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chriserenity

dolce_vita wrote: »

Yes.

"It's another example of the increased surveillance we are under in this country. Another opportunity for the government to gain infornation about us and our houses. Information which will shortly be used as a way of raisng extra revenue by linking energy efficiency with council tax"

You say it like its a bad thing!

I look forward to my tax being calculated on the basis of my carbon emissions and the same with council tax - if they link in the EPC with council tax that would be fantastic IMO. Bring on the revolution! Better than paying flatrate and a far cry from poll tax! I hope my borough council is one of the areas chosen to trial the pay as you throw too - I'd save loads of money!

Who wants to shoot me then?

chriserenity

WestonDave wrote: »

DG - that's actually the point - its not. Official local authority searches are done by council employees who often have a track record in the area, know how the files are kept etc. A lot of the HIP searches are done by independant agents who walk into the council offices and do the "search" themselves. Councils have to let them have the files but they don't have to help them. Result - I know of one case where an agricultural worker restriction was omitted (basically the property could only be occupied by a farm worker which rendered it worthless to 95% of the population!). Fortunately the solicitor concerned knew the area and suspected there might be a restriction and challenged it. If you were lending the bulk of the property price, you'd want some comeback against whoever did the search that you rely on, and the only way they can do that is get their own solicitor (they generally appoint your solicitor to act for them in the same transaction to register the mortgage etc) to do a search. If it falls over they can claim against the solicitor, they couldn't against the vendor, not the search agent as they didn't have a contractual relationship with them. To be fair the Council of Mortgage Lenders always said they would not accept HIP searches, which with the removal of the Home Condition Report (which CML rejected on the same basis - surveys at the moment are joint instructions so again the lender is protected) rendered the HIPS useless, but the government insisted on proceeding. Word around here amongst the agents is that no-one has ever asked to look at the HIP on any property they have marketed!

Good example - shows you need a good search source. I think you're wrong however that the only way the search can be reliable is for it to be 'official' . There are some great reliable experienced personal search providers e.g. PALI that carry generous insurance and are regulated by the PCCB. So you can claim against the search agent!

Have your local agents been introducing vendors to the value of the information contained in the HIPs or just waiting in case they are asked. If its the latter I'm not surprised no-one asked to see them given the complete absence of effort by CLG and most HIP providers to educate the public. I supply a pro-HIP estate agent who always shows the HIP to potential buyers as an aid to selling it, particularly the EPC. Every time the buyer said it was worth looking at. Give it a chance - the EPC certainly!!

mvhill

hi i was thinking of doing a DEA course. i have seen them for about 2500.00 (4 day course). Are they worth doing and do you think there is work available and enough to sustain a decent yearly salary? thanks for any advice.

chriserenity

mvhill wrote: »

hi i was thinking of doing a DEA course. i have seen them for about 2500.00 (4 day course). Are they worth doing and do you think there is work available and enough to sustain a decent yearly salary? thanks for any advice.

Right, I'll tell you the same as I tell the 3/4 people a week who call me asking the same thing.

If you do a DEA course you will be joining the back of a queue of now over ten thousand people training or trained to do the same thing. That is ten thousand compared to the number of full time DEAs actually needed for full rental and sales market roll-out. That being around between one and two thousand. At the moment there are about 6k accredited assessors massively oversupplying a partial market (soon to be full rental as you can see from this thread) with no rental market opportunities until October 2008.

This oversupply of DEAs coupled with the fact that current new entrants are being barred from joining the 'panels' that supply the work due to oversubscription means you will only survive as a business if you offer the full HIP direct to homeowners, solicitors, estate agents et al.

So in a nutshell, if you have the business acumen to stay on top of a volatile and uncertain market, compete with people already established in the industry, understand the regulations and insure yourself appropriately, etc etc ... Oh, and you have to be able to convince estate agents and other to use your service over a big national provider and that comes down to more than price!

The above is just for the residential and sales market. You need to retrain and pay out more money to progress in the industry:

Home Inspector licenced to do HCRs: 12k approx (HCR voluntary HIP doc)
Commercial EPC training: Variable and currently being set
Newbuild EPC training: Variable and currently being set
Public building EPC training: Variable and currently being set

Oh, and if the Tories get in they will scrap the HIP and you'll need to get a job with gritish bas or similar and there won't be many of them!

If the above is appealing go for it but you've been warned! And no there isn't enough work to sustain a yearly salary even at minimum wage levels for the average assessor even at the moment and it'll be worse when you come through.

I am a DEA and am not telling you all this to put you off as I don't want the competition - ring any other DEA and they'll tell you the same thing.

I can give you more extensive online resources to investigate the DEA route - pm me if you want this.

chriserenity

Richard_Webster wrote: »

EPCs can only give very broad indications and I understand that sometimes the categories that the inspectors have to use can produce silly results.

