EPC

[leedsbob]

We are in the process of selling our house through an agent and the agent has said an EPC is compulsory and it will cost us =A379 plus Vat,comments and suggestions please,many thanks

[Robin]

ISTM you have 4 options: (i) pay it, (ii) find someone cheaper, (iii) find an agent who will ignore the law[1] or (iv) qualify as an energy assessor so you can DIY - which I assume is what you have in mind to be On Topic :)

[1] HIPs are suspended but not EPCs - see eg

[Martin Bonner]

It is compulsory (it is all that is left of the Home Information Packs).

Check the internet for the cheapest you can get them for.

They are worthless.

[Invisible Man]

30 second google

Yes it is compulsory

can apparently be compared here if you want to see if it is cheaper to save your agent's markup:

[John Williamson]

£250, even in the cheap areas.

The course to become an assessor costs a couple of thousand, I've been told.

[tim....]

And most of them will have "wasted" money on the HIP training so will have lots of debt to recover

tim

[tim....]

> Costs can apparently be compared here if you want to see if it is cheaper

I'm surprised that agent's think that they can get away with a 100% mark-up. Surely 80 quid looks so overpriced that most people are going to investigate getting their own.

tim

[airsmoothed]

Given that moving house tends to be time consuming, expensive and stressful I suspect many people regard 80 quid as a drop in the ocean, compared with estate agent fees of a couple of grand or whatever.

[Invisible Man]

bit like all the indemnities etc solicitors want to sell you when they are doing the conveyancing.

[John]

We let out a mid-terraced house through a management agency. At the last change of tenant we were told the same as you, £79 + vat. I told them that I would find someone else to do it as I thought that that was a bit of a rip-off, and they said that they only knew of one person doing it and this guy charged them (the agency), IIRC, about £65 + vat. Sure enough, I found someone cheaper

and now the agency uses him as well :-)

[Huge]

The inverted commas aren't required.

[John Rumm]

Pay it, forget about it, move on.

[Huge]

The second point being what everyone involved will do.

[John Rumm]

Indeed - as others have said, a pointless bit of paper.

[tim....]

I find then a rather good way of finding out the square footage of a property when the EA has been too lazy to supply this information on their details

tim

[The Medway Handyman]

Could you elaborate on why they are worthless please |Martin?

[Lobster]

Because no buyer or renter in the history of the universe has ever given a monkey's about them, or made a buying decision based on their contents...

David

[MuddyMike]

I also consider them worthless, unless you are a provider. Please tell me how one is of value in our circumstances. We let what was a granny annex to holidaymakers, the heat and electric is included in the rent. The new legislation says we must have an EPC. Why?

Mike

[Huge]

Because nobody looks at them or cares about them - we've been trying to sell our house for the last 9 months, and nobody has even mentioned the EPC. And speaking to the guy who did it, the methodology is crap, anyway. Because we live in a large detached house, it's impossible to get better than about an "E" - the rating is in absolute terms, not relative ones - despite having about 18" of loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and modern double glazing throughout (all done for the selfish reason that oil is expensive, not because of some airy-fairy "green" nonsense) and CFLs where they make sense (about 50% of the lights in the house), we still only got an "E". The only way to improve it would be to demolish the house and build a smaller one, or rather a terrace of smaller ones. It's bollocks.

Oh, and it ignores external power use, so all those 500W floodlights blazing away are completely ignored. As would be, for example, a heated swimming pool, providing it was outside. If it's indoors, it gets counted.