The Energy performance certificates or EPC, only required on 4 bedroom homes and larger from 1st August 2007.
You should be aware however, that how you define your home is in direct relation to your requirement to provide a home sellers pack and or the Home Energy performance certificate. Click for Home energy certificate
As Ruth Kelly confirmed, there is no legal definition of what constitutes any size of home including 4 bedroom or larger properties.
Under planning law, it is about whether rooms are habitable, not whether they are bedrooms or not.
Therefore HIPs regulations can be avoided on any size of home by using Rooms.. instead of bedrooms.
The EPC prices should you ever need one, would cost around £45 to £60, some greedy domestic energy assessors want to charge over £100 some as much as £200. See this post on EPC open to abuse.
There is a very valid point in the comments about being charged twice, its worth looking at.
It should be noted, that the EPC rating of your home is incorrect before you even look at it. Take a moment to read below then ask yourself. Why not check the energy bills..
The EPC quotes this; “Not all of us use our homes in the same way so to allow one home to be directly compared to another, energy ratings are calculated using ‘standard occupancy’ assumptions.
Standard occupancy assumes that the house is heated for 9hours a day during weekdays and 16 hours a day at weekends, with the living room heated to 21oC and the rest of the house at 18oC.”
EPC
For a larger version of this EPC below, see Energy performance certificates
This is the compulsory part of your home information pack from August 1st 2007 , and as you can see it is just ridiculous, this report is suggesting you spend over £4000 on double glazing to save a further £30 per year.
If you want to avoid this, put your home on the market and advertise as a large home with no bedrooms, before 1st August 2007 or make a private sale, thus avoiding HIPs and Estate agents fees.
Chris
home-information -pack, domestic energy assessors, homeowner information packs, sellers pack, domestic energy assessor, Home information packs, hips,
Hello
The biggest flaw with the Home energy report is as follows;
For eg you pay your £80 and you get your report which hi lites, that you have not enough insulation in your loft and your home energy rating is downgraded.
You then add extra loft insulation plus say cavity wall insulation.
You then have to pay again to get the report changed, so in effect the whole thing is con to get more money from you.
So your final bill for the certificate is now £80 times 2
David
Tskk!!
What a con. Wow thats like paying for an MOT on a car – it failing , then you having to fix it (i.e insulation in your drafty cold old house) and then having to get an MOT again. Tskk!! Bloody liberty!
Sorry mate, have you dropped something? There, its there !- your copy of the Daily Mail.
Mmmn. you’ve put a lot of effort into the anti hip anti EPC site. Do you understand why EPCs are coming i.e. properly understand climate change – not just think its a government con to tax us. The truth is its worse than the government are letting on – but telling us that would give be like admitting they’re not very good at their jobs.
If they only charge £80 they’ll get a PAYE equivalent salary of £15,000 – before Tax and NI. Not the £60,000 being quoted by the training companies who are minting it. Hence the sales guy in the Times Article saying “oh yea – criminal record is no problem”.
He didn’t add the bit – give us the cheque. He could have just as easily said “you don’t need to be able to do maths”. It may be just about possible – to become accredited depending on the crime and whether the conviction is spent. E.g you’ll probably be OK if your a murderer, but not fraudster
The cost of the EPC or energy performance certificate should be set by the consumer that’s you and i, and not by these DEA’s who think they can charge what they like.
If you are quoted more than £90 then, the word is “you must be joking, go away and sharpen your pencil…”
Do not be conned out of your hard earned cash, if you need assistance tell us here.
Chris
will you need a HIP if you sell on line??
Hi Pat
If you market your home after 1st of August 2007 then you will need a HIP depnding on your home size, however if you sell to family friends or work colleagues Private sale you do not.
Chris
Here is an example of the rips offs so called domestic energy assessors are attempting to charge.
We asked 30 for a quote and here are the averages..
Fees for an EPC are likely to start at £90 to £100 for small properties.
Such as flats and 1 bed houses, £110 to £120 for medium size properties such 2 or 3 bed properties and
£125+ for larger properties.
These fees are an estimate and may well vary depending on market conditions when EPC’s are implemented.
Home info comment- “Look lets set the record straight here, your are not qualified surveyors, so an EPC should cost no more than £80 regardless of property size. Lets not rip people of here.
Chris
Hi Cris
You do not say what your job is, or why you are so anti energy inspection reports.
We like to point out to the public that there are options and that the cost for this report regardless of home size should be no more than £90 if required at all.
I can not see your problem, and £ 90-00 does not sound a great deal of money, to travel to a persons home , do the inspection then enter the data and return the report to the cliant.
With any job you must look at the overheads and return a profit, to run a car , which you will need for the job and office stationary will run into hundreds.
It is not for the home selling public to keep you or anyone else in a job, the public do not want or like the idea of having anyone wandering around there home any more than they have to.
It must be you do ,what ever job you do, for the love of it, sorry but the rest of us have to keep a family.
As for the cribs ,I have never asked to see a surveyors criminal record check.
