approach anyway.

Unfortunately some LLs are in PANIC mode. understandable because of the unknowns like a few
of these...
S21 going...Loss of asset control
Labour Government bringing in UNEARNED INCOME taxes (they have already said they wont touch CGT- Understandable as they do not want a rush on by LLs to sell and reduce stock. BUT they want to make a point to those that generate asset wealth will be hammered especially as they made a big issue of Sunaks Unearned income tax rate)
Selective Licensing and LLs becoming low hanging fruit for councils to pick on for penalty generating income for low level compliance issues. Remember if the councils inspect it costs them say £200 per visit then they need to generate this income in penalty plus more on top- I know I used to be in sales- Each customer call I made cost the company money so I had to generate income to cover costs and not walk away empty handed. HHRS for councils is the golden ticket for income opportunities as no 'inspected LL' gets away with clean sign off. Sorry for ranting on bit here on SL
My strategy is to sit tight and prepare to ride out the ONE term wonder of Labour (ie this lot will really mess it all up) so to mitigate all rents are going up significantly so high baseline rent will protect me to freeze/caps/EPC requirements.

The 10K is a limit to help landlords. If the cost to achieve EPC exceeds the limit then there may be grounds for an exception. Earlier proposals I think had a lower limit and if met would provide landlords a further period to meet the requirements.

We will have to wait and see the details. EPC C may be impossible for some properties, so will there be a complete exception for them like there is for listed buildings?

I would hold fire doing anything towards a C rating.... for now! Apart from insulation.

As a qualified EPC assessor of 15 years I recently spoke with my accreditation scheme who informed me that the Domestic EPC report score metric is looking very likely to be moving away form a score based on cost to one based on carbon footprint with a huge update predicted to come in to play next year. They're doing this to try and meet their carbon goals and to pat themselves on the back for their decarbonization of the national grid over recent years with wind and solar farms.

They recently updated the carbon data used to calculate commercial EPC report scores (commercial reports 'are' based on carbon emissions, while domestic reports are still currently based on cost) which resulted in properties that previously scored a G with electricity as their main source of space and water heating, leaping up to C with nothing changing other than the carbon data used in the software to calculate the score. This could well be happening before the C deadline with domestic reports, as the government are pushing people towards electricity and air source heat pumps. So any property on electric convectors or storage heaters could suddenly be scoring much higher - possibly higher than mains gas. But we won't know until the change happens....and this is the point: "don't do anything yet until the changes happen" , then look for advice from your local assessor.

This means that, apart from insulating (insulation will always improve your score), we won't be able to accurately predict for landlords what changes will have what effect on the score if they move the metric away from cost and onto carbon footprint.

This could also be good news for properties on LPG that have scored notoriously bad on the cost based EPC reports, as LPG is a relatively clean fuel compared to others. Oil on the other hand will most likely see its scores plummeting.

I thought that the gov't had already said that sale of the property would be an allowable reason for the new eviction process?

Reply to the comment left by NW EPCs at 01/04/2023 - 18:03
Thanks for that very welcome information, it sounds as though common sense might prevail after all.

Reply to the comment left by northern landlord at 01/04/2023 - 11:53
If S21 goes including on sale of property then we'll be back to back to the good old days of sitting tenants. Every landlords nightmare.
As per Harold Wilson's 1964 rent act that made people too concerned about this to rent out property which led to increased homelessness.
I can't believe this govn't have the nerve to call themselves conservatives.

Reply to the comment left by Martin Richardson at 01/04/2023 - 23:55Hi Martin
The white paper says “We will introduce a new mandatory ground for repeated serious [rental] arrears”. Notice the use of mandatory. If you can prove the rent arrears you will be able to evict no ifs, no buts and no second chances for the tenant. However, when it comes to selling up or moving in the white paper says “We will introduce a new ground for landlords who wish to sell their property and allow landlords and their close family members to move into a rental property” Note the word “mandatory” is missing from this one. It implies that selling up or moving in will have to be justified in some way in order for a tenant to be evicted and won’t be a Landlords fail safe, easy fall back option to get vacant possession when they want to leave the PRS. There could be all sorts of strings attached. We just don't know and it fuels uncertainty..

Reply to the comment left by NW EPCs at 01/04/2023 - 18:03
Good post. It will be essential as EPCs are now being used as a tool for carbon footprint rather than running costs.
They have to alter residential EPC algorhythm for carbon. I don't know why it's taking them so long to simply adjust a parameter for 45% of electricity now being generated from renewables