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With Crediton Tenants Deposits Totalling £522,120, How Will ‘Lifetime Deposits’ Change the Crediton Rental Market?

The Government’s scheduled publication of their White Paper for the Renter’s Reform Bill, which incorporates proposals to forbid Section 21 evictions and introduce ‘Lifetime Deposits’, has been suspended until 2022.

The additional time is required to give a chance to create a level playing field to reforms for both landlords and tenants in the private rented sector in England.

In this article, I want to look at these lifetime deposits. How could the Lifetime Deposit Scheme work, and how could they benefit both Crediton landlords and Crediton tenants?

When a tenant moves between rented homes, they need the deposit for their new home before being released from their old home.

The average deposit for a Crediton rented home stands at £859.

This means finding that amount of money at the time of moving home can be difficult for many tenants; thus, they become stuck in their existing rental.

Therefore, Westminster wants to propose in this White Paper a new deposit choice for tenants. A deposit is transferred from the old landlord (letting agent) to the new landlord (letting agent), thus making life simpler as the tenant doesn’t need to save for an additional new deposit every time they move home.

Now, of course, it’s vital that any new ‘deposit scheme’ does not dissuade Crediton landlords from making valid claims for damage to properties. Landlords cannot be expected to give up their right of recourse to a security deposit until such time that they are satisfied there will be no need to claim it.  

So how would Lifetime Deposits work?

There would need to be some form of system safeguarding that the new Crediton landlord is protected by a whole deposit, even if the deposit on the old Crediton home comes into dispute.

This will be critical and central to Crediton landlords having conviction in the Lifetime Deposit Scheme. That could be something like an interest-free loan for the tenant on the crossover between the properties.

Another advantage to the scheme is that ‘lifetime deposits’ could be used for tenants to build a deposit for a house for the future.

What about the existing system of deposits?

The rules regarding the amount of deposit held by a Crediton landlord were changed a couple of years ago, where only five weeks’ worth of rent can be held as a deposit.

The deposits Crediton tenants have had to save for certainly raises the cost of renting a Crediton home.

Some say this extra burden puts another nail in the coffin of the dream of homeownership for many Crediton renters. To give you an idea of the level of deposits held for Crediton rental properties…

The total of all the tenants’ deposits in Crediton are £522,120.

Yet the other side of the argument contends that if the Crediton tenant misses more than one month’s worth of rent, the landlord is immediately out of pocket, even before they’ve got the costs of solicitors and any improvement works from the tenant trashing the place. 

Does a deposit of just over one month provide Crediton landlords with a decent level of protection against unpaid rent or damage to the property? When you consider…

The total value of all the privately rented properties in Crediton is £192,726,880.

Before I conclude my thoughts to the initial question of lifetime deposits, the need for decent landlord insurance to ensure you are adequately covered as a Crediton landlord is vital.

So, what are my thoughts on ‘Lifetime Deposits’?

It is my opinion the common need for Crediton tenants to stump up a ‘two-fold deposit’ is not helping many Crediton renters when it comes to moving home. It’s clear the standard cash down deposit is not fit for purpose for the 21st Century.

One might suggest the Government’s quest for the ‘lifetime deposit’ could open the door to other deposit alternatives that have come onto the market for tenants in the last few years.

Some landlords don’t require a deposit yet are compensated by asking the tenant to pay a higher rent to cover the risk. Also, there are companies that offer insurance backed deposits where the tenant pays one week’s rent to an insurance firm, and the insurance firm pays out if a loss is incurred by the landlord.

Interestingly, other countries are already offering deposit loans and guarantee schemes. Could this be something for the British Government to contemplate?

We must wait until at least the spring of 2022 for the Renter’s Reform White Paper to be published. Then every stakeholder involved (tenants, landlords and agents, et cetera) can look at it in the cold light of day and decide how this will affect the way they view the landlord/tenant/agent relationship.

Many will say the bigger issue isn’t ‘Lifetime Deposits’ in the White Paper, but the removal of no-fault Section 21 evictions. The removal of Section 21 is something the current Governmen4t have pledged to bring in during this parliamentary cycle (i.e. before Q4 2024). 

I am not concerned about removing no-fault Section 21 evictions, but what will replace it to ensure there is suitable redress for landlords if the tenant doesn’t pay the rent?

Of course, a handful of Crediton landlords will decide to sell their rental portfolio because of the White Paper. The same happened in 2016 when the increase in landlord taxes were announced. 

However, this will reduce the supply and availability of Crediton rental properties, meaning rents will rise (classic textbook supply and demand), thus, landlords return and yields will rise.

Yet, because tenants still can’t afford to save the deposit for a home and we are all living longer, the demand for rental properties across Crediton will continue to grow in the next twenty to thirty years. The reason being is we are still not building enough homes to accommodate our growing and ageing population. This means we will turn to more European ways where the norm is to rent rather than buy in their 20s and 30’s.

This means new buy-to-let landlords will be attracted into the market, buy properties for the rental market in Crediton and enjoy those higher yields and returns. Isn’t it interesting that things mostly always go full circle?

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Crediton Homeowners to Face Post-Lockdown Mortgage Rate Rise of £678 a Year

With grocery, energy and other household prices/costs rising and hitting everyone’s back pocket, inflation (rising prices) may feel like an unimportant issue when it comes to the cost of keeping a roof over your head.

Yet nothing could be further from the truth for many Crediton homeowners and Crediton landlords.

Because inflation over the long term is bad for the economy, the normal weapon of choice to reduce inflation is to increase interest rates. The Bank of England (BoE) is in charge of interest rates.

Should inflation continue to rise, there will come a point later in the year when the BoE will need to raise it’s Base Rate from its 300-year record low of 0.1%, and probably continue to do so with a series of further increases in 2022.

When interest rates go up, the cost of mortgages go up. When the cost of mortgages go up, that hits the affordability of what people can borrow to buy their homes (and landlords to finance their buy-to-let properties). In essence…

could it be the end of the Crediton house price boom?

The danger of a base rate rise by the BoE on the back of a rise in inflation over the last few months has alarmed banks and building societies into increasing the mortgage rates for both home buyers and landlords.

In the last week alone, lenders have increased the rates (i.e. prices) of their mortgages, some mortgages by more than one whole percentage point. That doesn’t sound a lot, until you punch the numbers into a calculator (more of that later).

Crediton property buyers (be they landlords or homebuyers) have relished months of cut-price cheap mortgages rates.