Get real Chris people spend far more than this down the pub on a saturday night and have nothing to show for it.
To spenD money down the pub is there free choice. These Energy performance reports are not free choice, and they do not want them.
I’ve got a epc for my property, utter waste of paper, just stating the obvious (more insulation and low energy bulbs are good) and guessing what they didn’t know, such as an estimate for yearly energy use, didn’t bother to ask me for a bills which would have shown the actual usage.
Went on to suggest ludicrous ways to save anergy such as PV cells to save an additional £13 per year (whats the payback time on that?) and what the carbon cost of manufacturing the cells. Also do the inspectors walk or cycle to there appointments? I don’t think so.
This is just another misguided EU policy which has been made worse by HM gov.
Now an EPC on a new house might actually have some value and shame the housebuilders into making a quality product rather than a low quality high price one.As for old houses the monet is best spent on insulation or draftproofing.
Hi Simon
Your from the horses mouth so to speak comment, is very interesting in that, it proves that EPC is full of assumptions and not facts.
QUOTE “3) Does anyone bother checking their gas or electric bill. Do they even understand it come to that? Do they say – wow I can see that £4,000 I spent on double glazing has saved me £56 this year. Damn – I wish I’d spent the money on solar hot water system instead – that would have saved me £71. Now I hate double glazing salesmen even more.” end Quote
Chris
I declare in advance – I’m a trainee DEA and would like to offer a ocnstructive run down on EPCs…
Purpose
1) It’s an attempt to put a value on what energy savings measures will make to a specific house.
2) It doesn’t require an expert in house construction, but someone who’s been taught what different types of heating systems and controls look like and can therefore be done visually not intrusively. This means instead of costing £300+ it’s more like £100+ and is more accurate than a house holder trying to guess.
3) It uses a “standard occupancy” to even the playing field between someone who’s stuck at home 24×7 and someone who lives the high life and is never in (i.e. bills are not a good indicator of energy efficiency of the house – but the previous occupants lifestyles).
4) It can do the hard maths quickly – and work out what things would be useful to install and what their saving would be.
Shortcomings
1) It’s not 100% accurate. But it doesn’t need to be, we’re not building a flight simulator or missile guidance system. It’s meant to let someone realise the difference between a house scoring 30 points or 70 points and how much they can improve it. Think about car C02 ratings – would you really choose a different model because it’s in band D not band C. You probably don’t want one in band F or G.
2) It’s doesn’t take into account payback before making recommendations. But that’s because these are choices not compulsory. What is the payback on a new light fitting for the lounge vs not buying one? What about a 46″ plasma vs a 32″. See not everything you buy has a payback!
3) It doesn’t need to be done by construction experts. (Oh sorry thats not a shortcoming – but the Daily mail / RICS would have you think otherwise)
4) I’m sure if I try hard enough I’ll think of some more… mmmn, Ok it costs £100+, but will probably save you more than in a year anyway. Remember that’s an invoice price of £100+ not what our salary is you have to take costs of running a business from that.
Benefits
1) Anybody knows insulation saves money. But if thats the case why haven’t they all done it? Because they don’t know how much it saves. Just that it does. If they know how much – they might get round to doing something.
2) Do people know TRVs or a thermostat saves money? What the payback is? Well now it can be worked out.
3) Does anyone bother checking their gas or electric bill. Do they even understand it come to that? Do they say – wow I can see that £4,000 I spent on double glazing has saved me £56 this year. Damn – I wish I’d spent the money on solar hot water system instead – that would have saved me £71. Now I hate double glazing salesmen even more.
4) Does anyone currently know how much C02 their house emits or are they more concerned about Landrovers? Given the average house emits over 5 tonnes of C02 and the average Landrover 3.5 tonnes – which do you think we should pay attention to most? (considering there are over 20 million houses in existence and less than 175,000 4×4s sold each year – including the smaller ones)
Nothing like censorship of a valid argument. I suppose its your website, but you’ll lose in the end. Once people realise the truth. People be warned this man is misguided and his name probably isn’t Chris. He removed all my well phrased constructively written arguments in favour of the EPC and the HIP. If his points stack up then why remove mine!? My guess is that this site is sponsored by the industry who don’t want to see HIPs happen. Not someone who’s trying to help consumers.Where’s the contact details eh?
Comment from Chris
Simon you were ranting not stating an argument….
Why do Sellers seemingly think nothing of paying over up to 2.5% of the value of their homes to nothing more than an incredibly expensive dating service called Estate Agency.
Estate Agents should stump up the fee for the HIP, my house was sold in 2 days after 6 phone calls and 3 viewings, that cost me £4,000…daylight robbery!…I’m sure £350 for a hip could have easily been absorbed by these so called professionals.
Anyone who fools themselves that they can pretend that a four bedroomed house is a multi room house is being naive and it is disingenuous to suggest this. It’s also probably incitement to law breaking, but that’s beside the point.