We had one done for a family property recently (and from his description of himself I suspect chriserenity did it!) and for main heating it says "Boiler and Radiators, Oil. Energy Efficiency: Average." My wife told the inspector (and we have made no secret of the fact to potential buyers), that the system does not work at all and therefore should be: "Very Poor" . However, it seems that the rules have to treat the system as if it does work!

This is a criticism not of the inspector but of the system and the way the government have set it up.

Hi Richard,

I don't know what silly/broad results you are referring to - would you care to elaborate? Certainly the software isn't perfect. For example, there is no facility to take into account the growing market for domestic scale wind turbines or the specialist market of small scale hydro projects.

Why do you think the assessor that did your property was me?! How did he describe himself? I'm baffled!

The judgement of the different house aspects e.g. 'average' heating system does not relate to the state of the system. It relates to how it would perform if fixed/working in terms of energy efficiency. To an extent the EPC is inflexible but it HAS to be so that homeowners can compare any EPC in England and Wales with any other. Standardisation is essential!

To reiterate, the EPC is not a report on the condition of a home or its fittings, its a report on thermal performance and carbon impact. It isn't meant to do anything else.

If you want a report on the condition of a home get an aptly named but optional Home Condition Report included in the HIP!

Richard_Webster

The judgement of the different house aspects e.g. 'average' heating system does not relate to the state of the system. It relates to how it would perform if fixed/working in terms of energy efficiency.

I understand that - but I am a conveyancing solicitor and I can see how these distinctions come in. The problem is that the house buying and selling public still has lots of misapprehensions about the way things work and simple explanations such as you have given still do not get read and understood.

I think it is entirely likely that somebody might want to sue an energy inspector because he said that energy performance of heating system was "average" when it didn't work at all. There are lots of threads on this forum where people complain about something and contributors have to patiently point out that things aren't as simple as the original poster thought!

There have been long threads, for instance about why some proposed development didn't show up on the local search. It wouldn't and all sensible conveyancers will go to great pains to explain that kind of point to avoid an obvious source of possible complaint. You are stuck with a government required format for an EPC which will not make things 200% clear. So somebody, somewhere, is bound to misunderstand!

(It was you - don't you remember? You e-mailed me the report at 22.47 on 28/9/07. My wife tells me that you spent some time looking at the instructions for the oil fired boiler that was second hand when installed in the property in the 1970s.)

chriserenity

Yes, sorry Richard it was me stooped over the manual! Small world - I have to remind myself sometimes the posts on forums are made by real people in the real world.

Regarding your point about misconstruing the EPC information, I take your point about looking at the EPC from the vendor's perspective and can see how it can happen. I think I'll do a press release about it and post it here too.

For people reading this post I'd like to point out that if you do have any questions about the EPC you can just call the assessor or inspector that produced the report and ask them about it. All EPCs have the full contact details of the assessor on page 2.

chriserenity

For those people looking to compile their own HIP, the HIP announcement yesterday also included a change to the leasehold requirements.

In essence, the only leasehold document now required is the lease itself. The rest of the lease docs are optional. This should make it easier for you if you're only looking to meet the minimum legal requirements.

silvercar

So if I have 2 boilers in my house (each serving different parts), one super modern condensing combi and one 15 years old, how does an inspector do an overall rating? and do I get brownie points for being able to heat part of the house only?

Am I, as the seller, obliged to tell the inspector that there are 2 boilers, or could I leave the door to the good boiler open and say "I'll leave you to it" so the inspector will assume there is only one boiler, or am I legally obliged to tell him that there are 2 boilers?

chriserenity

silvercar wrote: »

So if I have 2 boilers in my house (each serving different parts), one super modern condensing combi and one 15 years old, how does an inspector do an overall rating? and do I get brownie points for being able to heat part of the house only?

Am I, as the seller, obliged to tell the inspector that there are 2 boilers, or could I leave the door to the good boiler open and say "I'll leave you to it" so the inspector will assume there is only one boiler, or am I legally obliged to tell him that there are 2 boilers?

The inspector will record the number of habitable rooms (a habitable room is a living room/dining room/kitchen-diner/bedroom/study or similar) and the number of habitable rooms that are heated in one form or another so the calculation will take into account unheated areas when working out your score.

As a seller it would not be wise to try and mislead the inspector as they will find the 2nd boiler. The inspector will ask you about the property as an aid to inspection but will make up their own mind when inspecting! We check everywhere (loft, celler, around the outside and in every room including cupboards and integral garages).

When faced with 2 boilers we would work out which is the primary system by looking at it from the point of view of the following criteria:

which system supplies the most rooms
which heats the domestic hot water
which supplies useful heat to the property at the lowest cost
which supplies heat to the living room

We would also enter a secondary heating system which depending on what else is present at the property might be your secondary boiler.

Hope this helps.