Mortgage lenders have played the big game in the last 12/16 months to capture the mortgage business of 1 million+ Brits that have moved home since the end of Lockdown-1 plus the many millions of re-mortgages, with the cheapest mortgage rates falling below 1%.

Yet, the money markets have already priced into their calculations that the BoE will increase the base to 0.25% by December, up from the existing 0.1%. They also anticipate a further two quarter point (i.e. 0.25%) rise in the spring of 2022, meaning they believe the base rate will be 0.75% by the end of summer 2022.

So why is this an issue for the homeowners of Crediton? Looking at the combined totals of the EX17 postcode districts…

2,710 Crediton property owners have mortgages totalling £282.84m (up from £252.07m in 2013).

Yet, 569 of those Crediton homeowners with mortgages are on variable rate mortgages, with their mortgage payments rising and falling based on how the BoE interest rate shifts. That will cause instant pain if mortgage providers pass on increased mortgage repayment costs. So how much will that be?

The average size of mortgage for a Crediton homeowner is £104,370.06.

If the base rate were to rise to 0.75%, the average Crediton homeowner (with a variable rate mortgage) would be £57 per month worse off (£678 per year).

The mortgage price war the banks and building societies have been fighting recently has resulted in falls in the month-on-month average mortgage rates available to borrowers. The economy is awash with cash looking for a home (mainly down to the Government’s and BoE’s intervention to keep the UK economy going during lockdown). For those with large deposits this has meant mortgages have been available at less than 1%.

However, with reports of a potential BoE interest rate rise happening soon, those Crediton homeowners who are on a variable rate mortgage are probably going to be the first who would feel the influence of any base rate increase.

If the BoE Base Rate rose to 3%, the average annual mortgage payment of those Crediton homeowners on variable rate mortgages would rise by £3,131 per year.

This could mean homeowners with variable rate mortgages would be spending half their salary on their mortgage should interest rates get up to these levels.

Now the BoE won’t increase rates by that amount over night, as that would spook the market. They will probably increase every few months by a quarter of one percent each time.

Thankfully, over the last 4 or 5 years, over 90% of new mortgages have been fixed rate, yet they are only fixed for a certain length of time. If you have less than one/two years left on your mortgage, you seriously need to take advice now from a qualified mortgage broker, as any penalty to change might now be considerably smaller compared to the mortgage rates you might be paying when your deal finishes in the next 12/24 months. Again, I am not giving you advice in this article – just making a suggestion.

A further message to the 1 in 5 (ish) of Crediton homeowners on a variable rate – please take some advice from a qualified mortgage advisor as well. Mortgage rates can’t get any lower and all the signs are showing they will be going up. The mortgage market is still extremely competitive, there is opportunity for borrowers to lock in ultra-low mortgage rates before any likely Base Rate increases filter through.

Will an interest rate hike crash the Crediton housing market like the early 1990s?

The early 1990s saw repossessions go through the roof as homeowners defaulted on their mortgage payments because of the increased mortgage rates. Also, in the run up to the Credit Crunch in 2008, Northern Rock were lending 125% of the value of the property (we all know what happened to them!). Other banks were recklessly lending 8 or 9 times a person’s income, without the person having to prove that income. Both scenarios were significant contributory factors in the housing market crash.

Thankfully in 2014, the BoE implemented the recommendations of its own Mortgage Market Review (MMR). The MMR forced banks and building societies to stress test mortgage borrowers against potential increases of the base rate of up to 3%. Thankfully, even the most hardened monetary doom-mongers aren’t contemplating base rates of those levels (although I won’t apologise for highlighting what it could cost earlier in the article).

Fundamentally, as we go into 2022, the housing market is built on decent foundations, unlike 2007 with the poor lending practices by the lenders. Yet the increase in base rates will have another influence.

The psychological factor of a perceived increase in mortgage costs, might be enough to cool the enthusiasm and excitement of many buyers to pay top dollar for their next Crediton home, and that might not be a bad thing. If I am being frank, we could do with something that takes a bit of fizz out of the Crediton housing market.

Many Crediton homeowners have been wary of placing their house on the market because they are scared they won’t be able to find another home. A slight increase in Base Rates will take the frothiness out the Crediton property market and return it to some form of normality. I would even go as far as to say house prices might ease back ever so slightly in the coming 12 to 18 months.

So dont be alarmed if house prices in Crediton do drift slightly over the coming years like they did in the mid 1990s.

It’s just the property market settling down and coming back into some form of equilibrium, which is good for everyone.

My final thoughts…

The mortgage lenders have already priced in the potential BoE rate rises, so even if rates do rise, let’s not panic. And even if they did rise to 3%, that would still leave them at levels that look exceedingly cheap at any other time in history. Many homeowners in their 50’s and 60’s can remember mortgage rates of 15% in 1992, so take advice from your family. (Interestingly, the 50-year BoE Base Rate average is 7.2%).

Buying your Crediton home is a long-term venture. It is a huge financial decision that can give you peace of mind and a superb place to live.

But it is not an investment. I am not saying you should avoid homeownership, however, if you are considering buying because you think you are making a clever investment choice, think again.

The idea that your Crediton family home can be an investment too comes from the fact that, historically Crediton property prices have risen. We all have stories of someone in the family, somewhere in the UK, who bought a house for £500 many years ago, for it to be worth 300% / 500% / 1000% more today!

If you read some of my past articles on the Crediton property market, I have proven many times over, there are much better ways to invest your money, e.g. buying buy-to-let properties or stocks and shares.

But if you want to bring your family up in a home that is yours, the bottom line is this. Even if interest rates rise to 3% (if not a little more), you will still be able to get on the property ladder with a small deposit (using the Government’s 5% deposit mortgages) and you will still find it’s cheaper to buy than rent.

If you would like to chat to me about anything in this article, do drop me a line. In the meantime, please do give me your thoughts on the matters raised in the article – I would love to know.

Thanks in advance.

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Has Buy-to-Let Changed the Crediton Property Market?

The ‘Buy-To-Let’ (BTL) mortgage is celebrating its Silver Anniversary (25 years) this autumn.

Isn’t it fascinating that a decision between a group of letting agents and bankers all that time ago to offer ‘Buy-To-Let’ mortgages has changed the face of the Crediton (and national) property market?

But has it been a good thing? Or has it ruined the dreams of many 20 somethings wanting to get on to the property ladder in the last couple of decades?

Let’s look deeper at the whole story, then I will let you, the reader, decide.

