Updating post from Reddit.
This was discussed a little already; early info on the next generation of the insulation grants.
Related Topics:
Few things that add context:
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only 1 property can claim this much, others only get 7.5k
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property MUST reach a C, average cost is around 30k according to the article
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landlord must be able to prove the tenant is eligible
This isn't anywhere near as generous as people are suggesting, which isn't inherently a bad thing. For 1 property its looking at about 15k out of pocket, and for 2 it shoots up to 48k.
That's a LOT of capital, that many landlords simply so tbhave sat around. Assuming 2 houses, taking average rent, needing average improvements, BOTH being eligible... that's 2 years of revenue required.
For context, does anyone think that Amazon has 1.2 trillion (yes trillion) sat around to get up to new legislation specs? Or a 1.2t line of credit to access?
Or that Tesco has 125b?
That's the scale we're talking. Double revenue for improvements, pver a relatively short space of time, is a LOT.
You’re spot on. Landlords will sell and whilst many will celebrate that and the ‘crash’ it will cause, it’ll have no impact on prices for buyers and will reduce stock for renters - pushing rents up.
The question society as a whole needs to answer is if we’re willing to spend 10s of thousands to save £300 per year on our bills.
The push for net zero is going to come at a huge cost and politicians aren’t being honest about it.
They can try all they like to push that cost to specific demographics but the market will always find a way of spreading the pain out.
It'll be interesting to see if the UK goes the way of the USA. Huge amounts of landlords have to offload there properties and then private equity moves in, snatches them all up in a land grab....black rock have been doing it for years
Agree, and I don’t understand how we’re not looking round the world at various schemes and seeing that none work. To be honest, we only have to look at Scotland.
A jealousy around someone with a little bit more than you making a profit has turned politicians into making these crazy decisions that negatively affect tenants - but look good on the surface.
Then corporations make loads of money and everyone wonders what happened.
That's exactly it. These PE companies can afford to buy up whole tower blocks or whole streets, once in they can control the rent of an area, increases every year with no competition.
It's actively happening in Europe and America and it will happen here. Lloyd's have been in on it for a few years
It Will also mean one less renter (somewhere because there is now one more house available to buy) so its net neutral to the rental market.
The stats show that it doesn’t work like this.
Firstly, rental properties are generally better utilised than owned homes, so you’re not making the absolute difference net neutral.
You also don’t proportionally alter the maths either.
Say for example there are 1m rented properties and demand for 1.2m - both made up. You have 120% demand.
If you reduce the stock by 250k and assume the above point is net neutral, you also reduce demand by 250k - leaving 750k properties for 950k people. You now have 127% demand … and rents go up.
Add the first factor and you have even more of a disproportionate effect, and rents go up higher.
Housing policy is counterintuitive - but that doesn’t win votes so renters have got years of higher rents to look forward to.
So what’s the solution ?
Fundamentally we need to be asking what the problem actually is.
Because if it's energy efficiency, why ate there exceptions, and why does it only apply to rentals?
landlords and people that control their own businesses it is recommended for 1-2 YEARS of emergency funds
1-2 years of costs is not the same as 1-2 years of revenue.
Suddently gumtree lettings ads went from no DSS to DSS only!!
LOL
I'm beyond caring at this point. Just like every other mindless net zero policy the government has capitulated on, these will be pushed back into irrelevancy or the requirements will be diluted so as to make EPC targets more realistic. The only other alternative is an actual housing crisis and not this watered down version we have right now.
Once they start giving landlords a sliver of autonomy and stop attempting to bribe us with schemes like this, I may actually start taking them serious. They can't even meet their own targets and have made social housing exempt, it's a joke.
Also where is all this money coming from? Do they realize how much of the country needs upgraded to a C? The median wage isn't even £36k so I assume quite a few LLs are going to qualify, this is just going to screw over the taxpayer for what amounts to one massive scam.