And of course the market will drive the cost of EPCs – and HIPs! It’s daft to suggest otherwise. People will shop around for a decent HIP and EPC provider – or at least, their estate agent or solicitor will. The only fixed cost is the lodgement with the databank, which is a couple of quid.
To the reader, when we get comments like this, we know the truth is starting to hurt…
Selling your 4 bedroom home as 3 bedroom plus upstairs lounge , study ect is not the same, as selling a 3 bedroom home, you cannot campare the prices.
The price on 3 bedroom plus upstairs study is the same as a 4 bedroom home. see this post Home sold with no bedrooms
From Roger
Do you honestly expect anyone to take any notice of an anonymous web site put up by an anonymous person? Given that you are actively encouraging people to market their homes as three bedrooms instead of four, thereby reducing its value, I think the least they should expect is that you identify yourself and state what qualifies you to advise property sellers. Come on Chris, what’s the big secret?
Chris those quotes you got for EPCs seem perfectly reasonable to me. taking into accout the overheads a Domestic Energy assessor has. Namely Training costs averging £2500-£3500, Licencing: use of software £200, and £6.50 per certificate issued. professional indeminty and public liablity insurance £400-£500, Equipment approx £500, fuel costs to travel to and from dwellings and the time taken to carry out the assessment and then fill in the software. £45 an assessment would not be possible.
Hi all
After looking on various forums there are several points to be made
DEA’s working for HIPs providers, get Energy performance certificate prices of £45 per report
Hundreds of individuals who are looking to top up there income are quite happy to charge £45 per epc
So the cost of the EPC should be £45 regardless of home size.
The market sets the price, that’s the home selling public you and I
So if you ever need an Energy report and you are being quoted £90 and over refuse to pay it.
Chris
its all good stuff and in my view important that we are all having these discussions. I am trying (!) to sell a solid 2 bedroom house for a resonable price (three quotes by estate agents – all similar) BUT there is the issue of stamp duty ie. you will not get more than £125,000 whatever we value it at. HIPs, well ‘we have to sub-contact to the provider (& then they sub-contract etc)’ More cost, more money paid to people who are not properly trained & threfore (in my view) do not really know what they are doing.They invade your privacy ie.your home, mess about and then panic if you ask a reasonable question like – do you really know much about what you are doing. None of these people are surveyors. Agree about estate agents, just quoted (taking into account EPC,HIP & estate agents fees etc.) approximately £3,500 to sell a property which according to them would not sell for more than £25,000. Sounds like a lot to me. Real problem – does not work for older properties (mine is I think very energy efficient, new boiler, insulation, double glazing etc). New ones – should not really need it although should be straightforward ?. Plus everyone is really just trying to make a fast buck. I do not diagree with these things in principle but they have to be done properly, for everyones sake ie.sellers and prospective buyers. If not – who would be ultimately responsible ?. I suspect in law the seller & so could therefore in theory be sued ?. No not ‘paranoid’ just an ex-town planner with a bit of knowledge about surveying & the law in this area. RICS should be monitoring all of this. Its a shambles as I think we would agree ?. If it continues the market will just stagnate further and everyone will go out of business. Not to mention the possible liigation which will follow. Some solicitors may like it though. Average cost of HIPs being quoted in this area (North Manchester – £400 plus VAT). Its all a load of nonesense because of the way they are doing it & is a desperate last ditch attempt to comply with E.U. directives which they have ignored for too long. There we go. This is NOT a sales pitch to try to sell my house. I will do that properly when I gather all necessary bits of paper together, which is not too difficult. But I did just want to contribute to the discussion.
Good luck everyone.
All this is just a con to get the VAT revenue up and the unemployment figures down. The government and the professions (especially lawyers and accountants) are not caring for the citizens, they are just a plundering occupying army raping the country. Jack Straw some years ago said he wanted to reduce the cost of lawyers but failed. Shakespeare had one of his characters say they should all be killed, and Dickens tried to indicate their corruption in his novels such as Bleak House.
It is not that the individuals are crooked, but professions as a whole are corrupt in the way they take money from people giving nothing or little in return.
As a result there is much less money in the economy to pay honest tradesmen for useful work. An accountant can take from a self employed tradesman a weeks wages for just 40 minutes work.
Lawyers and such people should be made to feel social pariahs and outcasts.
If the authorities were honroable about this they would have zero rated these compliance costs and set a fixed fee that could be charged (like planning fees). The fact that they haven’t shows them to be collectively corrupt not not benign in their intentions.
WHAT SHOULD THE COST OF AN ENERGY PERFORMANCE CERTIFICATE BE? I HAVE HAD MY HOUSE UP FOR SALE FOR OVER 12 MONTHS. MY ESTATE AGENT HAS SENT ME A BILL FOR £75.00 + VAT £13.13 = £88.13 PAYABLE BY 1ST OCT 2008 WHEN THE NEW LAW BECOMES OPERATIONAL.
IS THE CORRECT FEE
PLEASE ADVISE
Very detailed information. Keep it up.