As soon as the BTL mortgage was launched, it was clear there was an enthusiasm and a need for this mortgage product. So much so the size of the Crediton private rented sector has grown exponentially.

According to my analysis…

there are 608 private rented homes in Crediton, worth £194,260,000.

So now we are in 2021, it seems farcical that banks and building societies once thought that properties rented out to private tenants would not create a steady income or increase in value, yet this thought was conventional back in the 1990s.

It’s no wonder BTL landlords have been given a hard time, with numbers like this.

Yet before we burn every landlord at the stake, let’s just look at the background story.

The Conservatives introduced the right of a council house tenant to buy their own council house in the early 1980s. Fantastic news for council tenants, yet when a council tenant bought their home, that meant that council housing was taken away from future generations to rent and therefore eroding the council housing stock available. Meaning from the mid 1990s /early 2000s, people who would normally be eligible to rent from the council, yet who couldn’t buy, had only one option … rent from a private landlord.

Meanwhile, in the early/mid 1990s we had 15% mortgage interest rates, unemployment rates of 9% and the 1989 housing crash fresh in people’s memories. Repossessions were rife, making home ownership not the most attractive prospect for 20 somethings.

Crediton house prices dropped by 28.8% between 1989 and 1993.

This meant as we entered the mid 1990s, the Crediton property market entered a period of stagnation. There were many Crediton homeowners that bought their home in the property boom of the late 1980s who were disinclined to sell their home for a loss. They were in negative equity (i.e. they owed more than what the house was worth) yet needed to move because of their growing families.

Renting their home out could have allowed them to buy another home for their growing family, but most banks and building societies were still mostly unreceptive to the notion of these homeowners becoming accidental landlords. Most mortgage terms and conditions usually included clauses that prohibited homeowners from renting out their homes.

So, with growing demand from potential tenants, supply reduced from the sale of council houses and many homeowners in negative equity, all bound up by the semi-deregulation of the private rented sector with the Housing Act 1988 – you can see that the BTL mortgage came along at the right time.

Early take up of BTL mortgages was slow in the first couple of years.

By the Millennium, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, there were just over 120,000 BTL mortgages, with a total value of £9.1 billion.

Yet as we entered the 2000s, they really took off, with every man and his dog jumping onto the BTL bandwagon. So much so that today in the UK, there are…

4.4m private rented homes, 2.1m of them with BTL mortgages totalling £234.1bn, which is 11.9% of the UK’s GDP!

That’s more than a 1,650% increase in the number of BTL mortgages to landlords and a 2,470% increase in the value of those BTL mortgages.

Since 2001, the number of privately rented households in the UK has grown from 8.3% to 19%.

On the face of it, you could say with the growth of these BTL landlords with their cheap BTL mortgages and often unkempt properties, it has pushed potential homebuyers into squalor. Yet, let’s look a little deeper.

Most Crediton landlords are very fair with their Crediton tenants providing them with clean, well presented and affordable housing. Of course, there are the rogue landlords but with TV shows such as ‘Landlords from Hell’, the British public are given a distorted and uneven view of private landlords as a whole.

Private sector landlords have played a critical role in providing homes to millions of Brits in this country, let me expand.

The UK population has grown by 405,000 people per year (for the last 20 years), yet only 22,750 council/social houses have been built per year in the same time frame.

If it wasn’t for the rented sector, who would have housed all the extra people in the country over the last 20 years? 

What about the exorbitant rents? Would it surprise you that rents have risen below inflation between 2008 and 2019?

Also there has been a drive to tax BTL landlords more comprehensively and regulate the private rented sector to develop better housing conditions for tenants.

Unlike owner-occupier homes, tenants get the benefit of new regulations from Gas Safety Checks and Electrical Safety Reports. Also, BTL landlords will need to improve their Energy Performance Certificate Rating to at least a C rating by the end of 2025 for all new tenancies, and by end of 2028 for all existing tenancies, all at no cost to the tenant and directly saving them money on their heating costs – something that is very important considering the recent rises in gas prices.

Crediton landlords have also had to pay more tax on their Crediton BTL properties, paying 3% Stamp Duty Tax supplement for the last 5 years, and higher rate tax relief on mortgage interest was taken away four years ago.

Landlords have also had to deal with the financial fallout of the pandemic. It is estimated 1 in 5 tenants in the private rented sector have some form of rent arrears.

Interestingly landlords that dont use a letting agent to manage their property are 272.5% more likely to be 2 months or more in arrears.

Also, evictions for rent arrears were banned during the pandemic, meaning some tenants ran up arrears of 12 months or more. According to the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), this has left around 210,000 private tenants in the country facing a court order for rent arrears. That would equate to…

33 Crediton private rented households with a court order for arrears.

The idea that Crediton landlords are middle-class establishment types who are out to take advantage of Crediton tenants who can’t afford to buy their own Crediton homes is, in my opinion, just wrong.

Of course, there are some rogue Crediton landlords, yet there are plenty of rogue tenants. Just because you are a Crediton landlord, it doesn’t mean you are quaffing champagne and rolling in cash.

109 Crediton landlords own just one BTL property.

And just under half of those use their rental income to supplement their pensions, and according to the NRLA, a third of landlords have a gross income (excluding income from the BTL property) of less than £20k per annum.

Its hard work being a Crediton BTL landlord and I still believe the burden of housing just under a fifth of the UK population isn’t appreciated or taken seriously by Government.

Notwithstanding the challenges, most Crediton BTL landlords are in it for the long run. BTL mortgages can be secured for less than 1% and demand is on the rise (with rents rising at the highest rate for 10+ years). Of course, Brexit caused a few issues with some Crediton landlords losing some Eastern European migrants. Yet once things settle down, we will have an influx of people coming from Hong Kong and Afghanistan, wanting to settle down, get jobs and ultimately require a home to live in, which will be a private rented house.

I know the Stamp Duty Tax holiday has cleared out the Crediton landlords who were on the fence for staying in the private rented sector or selling up, but those Crediton landlords that are left will be more professional and will run their BTL portfolio as a business, not a hobby.

My final piece of advice to anyone thinking of becoming a BTL landlord in Crediton for the first time is that you have to have a strategy and plan ahead. Those who stumbled into the BTL market in the early 2000s made a lot of money without any strategy or tactics.

Moving forward you need the guidance and support of an agent who can tell you the best places for investment, be that for better yield or better capital growth.

They will also be able to tell you what tenants demand to ensure that you attract the right sort of tenants who won’t trash the place and leave you in arrears. If you would like some advice, do not hesitate to drop me a line or pick up the phone.