You're right of course. As a landlord of a London property, my tenants earn 100k+, they work in construction and healthcare, and not at a senior level. It's an EPC C so I'm unaffected (for the moment) but all these schemes + regulation are just laughable whilst continually missing building targets. I don't see a scenario where rents don't go through the roof.
Complete waste of taxpayers cash. Allow the market to value these properties at a lower value so landlords can purchase them and do the work at their own cost.
Waste of tax payers cash to:
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keep rental stock relatively stable (as we already have a shortage)
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help provide jobs
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improve the general quality of housing stock
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reduce energy demand, something we struggle with anyway
Terrible choice!
Edit: /s is more needed than I thought.
Jobs, reduced demand on energy, better housing and keeping rentals available is something people actually believe is bad....
None of that changes if landlords have to fund it themselves.
Except it won’t happen like the spreadsheet suggests.
Human nature will take over and the losers will be tenants like what’s already happened to them with every other anti landlord change that has been made.
Sorry, I meant this sarcastically, I'll edit it in now.
No idea how anyone can think that the solution to not enough rental accomodation is less rentals....
Yeah why are we paying for this exactly? If it’s not up to standard they pay for it as a business expense or offload it to the private market who can live there regardless of EPC.
Why would we pay 15k for business owners to retrofit their place to rent yet a home owner with the same EPC gets nothing lol? Does the EPC matter or not?
It also doesn’t help low income tenants. It’ll be a minimum of 1 year probably for the grant and then they’ll be evicted.
Yeh, I worked and paid taxes all my adult life and can't get any kind of energy grant for my home, yet business owners who refuse to invest in their business get grants out of our tax money.
How so?
The EPC requirements will come in at the same time s21 is scrapped
And it being not legally rentable will come under s8 lol. You can’t rent something that can’t be legally rented.
Ground 6 redevelopment. Not to mention many changes needed for EPC do not leave the place habitable during the works. They can’t punish you for eviction and also punish you for it not being legal to rent. If the rules change you can end the tenancy to do the works. Or more likely just ditch it into the private market.
How does any of what you said apply to not being able to s21 a low income tenant t after 1 year because you've had your grant?
Because landlords will continue renting out shitty E rated properties because tenants have no choice.
I thought landlords were all about servicing the public by bring condemned buildings back into use. Offering better accommodation than council and all that.. I would have thought benevolent landlords will love this new benchmark to rip through.
That's what is already happening...
We have energy criss where we are dependant on imported energy.
Sorry your landlord rights to rent out draughty properties get trumped by national campaign to reduce energy dependence on adversarial regimes.
In one way or another the taxpayer will be better off as the government needs to subsidie less energy than before.
That’s all great. Let the values of such property reflect its condition. Then landlord will renovate the properties with their own money.
No need to do that. I will get £15000 from tax payers instead. I can charge more rent also.
Lol, you juat don't want to be forced to improve. And you're feigning sympathy to tax paper.
If you don't want taxpayers' money, don't claim it.
I as a tenant hate the shitty draughty properties I'm forced to rent out. Because there is no legislation requiring improvements.
The taxpayer benefits too when the property is sold off or there is inheritance tax, the value of the propsrrty is higher so.taxpayer gets more. Thanks but you needn't worry about the taxpayer. Taxpayer is just investing in their assets for cashing out later.
Why don’t you rent a property without draughts? I am in a EPC D Victorian house. It has a wide open chimney but it’s not draughty.
As a EPC C I am sure the rent would be £500 pcm higher. Can you afford that? Probably not.
Look whose stressing about their future viability. Not me.
Been through all the threats landlords have made
That they were gonna sell upmdur tominterst rate - never happened, there are a finite number of first time.buyers to dump properties onto.
They were gonna a sell up before s21 reform - never happened. No buyers
That they're gonna increase the rent with higher cost - the rents are always as high as the market can bear. You can keep.increasig. people can only.pay what they can afford.
Market rents are set by what others are charging, and there are those that have EPC C that are charging the same as your EPC E. Ho1 you gonna get £500 more by juat meeting the minimum standard.
