Houses to be rated for energy use

HOUSEHUNTERS will have to check out two tags when searching for that dream property from today — the first is the price, the second is the house’s energy rating.

All new houses will come with a Building Energy Rating (BER) which will demonstrate how efficient they are in using energy and, therefore, how much of an impact they will have on the environment.

Ireland is one of a group of 10 EU countries who are leading the way by introducing the energy rating system for new homes. The scheme will be extended to all new buildings in 2008 and to second-hand homes coming on to the market in 2009.

Two objectives lie at the heart of the new BER scheme — to give prospective buyers and tenants information about the energy performance of buildings before they buy or let, and to give builders and developers of new buildings, as well as vendors or landlords of existing buildings, an incentive to upgrade energy performance.

While the exact impact the new energy rating scheme will have on the housing market remains unknown, auctioneers and valuers have welcomed the move towards greener houses.

“Very much so,” said Noel O’Reilly of the Irish Auctioneers and Valuers Institute (IAVI). “Anything that reduces our C02 emissions is to be welcomed. Fossil fuels are finite.”

The IAVI carried out a survey of its members on the expected effect of energy rating and 99% believe that it will have an impact on values, while 81% think that the value of residential homes with a good energy rating will rise, with the expected increase pitched at about 3.5%.

Meanwhile, 62% of IAVI members believe that the value of existing houses won’t fall through having a poor energy rating.

“These findings suggest the continued confidence in the Irish market by estate agents,” Mr O’Reilly told the Irish Examiner.

So far, according to Sustainable Energy Ireland, about 60 professionals have trained as assessors of new homes and more will following in the coming months as new training providers come on stream.

In general, those training to become assessors will be from the construction business, and Sustainable Energy Ireland hopes they will have a Level 6 construction-related qualification.

When trained, these assessors will be registered, included on SEI’s website (www.sei.ie) and free to promote themselves.

They can then be contacted by any builder, developer or individual who needs a BER for a new dwelling and, following an assessment, a certificate will be issued. This certificate will include a primary energy rating, somewhere on a scale of A1 down to G, as well as information on carbon dioxide emissions from the building.

A spokesperson for SEI said that they couldn’t say how the value of old buildings — which may be poor on energy efficiency — will be affected when new certification becomes available.

“That will depend on the market and a number of factors. We can only speculate.

“What this means is that, for the first time, buyers of new houses will have access to this information whereas, before, they wouldn’t have known how energy efficient a house was going to be.”