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Are Crediton House Prices Set to Fall this Autumn?

The stamp duty holiday is over, furlough finished at the end of September, unemployment is due to rise and inflation is rife … is this the end of the post lockdown Crediton property boom?

Surely, we are heading for house price correction?

Forecasting what will happen in the Crediton property market this autumn may not be as simple as it first appears.

It’s true the Crediton property market is starting to settle down after an all-time number of property deals were completed in June.

More Crediton people will have moved home in 2021 than in any year since 2007, with an estimated 1.5 million home buyers nationally having bought a property.

Roll the clock back to last Christmas, and the Government’s Office for Budget Responsibility, projected that national house prices would drop between 6% and 8%.

By Christmas, the price of an average home in Crediton will be about £260,300, up 4.8% on last Christmas.

Let us not forget there were so many ambiguities at the start of 2021. We were about to start a 5-month lockdown, hospitals were bursting at the seams with patients, the vaccines hadn’t started, 4 in 10 employers had furloughed their staff and we had just had Brexit … things didn’t look good.

Yet, nothing could be further from the truth 10 months later – the Crediton property market has been on fire. But after a heated summer in the Crediton property market, things certainly can’t carry on as they have been since the end of lockdown.

So, where are we with the Crediton property market as it stands? Taking reference from historical data on the website The Advisory (I would certainly recommend you check it out) …

76% of properties on the market today in Crediton are sold subject to contract (stc).

How does this compare to October 2019 and October 2017?

In October 2017, 47% of Crediton properties were sold stc, whilst in October 2019, 44% of properties were sold stc.

Yet how does that compare to the national picture?

In 2017, 39.72% of the country’s properties for sale were sold stc whilst in 2019, that figure was 38.11%.

Now I love a good league table, so then decided to compare our locality to the rest of the country.

So, I chose to look at the EX17 postcode specifically. For information, there are 2,234 postcode districts in the country.

The 2021 sold stats put EX17 in at 364th place in the country, 635th in 2017 and 668th in 2019 … meaning we have improved from the 2017 and 2019 figures.

As we enter the last 3 months of the year, there are not so many uncertainties as there were at the start of 2021. On the good news front, 49 million Brits have had at least one jab (45m two jabs) and the UK will be the world’s fastest growing advanced economy this year according to the IMF.

Conversely, the furlough scheme ended at the end of September and with energy prices going through the roof, a real shortage of homes for sale (as I have discussed a number of times in recent blogs) and rising inflation on the back of a shortage of raw materials and trained staff, forecasting this and what will happen to Crediton house prices might not be as easy as it seems.

Post stamp duty holiday, it is now recognised that the majority of the demand for people moving home is focused by a profound unhappiness and frustration with the homes we live in, revealed during the first lockdown in 2020.

Buyers (and tenants – so take note Crediton buy-to-let landlords) want space … in fact, three types of space … and they will pay handsomely for them!

  • Office space (be that bedroom or study)
  • Outside space (gardens or proximity to green areas)
  • Broadband with ‘outa-space’ download speeds

And whilst there is a shortage of properties coming on to the market, demand and supply economics mean …

Crediton house prices should remain relatively stable going into 2022.

The number of properties coming onto the market in Crediton is slowly improving, yet not enough to diminish house values.

Also, don’t forget Crediton first-time buyers still have stamp duty relief all to themselves again and mortgages are cheap. At the beginning of the 2020 lockdown (Spring 2020), mortgage providers removed their higher risk 5% deposit mortgages for fear of a housing market crash. Currently, the vast majority of these low 5% deposit mortgages are back, together with the Governments own 5% deposit mortgages.

Yet many Crediton homeowners are concerned about inflation and its effect on their mortgage payments.

Inflation is important because if inflation gets too high, the Bank of England will need to raise interest rates to reduce inflation. Because mortgage payments are based on the Bank of England interest rate, higher mortgage payments will affect what people can afford. Normally the higher the mortgage rate, the less likely house prices are to increase (and in fact if interest rates are too high, house prices will fall).

Whilst I can’t give you advice, with the Bank of England base rate at a 300-year historic low of 0.1%, I’m still surprised that nearly 3 in 10 Crediton homeowners with mortgages are not on a fixed rate mortgage. There has never been a better time to get a fixed rate mortgage, as there are deals out there with interest rates as low as 1%. This means even if interest rates do go up in the short term, you will be protected from higher mortgage costs. Anyway, back to inflation.

Inflation did rise quite quickly and steeply in 2008/9 but came back down within a year.

This was because of a shortage of staff and raw materials during the Credit Crunch of 2008/9, the very same issues we are experiencing at the moment in Q4 2021. The type of inflation (yes, there are types of inflation!) in 2008/9 was called ‘push inflation’. Whilst inflation is not great, ‘push inflation’ could be described the better type of inflation (as long as is it doesn’t go on for too long).

The economic crippling hyper-inflation seen in the 1970s was ‘pull inflation’. The circumstances that create ‘pull inflation’ are not being experienced at the moment buy in the UK. This is good news because ‘pull inflation’ is bad inflation, which in turn would create massive problems to the UK economy as a whole.

Therefore, whilst inflation will probably rise to 4% – 5% by Christmas, I don’t believe the Bank of England will raise interest rates substantially as the message we are hearing from them is they see this as a short-term blip.

Opportunities for Crediton buy-to-let landlords?

Ultra-low mortgage rates and a booming rental market is encouraging more Crediton buy-to-let landlords to expand their rental portfolios, yet their strategy is changing. Yields are increasing as there is a shortage of rental properties, driving up rents. Also, there are Crediton landlords looking to exit the rental market, often because they want to liquidate their portfolio for retirement. These portfolios don’t make it onto Rightmove and get sold ‘off market’.

Therefore, if you are a serious Crediton buy-to-let landlord and you’re looking to expand your own portfolio, it’s really important to put yourselves on the mailing list of estate agents and also build up great one-to-one relationships with the same agents to ensure that you’re at the front of the queue for these off market rental portfolios and not at the back.

To conclude, nobody knows the answer to what will happen to the property market in Crediton as we go into 2022. There are many factors that could affect the market in a positive and negative way, yet buying property is always a long-term investment (be it for yourself or to rent), so if you need any advice or opinion on what you should do, drop me a line or pop into the office and we can discuss the options you have over a cup of coffee.