Tenants can afford to pay the higher rents. Thats why rents go up. Minimum wage is increasing.
Ok buddy, I guess you can keep increasing so why complain. Do the place up and charge £10,000 a momth.
I am not complaining you are.
What’s the betting the costs to get to C suddenly reduce to exactly £15,000. Like boiler grants the price of the new boiler suddenly becomes the price of the great so the companies load up on the “free” money.
I'm pretty sure the price would increase to the limit if it were below, not the other way round.
If I were a landlord, paying £5k for £20k in order to keep my revenue stream is as much of a no-brainer as paying £0 for £15k of work. The energy efficiency improvements are only going to add value to the house property.
I'd be surprised if this doesn't just end up making smaller/gradual energy efficiency improvements more expensive for people doing up their own homes. Like you said, builders/installers are absolutely going to cash in on this
I'm pretty sure the price would increase to the limit if it were below, not the other way round.
If I were a landlord, paying £5k for £20k in order to keep my revenue stream is as much of a no-brainer as paying £0 for £15k of work. The energy efficiency improvements are only going to add value to the house property.
I'd be surprised if this doesn't just end up making smaller/gradual energy efficiency improvements more expensive for people doing up their own homes. Like you said, builders/installers are absolutely going to cash in on this
Accors8ng to the article, the average rental would need to spend about £30k to get up to a C rating.
Why do you think the price of these home improvements would be halved?
Depending on the improvements needed, there is a bit of a catch-22. You will need a low-income tenant, but you may likely need the property vacant to make significant improvements, too.
How can you prove you have a low income tenant to get the grant when the property needs to be empty for most improvement works? Or are they saying once the work is done you then have to advertise DSS only etc? Who would do that?
Is it dual income £36,000 or only one of the occupants?
It will be household most likely
The whole household income.
1.5 FTE @ minimum wage!
About the median income.
For 1 person
Yes, 36k is about 1.5x minimum wage, which I'd about the median.
But the 36k grant refers to household income.
Well, it's a start.
So just to confirm… people who own their houses will have to carry out this work themselves? But landlords letting to lower incomes will get it covered.
As a landlord (who’s already ensured my portfolio is C or better) this seems quite unfair to the general public
Don’t try to use logic with government policies…
No. That is not confirmed. Care to show the evidence for your claim that people who own their houses will have to carry out this work? If indeed this were the case then there would be a revolution
Whoa. Cool the attitude.
I meant if they needed the work done, to get their house efficient they would need to pay for that themselves. But low income families in a rental property would get it paid for them.
It seems quite unfair.
Oh yeah for sure, I get you, but people aren’t being forced into it. That’s the point.
Owner occupiers are included in the scheme with the same means testing
Ah well that’s fair enough
Another thing to consider is that a fair % of rental homes cannot reach level C.
Time to rent out properties to mates on the cheap or their own kids 😂😭
Based on £36,000 annual income, the maximum rent someone can afford is £1,200 monthly. So anyone new who pass the affordability test in referencing rent above £1200 will not be eligible
You already posted this: https://www.reddit.com/r/uklandlords/comments/1fv3961/landlords_will_be_handed_grants_of_up_to_15000_to/
Question - purchasing a house on my own (EPC D) with an annual salary just under £36,000. Does that mean I can apply for a grant to upgrade it to a C rating or is only on the basis the property will be rented?
It has to be occupied. So an owner occupier would benefit or a landlord.
Perfect so as I’ll be living there as my primary residence I can apply?
Definitely, you'll likely need to supply proof of ownership/occupancy and income like a bank statement. The property will also need to be suitable and have an EPC of D or below.
They’d be better off just buying properties from landlords & adding them to the social housing stock
As long as it isn't paid in cash and is a reimbursement for costs incurred. That'll be fine. Don't want landlords pocketing money and not providing the services.
Don't worry, landlords won't be given the money at all.