Landlords face £21 billion bill to meet new EPC standards

Whilst I think the number is questionable, Ministers should be in no doubt about who will pay.

It won’t be the landlords. At least, not in full. It must be the people that benefit from the (ahem) improvements. And that is, of course, the tenants.

Let’s hope Housing Benefit is increased to cover the higher rents.

It may already be too late to gain possession via Section 21 but there will be fewer rental properties by the end if the Loonies’ 5 years at the helm of the good ship HMS Asylum..

How long have we got left?

My best earner, a 4 bed semi, is going on the sales market now as the current great tenants are buying their own house, and I wish them well. It's an EPC D rated property despite cavity wall and loft insulation - apparently it's the footprint size of the house along with the warped EPC rating system. Anyhow, I cannot risk placing new tenants in who will perhaps never leave, may decide not to pay their rent and generally smash the place up. I wouldn't be able to prperly choose the tenant under Labour's folly, and i know it's not law yet but im jumping before i'm pushed. Another 9 properties left, waiting for natural vacancies to occur and do the same. Going to use the money to maybe flip some renovations or just enjoy my path into retirement. My children don't want this hassle passed on to them.
I'm convinced that the idiots making PRS policy haven't a clue what consequences to tenants at the bottom of the pile will be.

Reply to the comment left by Chris Mills at 01/10/2024 - 07:24
I think that it is a mixture of ignorance, incompetence, hypocrisy, and the triumph of sound-bites over effective policy.

Mark Drakeford in Wales understood when he was making things worse on rent controls and backed off.

The consequences to tenants of moving all properties to minimum will be lack of choice in the rental market and higher rents. Tenants will not benefit in any way.

Just remember the government does not care about your assets or your ability to mortgage or insurance them. They will gladly encourage you to ruin your properties with unnecessary chemicals.

Some of the suggested /required so called improvements on EPC certificate are just Daft.
And will never pay for them self .
The reason Labour are doing this is to create a market. they cannot force Homeowners to spend a fortune on EPC targets But Landlords are easy targets.
With regards to us all having an electric car and Boiler in six years well what do you think.

Reply to the comment left by Northernpleb at 01/10/2024 - 10:47
What I think is that they can't afford to do it and the only way that they could make them affordable for anybody else is to make them tax deductible.

They haven't got the money and despite their bleatings about stuff they inherited from the conservatives they were in opposition arguing for more spend during the last government and are at least as culpable for the present deficit.

Bottom line is that haven't got the money and if they try to impose this nonsense on landlords then tenants will suffer.

What no-one in power seems to appreciate is that if we sell up our BTL properties they are indeed very likely to appeal to FTB's - which, we are told, is what the Government want ... but in order to free up a property to sell it to a FTB we will need to make another family homeless, as our renters don't want to, or can't afford to, buy.
Can someone cleverer than me enlighten me as to where the gain in terms of reducing homelessness is in that scenario?

'You will own nothing and you (we) will be happy'

Whether tenant or landlord, we arw all going to be relyng on extra jumpers, just yesterday yet another coal fired generating station permanenty closed, good you might say but Bill Gates, strongly pushing the UN 'Climate Crisis' propaganda is building his own, wind turbine, no, actually his own nuclear power sration saying 'it's important to get the right balance between renewables (expensive, inefficient, reliant on subsidies, land use hungry) and nuclear, if their lips ar moving they are lying to you

Reply to the comment left by Denise G at 01/10/2024 - 11:09
If they wanted to make ex. BTL properties affordable to first-time-buyers then they could re-introduce Mortgage Interest Relief at Source or some other equivalent, i.e. by making mortgage interest on your principle-private residence deductible from your earnings up to a certain limit. That could help people buy their ex. council house, as Angela Rayner did, although in reality council house people are already getting 30-50% discount paid by the tax payer so that policy would have to be eliminated. It does seem unjust to restrict that to first-time buyers as older people might have lost their first-time properties, either because of life changes such as divorce or economic policies inflicted by governments that were not their fault.

But as you correctly say, that won't make any difference to tenants because it's a net-loss of property from the rental market if the tenants were living at home before they bought, or neutral if the tenants were living in rented accommodation, or something in between. It doesn't benefit tenants.

It doesn't make any difference to emissions because typical first-time buyers struggle to raise the deposit and they don't have the money for retrofits. They have to opt for gas boilers along with everybody else as it's the cheapest option; unless of course they can still buy coal, or they have a source of logs or reclaimed wood that they can burn in their solid-fuel burner whilst they turn the boiler off.

Demolishing old properties and building new ones has a significant impact on the environment and isn't investment in new build. Tax policy favours new build because VAT isn't chargeable on new build but it is on renovations and retrofits. That's an environmentally-damaging policy that as far as I can see Angela-Ed have not picked up on yet.

But as far as renters go, stopping renters from being able to rent band D, E, or F just restricts supply and drives rents up. It doesn't benefit tenants and for all the reasons above makes no significant difference to climate emissions.

Reply to the comment left by Northernpleb at 01/10/2024 - 10:47
I don't think you'll ever find the truth behind Labours policies, but if an aconimidt wants to stimulate the market place, they don't destroy the PRS in the process. Johnson implemented Net Zero without an assessment, and Labour are implementing typical 70s Labour policies without any consideration whatsoever for their effects. Is it their hatred of landlords that is greater than their contempt for those who would normally be their traditional voters. Either way, this and the last government have proved their inability to do the job we ask of them.