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Crediton Buy-to-Let Market on the Rise as Returns Rise by 35.2% in 5 Years

Crediton landlords are becoming progressively more self-assured about expanding their rental portfolios; as Crediton rents rise, mortgage interest rates fall and demand for decent Crediton rental properties outstrips supply.

A number of reports nationally would suggest around a third of UK ‘portfolio’ landlords (i.e. landlords with more than one rental property) are actively looking to expand their rental portfolios in the next 12 to 18 months, that would locally mean …

81 Crediton ‘portfolio’ landlords are looking to add to their rental portfolio by the end of 2022.

The pandemic has had a substantial change to what we want from a home. Many people think that relates just to homeowners, yet nothing could be further from the truth as it also applies to tenants.

Homeowner or tenant, many of us have spent a lot of time away from places of work. Many office workers face the outlook of the combination of working from home as well as at the office, meaning a change in what people look for in their home. People (including tenants) are looking for larger properties, with extra rooms for office space and decent sized gardens or to be closer to outside green space.

So, let’s look at the ‘scores on the doors’ as to why Crediton landlords are on the up …

Crediton house prices are 17.5% higher than 5 years ago.

Because some Crediton first-time buyers are being priced out of the market due to these house price rises, they are being forced back into the rental market. Add the extra demand of the 1 in 10 Crediton house sellers who, in the last 12 months, have had to go into rented accommodation instead of buying, and this has created increased demand, meaning …

Rents today in Crediton are 11.5% higher than a year ago and 17.7% higher than 5 years ago. The average rent of a Crediton property today is £700 pcm.

In previous articles on the Crediton property market, I was talking about the lack of properties to buy – yet that issue is also there in the British rental property market. Now let’s look at the supply of rental properties.

Would it surprise you that the number of private rented homes in the UK has fallen in the last 12 months by just over 2.5%?

Why? One reason has been many ‘accidental’ landlords have used this housing market to sell their property for a good price. That means the supply of available rental properties has decreased. The perfect storm of increased demand and lower supply, and with many Crediton tenants competing for those larger Crediton homes, they may find Crediton rental prices pick up even more over the next year.

What about buy-to-let mortgages for Crediton landlords?

The banks all but withdrew from buy-to-let lending in the first lockdown. Yet, since last summer things have settled down and during 2021 there has been a mortgage price war.

Crediton landlords can borrow 60% of the value of their BTL property on a two-year fixed rate of 1.18% from Platform and even those with a 20% deposit (that’s borrowing 80%) can borrow that money at 2.49% 2-year fixed rate from The Mortgage Works. Those looking to fix for a little longer can get 1.44% from The Mortgage Works and 1.79% at 75% loan to value from Santander.

(It must be noted there are some fees to these mortgages, and you must take advice from a qualified mortgage advisor before deciding which mortgage is best for you).

So, is now the best time to invest in Crediton buy-to-let property?

If you are attracted to invest in Crediton buy-to-let, it’s vital to do your homework first – particularly if you are new to the game.

When estimating the expected rental returns on investment, capital growth and yields, many Crediton landlords look to what has happened with house prices and rental prices, yet past performance does not always deliver a future guaranteed return.

Smart Crediton landlords will speak with agents like myself and others in Crediton, prudently researching the Crediton property market to discover what types of properties are in high demand (and short supply) from tenants.

Whether you are a landlord of ours or not, please feel free to drop me a line via email or social media for no nonsense advice on the important matters to look out for before investing in Crediton buy-to-let.

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Crediton Homeowners Have Turned to the Rental Market to Cash In By £11,100 Each

Should you sell or should you buy in this most interesting Crediton property market?

I have calculated that at least 25 Crediton house sellers have rented a home to break their house chain in the last 12 months, although at a cost as they face paying many thousands of pounds in rent. 

There are a number of reasons behind this. One is because they cannot find another Crediton property to buy amidst a continuing shortage of new Crediton properties coming to the market. Although, there are others who have achieved such a high price for their home they have decided to cash in and are (hopefully for them) waiting for the Crediton property market drop?

Or will it drop? (More on that later).

Those selling their home have seen the… average Crediton home rise in value in the last 12 months by £11,100.

Yet, if they have had to go into private renting, they have paid for that privilege in the rent they have had to pay.

The average cost of a six-month rental agreement in Crediton is £3,972, meaning accidental Crediton tenants have pumped £99,294 into the Crediton rental market in the last 12 months.

The unevenness between the number of properties for sale and demand for them is at its widest since the early 2000’s. Whilst we have seen a slight improvement in the number of properties for sale in Crediton, there are still…

45% fewer homes up for sale today in Crediton, compared to August last year.

This serious shortage of Crediton property for sale is discouraging some hesitant Crediton homeowners from putting their property on to the housing market, anxious they will not be able to find their next home and will be left renting.

Yet some savvy Crediton homeowners are moving into a rented property as a way to navigate the shortage of properties to buy. If you have someone offering you top dollar for your Crediton home, whilst you will have the hassle of two moves, the increase in value of your Crediton home will more than offset the rent. 

Also, when you come to buy your next Crediton home, you will be chain free and in pole position to buy your ‘forever home’, rather than being overlooked for the home because you are sold stc and burdened with a chain.

Yet this trend has made life tougher for long-term Crediton tenants.

On average there were normally 6 to 10 properties available to rent in Crediton on Rightmove at any one time (pre-pandemic), today there are only 3 available.

To give you an idea of how this has affected the Crediton rental market, with heightened demand and lower supply, demand for rental properties has grown to such an extent…the average rent in Crediton has grown from £662 per month a year ago to £750 per month today.

Tenants are suffering from less choice and higher rents in the Crediton property rental market, with few indications it’s going to significantly ease on the run up to Christmas.

So, what is going to happen to the Crediton property market? 

Well, those of you that follow me know I regularly write about the Crediton property market in my property blog. If you would like some recent articles I have written about the future of the local property, either drop me a line and I will send you some links to those posts, send me a DM or contact me by telephone.

In the meantime, please do share your thoughts on the matter in the comments.

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£556,546 – ‘Wood’ You Pay That For a Crediton Semi-Detached House?

The value of an average Crediton semi-detached house has increased in value by £24,940 in the last 12 months, an increase in value of 9.5%.

Yet the costs of building a Crediton home have shot up even more in the last 12 months, meaning the price of Crediton new homes and any building works you do to your Crediton home in the coming months and years could be a lot higher.

The British house building profession is experiencing a building materials supply problem. Everything from cement to bricks, timber and roof tiles, plastic guttering, copper wire and pipe to insulation, even kitchen sinks have become scarce – and when people can find them, they are costly.

