MSE News: Green Deal launches to help insulate homes

Ecodave

new_owner wrote: »

Im sorry but;

No one is going to buy a house if there is a monthly payment of £50 on top of your energy bill, especially if it going to be over the next few years.

The first thing anyone is going to say is that needs to payed off or discount the cost of the house down. I dont think this can be compared to service charges for leasehold.

You are not getting (as a buyer) anything extra to justify the cost.

The other issue is gas/elec will keep increasing; I dont see how you could vaguely justify the old bills.

A personel loan, savings or off set via credit card is the way to finance home improvements. It should have been called wonga green deal

Hi New-owner,

Your view regarding future house sales is certainly one that is held by the vast majority. But I think it generally pre-supposes that the asking price is high enough to reflect the measures installed. Eg your house is on the market for £1500000, you get green deal for 10k and immediately put the price up to £160000. I don't think this will, happen, but if it does, any prospective purchaser would have every right to bargain the price back down.

ricky9

What happens when you are a home owner and your electric is supplied via a sub meter eg you do not have a electric supplier but pay some one else.
When we bought the property we did not know until we tried to find out who supplied the property.
We have looked into getting our own supply but it will cost us £35,000 yes £35,000 to get it.

Ecodave

grahamc2003 wrote: »

No it wasn't directed at you.

Some other poster said he found my post insulting for some reason, and had a pretty poor attitude imv. His post appears to have been deleted (I didn't report it - I assume he must have requested the deletion himself). What is even stranger is that the quote of his post has also been deleted from my post. It does make the flow of posts a bit disjoint.

Regarding your insider view of the scheme is very informative. What I think it shows is quite a few people involved in getting any work done. That must work out relatively expensive, simply to pay the manhours for all the overhead. On a macro view, funding works which aren't really affordable on long term credit isn't really doing the client any favours imv. I just don't see the 'Golden Rule' often genuinely working, especially with a 7% interest rate, although I expect theoretical figures will adhere to the 'Golden Rule'. I'm very sceptical - not a criticism of you at all, but I have concerns of the efficacy of the system itself.

Hi Graham,

Thanks for the clarification. Your points regarding the scheme basically having too many fingers in the pie for it to be cost effective is fine if you can come up with a mechanism that works better. This must provide all the customer safeguards that are present in GD, in order to be a proper comparison. It should also be as inclusive as GD is. In other words, just like the GD. There are costs to providing these safeguards, and I would prefer a system with safeguards to a cheaper system without them.

I can't agree that funding works such as SWI is against a customers interest. How do you justify that?

The interest rate makes the Golden Rule harder, but any Plan that goes ahead can realistically expect to achieve the savings stated, subject to sensible caveats surrounding occupant behaviour.

victor2

Ecodave wrote: »

But I think it generally pre-supposes that the asking price is high enough to reflect the measures installed. Eg your house is on the market for £150000[STRIKE]0[/STRIKE], you get green deal for 10k and immediately put the price up to £160000. I don't think this will, happen, but if it does, any prospective purchaser would have every right to bargain the price back down.

Not just back down, but down to £140K because you are buying a £10K debt with the house.
Also, how would you go about changing utility suppliers if you had such a debt on your acquired account?

It does seem like you're on a one-man crusade Ecodave. You've invested in the training, but it's clearly going to be an uphill task to convince everyone else (me included!) to buy into it. Most people would treat you like a double glazing salesman IMO.

Ecodave

Hi Victor2,

If in the example, you were entitled to bargain back down to £140k, wouldn't you be getting all those improvements for free? That doesn't seem fair to the seller. Unless you think they are worthless I suppose.

The payments are attached to the electricity bill for ease of collection, and affect them in no other way. You remain free to change supplier, or move onto different rates with your current supplier, the same as any customer.

Most people will probably distrust me, you are right, and I take no offence to you pointing it out!:mad: . Ultimately they won't be ringing me up to book an assessment, so I doubt I will have to justify myself in the fashion that you expect. I don't intend to go knocking on doors, housing manual in hand, preaching insulation.

The ones who do trust me will get an impartial assessment of their property, and honest views regarding the pluses and minuses of the scheme. And I hope that some of them will go on to improve their living conditions. I will risk being referred to as a double glazing salesman.

Ecodave

ricky9 wrote: »

What happens when you are a home owner and your electric is supplied via a sub meter eg you do not have a electric supplier but pay some one else.
When we bought the property we did not know until we tried to find out who supplied the property.
We have looked into getting our own supply but it will cost us £35,000 yes £35,000 to get it.

Hi Ricky9,

Only the person named on the electricity bill can apply for a Green Deal loan. Sounds like a most unusual arrangement you have there. Can you go into more detail about this?

ricky9

The house was the old gatehouse part of an old BNFL site supplied under one meter for whole site..
Was split up and sold in 2009 The house to me and the office buildings to a private firm.
When i bought the property i contacted norweb who quoted me between £30,000 and £35,000 to get my own supply connected .

Ecodave

penrhyn wrote: »

If these loans are going to be repaid over a very long term then the interest rate should not be more than bank base rate at 8% they are having a larf.
I just don't know who this scheme is aimed at.
I guess someone who will never move, and has 20 -30 years of life left.
The assessor role sounds just like the bloke who comes round and does an energy assessment when you are putting your house on the market. Took all of half an hour when I had it done. ( Do they still do this?)

In order to be a Green Deal Advisor you also need to be an Energy Assessor, and an updated version of the Energy Performance Certificate is used to define appropriate improvement measures for a dwelling. I have heard of them being done in less than half an hour in the past, and of assessors completing 8 in a day! I am told that the upgraded assessment is more detailed, and hence a significant number of assessors have been deleted from the register. Perhaps the economics didn't add up if you couldn't do as many in a day and the fee you could charge had been reduced due to there being too many assessors.

CFCTROBERTS

While completing an assessment form for the green deal I was informed that Utilities Warehouse was not a valid supplier to qualify for the deal. Surely UW club must be trying to rectify this or risk losing customers. Is anyone aware of any progress or have any suggestions on ways round this? Thank you.

penrhyn

Some say that you may save more by switching away from UW, than you would on GD, only joking, or am I.
UW should be discussed in the dedicated thread.