With the majority of the housing stock built without energy efficiency in mind, many EPCs are expected to highlight a number of enhancements needed if the property is to reach the standard assessment procedure (SAP) target of between 80-85 per cent.
With the average SAP rating in the UK being 40.3 per cent, Stephen Foden, chairman of Spring Move, believed buyers would try and get a reduction on the asking price to cover the cost of improvements.
He said: “While we are in favour of EPCs, we believe that in many cases these will create ‘environmentally undesirable properties’, which will make it harder for owners to sell or to achieve their asking price.”
Foden indicated a typical three-bedroom semi-detached property could require around £700-worth of improvements to bring it up to the target SAP.
With 1.2 million property transactions every year, if sellers were forced to add on enhancement costs, this could see around £764 million removed from the property market.
However, Mark Sismey-Durrant, chief executive of Heritable Bank, believed the current state of the market would prevent any impact on pricing.
“The major driver of house prices is supply and demand, so the power of the buyer to knock down the asking price is very limited. The seller has all the power – if one buyer isn’t prepared to offer the asking price, there is usually another that will. It will be a good thing to show up the problems but I’ll be very surprised if the EPC has an effect on prices.”