For example, looking at the timber industry, three-quarters of the UK’s building timber comes from abroad, so lockdowns around Europe put a restraint on the timber processing industries of Sweden, Lithuania and Latvia throughout 2020. In addition, building material supply chains were interrupted due to the application lockdowns imposed by their Governments, resulting in many sawmills in those countries restricting shift work to comply with their country’s social distancing rules. Some mills even stopped all work for eight weeks last year, meaning they were incapable of cutting, milling or treating timber, causing their existing stocks of building wood to run dry. 

Yet, whilst we were all in lockdown, everyone started doing DIY projects, so the public demand for building timber in the UK remained high, giving little opportunity for UK sawmills (let alone North-eastern Europe) to catch up and restock to the levels previously held before the pandemic.

Building timber costs 112% more than a year ago, steel RSJ’s are a lot more expensive because iron ore has gone up 120.1% whilst aluminium is up 56.8%, and copper is up 59.7%.

All the blame cannot be laid at the feet of the virus and lockdown. The ‘B’ word caused issues with supply at the start of the year. Building materials are a worldwide supply chain issue; this spring’s Suez boat crisis, when many boats were diverted around Africa (as the length of time the blockage was going to last was unknown), exacerbated the problem. All this has combined to make the cost of sending a 40ft container from China to Tilbury Docks £7,576 today, compared to £1,195 just before the crisis. Also, supplies of sand and cement are particularly low with massive demand from the large £98bn High Speed (HS2) rail project. All this combined is affecting many building projects, big and small, across the UK.

If an average Crediton semi-detached house had risen by the price of building timber in the last 12 months, today it would be worth £556,546, not the current £287,462.

RSJ (steel joists) take twenty weeks to arrive, compared with the typical five weeks, whilst plasterboard is being rationed with weeks of delays for the ‘good stuff’ and MDF wood, usually takes seven days to arrive; now it takes over a month. Roof battens need to be ordered a month in advance, whilst pre-lockdown they were commonly held in stock by every building merchant.

Demand for building materials has increased so quickly because many British homeowners are driving the explosion. Those people in safe jobs with little opportunity to spend money on foreign holidays and fancy restaurants decided to invest in their property and gardens. According to the Bank of England, this craving for home improvement has particularly exploded since the mature generation have started to be double jabbed (their savings accounts having increased by £180bn during the pandemic).

As I have explained in previous articles, these increases in the price of raw materials will fuel inflation, possibly affecting interest rates upward. An increase in interest rates will make a material difference to the value of Crediton property. To what extent? Please read my previous articles on the Crediton property market.

Please do share your stories of issues with builders and building materials over the last 15 months in the comments. I appreciate any stories you can provide to help others in Crediton.

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Crediton Buy-to-Let Landlords Owed £127,515 in Unpaid Rent Rogues or Saviours?

There is no getting away from the fact that the rise in the number of buy-to-let properties in Crediton has been nothing short of astonishing over the last twenty years. As a result, many in the press have said Britain is a broken nation, with many twenty and thirty-somethings unable to buy their first home. The press has named this group ‘Generation Rent.’

Crediton landlords have been accused of scooping up all the smaller Crediton properties for their buy-to-let property empires. Others blamed the Government (of both persuasions) for pouring petrol on the buy-to-let fire for giving landlords an unfair advantage with the way buy-to-let has been taxed in the past. Many have said these landlords have priced out Crediton’s ‘Generation Rent’. Many say they are rogues, and you can see why there is little sympathy for landlords, especially as…

Crediton landlords receive £6,923,904 a year in rent – easy money or what?

So, as we come out of lockdown, I want to make a stand for Crediton landlords and talk about the great work they have been doing during the pandemic.

Since lockdown, it has been (almost) illegal to evict a tenant from private rented property. Yet, in the last few weeks, this ‘ban on evictions’ has begun to be eased, making some commentators forecast a ‘tsunami of homelessness’ as landlords ready themselves to kick out the tenants who cannot pay their rent.

You might say they can afford it, yet I need to highlight an often-untold story in the massive numbers of Crediton landlords who have co-operated with their Crediton tenants to evade eviction.

The personal finances of some Crediton landlords and tenants have been ruthlessly strained during the last 16 months — something that is going to have ramifications on the back pockets of both landlords and tenants, as well as the attraction of being a buy-to-let landlord (more of that later).

55 Crediton tenants are in arrears with their rent to the tune of £127,515.

That’s money these landlords need to pay their mortgages with and even to live off themselves.

The eviction ban was imposed in March 2020 and the Government has expected private landlords to stand the cost of their tenant’s rent if they could no longer pay. It was estimated over 1 in 5 landlords with mortgages had requested a mortgage payment holiday in 2020. Thankfully, that now stands at 1 in 100 as most Crediton landlords with shortfalls in rent have been using their own personal savings to cover the mortgage payments.

I have seen so many landlords giving their Crediton tenants rent breaks and discounts to help them through these times. However, most landlords I talk to acknowledge that it is better to have a tenant paying something rather than a tenant paying nothing, hoping that total rent will start flowing as the economy recovers.

Going into the pandemic, 1 in 25 Crediton tenants were in arrears, yet that now stands at 1 in 11.

So, are we going to see lots of evictions? I would go as far as to rebuff the idea that we will see a rush to the courts of landlords to obtain possession orders now the eviction ban has been lifted. I have always viewed evictions as a last resort.  

Before the pandemic, it took about 12 months for courts to hear rental repossession cases, so this backlog will be nearer two years (if not more). Nonetheless, the threat of a County Court Judgement (CCJ) often makes tenants pay up as it will demolish their credit rating, making it very challenging for them to rent another home.

I feel for those Crediton tenants under furlough or reduced hours as they have the quandary of wanting to reduce their outgoings by moving to a cheaper rental property, yet whose rental deposits will be sacrificed to cover their rent arrears. However, some have said that because house prices have exploded during the last 16 months, Crediton landlords should write off their tenants’ arrears as a goodwill gesture.

The issue is, 97 Crediton landlords only have a single property for rent, so the arrears would have to be funded by their personal savings.

For them, the pandemic experience could be the incentive to sell up for good.

A National Residential Landlords Association survey found around a third of all landlords were now more likely to sell their buy-to-let properties altogether or sell some of them. This would mean fewer properties for tenants to rent, thus driving up the rent.

According to government and industry data, evidence suggests that a tenant who rents a property directly through a landlord and not through a letting agent is between two and three times more likely to go into arrears of 2 months or more. Is this because tenants know that private landlords who advertise directly for tenants on Gumtree and other platforms don’t carry out the checks letting agents do on them?

Many of those landlords are switching the management of their property to an agent, and for those landlords sticking with self-management of their property, there is circumstantial evidence they are starting to become a lot pickier when starting new tenancies. Even though illegal, spurning tenants on benefits is woefully all too common. I also worry there could be a stigma about renting properties to self-employed people because of the erratic nature of their income.

Looking into the future, I envisage a growth in the use of ‘rent guarantor contracts’, whereby the tenant is called upon to provide a 3rd party person to pay the rent if the tenant doesn’t. These are pretty common for student lets and those on certain benefits, and it wouldn’t surprise me if these are used more often for self-employed tenants and regular professional lets.

That is why I believe Crediton landlords should be celebrated … most of them have been saviours. These are my thoughts – what are yours?

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Your Great-Great Crediton Grandfather Would Have Only Paid £378 7s 7d for His Crediton Home in 1871

Would it surprise you even more when I said the ratio of house prices to wages are still lower today when compared to 1871? Yes, you read that correctly, as a proportion of average wages British house prices are 17.6% proportionally cheaper today than they were in 1871.

I wish to talk about the last 150 years of the British property market and later in the article, the Crediton property market. I will also touch on why, before the 1900s, buying a home in Crediton was considerably more expensive than today and why that changed.

So, let’s look at some interesting stats to get us started:

  • In 1871, each house was occupied by an average of 5.33 people (i.e. for every 100 houses, 533 people lived in them), whilst today that stands at 2.39 people per house
  • In 1871, there were 4.5 million properties in the UK, whilst today that stands at 27.9 million.
  • In 1871, the weekly average wage was 13s 8½d (68p), whilst today it’s £585.50
  • In 1871, only 20% of people owned their own home, whilst today its stands at 65%

I stated in the first part of the article it was more expensive to buy in the latter parts of the 19th Century than today. It may only be of historical interest, but back in 1871, the ratio of average house prices to average wages was 10.5 to 1 (i.e. the average house was worth ten and half times the average person’s wage), whilst today it stands at 8.8 to 1.

Interestingly, for the next 45 years, that ratio went on a downward trend relative to wages and only stopped falling after WW1, where the average house was worth only 2.2 times the average wage. This made houses more affordable and set the foundations for the homeowning passion we Brits have today.

So why did this happen, what can we learn from it and what does it mean for Crediton homeowners and Crediton landlords?

There are three significant drivers that made property a lot more affordable between 1871 and 1911: the Victorians built more property, made them smaller and people’s wages rose significantly.

  • In the 40 years between 1871 and 1911, the number of properties in the UK rose from 4.5 million to 8.9 million. To give you some perspective, there were 18 million properties in the UK in 1981. If the UK had grown by the same rate between 1981 and today that was experienced between 1871 and 1911, there would be 35.6 million households in the UK (and not the 27.9 million mentioned above).
  • In 1871, the average plot size of a property was 0.23 acres, yet by 1911, that was down to 0.06 acres (or a plot of 72ft by 40ft). This came about from building smaller types of property (i.e. a change away from larger Georgian detached houses towards the infamous rows of Victorian terraces), and a downshift in the average size of houses within each category.
  • The average value of property dropped by 26% between 1871 and 1911, whilst wages rose by 85% over the same time frame.

So, by 1911, the average Crediton property had dropped in value from £378 in 1871 to £281.

N.B. – you might have noticed I wrote £378 in a slightly different way in the title of the article. Up to 1971, a pound was split not into 100 pence but 240 pence. There were 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings (or 240 pence) in a pound. It was expressed in the form £sd and spoken as “pounds, shillings and pence”. I dropped that into the title as it’s the 50th anniversary this year of when the UK decimalised its currency (younger readers – do google the story – it’s a fascinating topic).

So back to the property market and at the end of WW1, four in five people still rented, virtually all from private landlords. Politicians were concerned about the poor living standards of people’s homes, and this led to the ‘homes fit for heroes’ 1919 Housing Act which delivered subsidies for local councils to build council houses. The average value of a Crediton property in 1922 was £442.

The 1930s – By 1930, the average value of a Crediton property stood at £558. With the country building a third of a million houses per annum, interest rates fixed at 2% and hardly any planning regulations, supply of property was outstripping demand, so the average Crediton home dropped ever so slightly in value to £516 by 1938.

The 1940s – With the bombing of many towns and cities and housebuilding being stopped because of the war, this created a perfect storm to increase house prices after the war. By 1947, the average Crediton home had risen in value to £1,725 because just as food was rationed during and after the war, so were building materials. Builders could spend no more than £350 on building materials for a new home (and that lasted until 1954).

The 1950s – The ’50s were all about building council houses – a quarter of a million of them each year. By 1959, the average Crediton home had risen steadily to £2,393.

The 1960s – This decade saw even more houses being built in the UK, with an average of a third of a million houses a year being built. Crediton is full of 1960’s council houses and now even more owner-occupied housing, meaning by the end of the decade Britain had as many homeowners as renters. The average Crediton house had risen in value to £4,389 by 1969.

The 1970s – We experienced the first boom and bust housing bubble in the early 1970s with house prices rising by over 30% a year in the early years of the decade (so the current 10% a year is child’s play!) but prices dropped in 1974. They recovered quickly in the following years, not because of increased demand but due to hyperinflation, making the average Crediton house price rise to £22,321 by 1980.

The 1980s – This was the decade of council tenants being able to buy their own homes, although not many people know it was an idea from Labour. They decided against the idea, but it was seized upon by the Tories, who made it the cornerstone of their 1979 election manifesto. The property market helped improve the economy, and by 1988, Crediton property values increased to £46,687 (only to drop by 32% a couple of years later).

The 1990s – The housing market crash of the early 1990s was painful for all, exacerbated by mortgage interest rates being raised to 15% on Black Wednesday (16 September 1992) and left there for 12 months. Unemployment went from 1.5m to 3m for the second time in ten years, and many of those homeowners who had taken out large mortgages in the late 1980’s housing boom could no longer afford the repayments because of the high interest rates, meaning repossessions went through the roof. The crash also made builders nervous, and they only built 150,000 houses on average a year in this decade. Yet, by the mid-1990s, things started to improve. So much so, the average Crediton home was worth £87,520 by the turn of the millennium.

The 2000s – The decade of cheap mortgages and the rise of Buy to Let, together with a severe drop in the number of new homes being built, contributed to the UK’s third big housing bubble since WW2. The average Crediton house price more than doubled to £234,374 by 2008, before the Credit Crunch brought the boom to an end, and a year later (2009), the average Crediton property had dropped to £208,170.

The 2010s – The property market started to come back to life in the early 2010s with property values steadily rising throughout the decade, yet builders were only building around 135,000 new homes a year. It also might surprise you that by 2015/6, the number of homeowners was starting to rise quite significantly, meaning today, as we enter the 2020’s decade, the average value of a Crediton property now stands at £283,115.

So, now we are back to 2021.

Yes, your Great-Great-Grandfather might have been able to buy their Crediton house for a shade over £378 in 1871. Taking inflation into account since 1871, that same Crediton house today would be £45,578.63, yet if his wages had increased by inflation at the same rate, the average wage today would be £81.91 per week, not the current £585.50 per week.

I appreciate there are plenty of other factors involved with this topic, such as the cost of renting, raising a deposit, changing lifestyles and the biggest point, the cost of borrowing money on a mortgage.

All this begs the question, what does the future hold for the Crediton property market?

It’s obvious since the mid-1980s, house prices have sustained a period of impressive growth (even withstanding a couple of property crashes). The Bank of England has gone on record to say that much of the rise in average house values, comparative to wages, between 1985 and now can be seen because of a sustained, dramatic and consistently unexpected decline in real interest rates and additionally concludes that: ‘An unexpected and persistent increase in the medium-term real interest rates will generate a fall in real house prices.’

Cheap mortgages and a lack of building have created this situation. So as long as interest rates don’t go back to their long-term average of the 5% to 7% range or the Government decides to increase building new homes to half a million a year (from the current 240,000 per year) … things will carry on as they are in the medium to long term.

These are my thoughts … I would love to hear any stories of your family buying property in the late 19th Century or early 20th Century and what they paid for it, together with the affordability of Crediton property and the future of it.

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23.6% of Crediton Landlords Could Be Fined £5,000 Each with New Energy Regs

… whilst possible new mortgage rules for Crediton homeowners would make it harder to sell their draughty old properties

As the UK has committed to a legally binding target to be carbon neutral by 2050, one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gasses are residential properties. To hit that target, every UK property will need to achieve a minimum grade of C on their Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) by 2035. The issue is that two thirds of UK’s homes (around 19 million households) are rated D or below.

To help the country hit its targets, in 2018 and again in 2020, the EPC requirements altered for buy-to-let landlords, meaning they couldn’t rent their property unless it had a minimum energy rating of ‘E’ or above.

And now for homeowners, the Government are considering forcing banks and building societies to publish the average EPC rating for all the homes they lend money on and if the banks and building societies don’t hit the Government EPC targets, they will be fined (meaning those homeowners with low energy efficient properties will have to pay much more for their mortgages).

So, let’s look at these two issues, first regarding Crediton landlords and their EPC’s, so you know what your lawful responsibilities are and what else landlords can expect in the future.

Since October 2008, all UK rental properties have required an EPC, yet from April 2018, the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) regulations regarding EPCs have also required all rental properties’ new tenancies and renewals to have a minimum EPC rating of ‘E’ or above. However, since April 2020, the MEES regulations have applied to all existing tenancies as well, meaning if your Crediton rental property doesn’t have a valid EPC rating of ‘E’ (or above), it is illegal to let out.

379 rental properties in Mid Devon are currently let out with a ‘F’ or ‘G’ EPC rating, making them illegal to rent out and each landlord liable for a £5,000 fine – they just don’t know it

The EPC lasts for 10 years and gives an energy rating of between A – very energy efficient to G – very energy inefficient. So, if you find yourself, as a Crediton landlord, with a rental property that has an EPC rating of below ‘E’, what are your options?

To start with, you have a responsibility by law to carry out the changes suggested in your EPC report to improve the energy rating of your property. The law states that landlords should spend up to a maximum of £3,500 on the energy efficiency improvements set out in the EPC. Yet, if by spending £3,500, that improves your EPC rating but doesn’t mean you reach the ‘E’ rating, whilst you will still be expected to improve the rental property and spend the money, you will be able to apply for a high-cost exemption via the PRS Exemptions Register and still let the property (even though you will have an EPC rating of F or G).

It must be noted that some properties are exempt from the MEES legislation. If your property is listed or protected and the improvements would unacceptably alter it, it is exempt from EPC requirements.

Once your EPC has been registered, it is then valid for ten years. Because the EPC regulations came into force in 2008, there will be some rental properties that had their initial EPC but not had it renewed on its 10th birthday. Now as a Crediton landlord, you do not need to get a new EPC if your EPC reaches its 10th birthday, unless that is, you are starting a new tenancy with new tenants. The issue is …

of 5,091 rental properties in Mid Devon, 1,204 of them have an EPC that is 10 years or older which has not been renewed.

If you are a Crediton landlord, your EPC is 10 years old (or older) and your tenant leaves, you will require a new EPC, because if you don’t, you will be fined £5,000. If all those buy-to-let landlords in our local authority area ignored that law, accumulatively they could be fined £6m.

Secondly, what about Crediton homeowners and the mortgage companies?

Under new legislation being considered, homeowners living in poorly insulated and draughty homes (meaning they would have a low EPC rating) could pay more for their mortgages and lose value from their Crediton homes under Government plans to prioritise mortgages on properties with high energy-efficiency ratings.

There are 8,521 properties in Mid Devon with a rating of ‘E’ or below

The Department of Business (DoB) wants to force mortgage providers to classify the energy ratings of their borrowers’ homes and put the average into a Government league table, which will be presented on the DoB’s website. Mortgage providers will then get time sensitive targets to improve their average EPC scores, punishable by fines, meaning this would increase the mortgage costs for those with low energy efficient homes.

Maybe it’s time you looked at your EPC certificate and find out how you can improve your rating? If you are a Crediton landlord or Crediton homeowner, and would like to chat about your legal position or would like a copy of your EPC emailing to you, don’t hesitate to drop me a line and I will be more than happy to discuss your personal circumstances further, without obligation.

So, is it right Crediton landlords should have to fork out to improve the energy performance of their rental property, yet they aren’t the ones benefiting? Also, should Crediton homeowners have to have higher mortgage payments in the future because they have a low energy efficient home?

Let me know your thoughts.