From: usenet@listmail.good-stuff.co.uk 
  
 On 5 Sep 2025 10:45:47 GMT, Roger Hayter  wrote: 
  
 >On 5 Sep 2025 at 11:25:50 BST, "Roland Perry"  wrote: 
 > 
 >> A friend has a million-pound spare-house which he rents to willing 
 >> tenants. But it's a 1930's picturesque front-tiled property (may or may 
 >> not be in a conservation area, I forget) which is completely uneconomic 
 >> to raise to recently proposed minimum EPC standards. What is he suppose 
 >> to do? 
 > 
 >I suspect he simply has to accept that he is not as rich as he thought he 
 was. 
 > Unless it is actually listed (in which case his best bet is probably to 
 sell 
 >it for whatever someone will pay for it) it is probably not "uneconomic" to 
 >convert it, just very expensive. So he has to suffer the loss. Or sell it, 
 >preferably to a quixotic owner-occupier. 
  
 "Uneconomic" and "expensive" are not the same thing. The former means it 
 will cost more than it's worth. The latter means it will cost a lot of 
 money. Something that is expensive and will cost a lot of money can still be 
 worth it if the return exceeds the expenditure. But even something cheap can 
 be uneconomic if the cost exceeds the return. 
  
 In the case of a rental property, improvements are uneconomic if the cost of 
 them cannot be recouped by increasing the rent by a reasonable amount. And 
 if the only way to recoup the costs is to increase the rent by an 
 unreasonable amount, it may not be in the tenant's interests to get the work 
 done either. If halving your energy costs requires doubling the rent, then 
 you're probably better off continuing to pay the higher energy costs. 
  
 If the law makes it no longer possible for the tenant and landlord to agree 
 that keeping the rent down is more important than reducing energy costs, and 
 the tenant cannot afford (or is unwilling) to pay the higher rent that would 
 be necessary to recoup the costs of the work required by the law, then the 
 only realistic option is, as you say, for the landlord to evict the tenant 
 and sell the property. 
  
 That said, I'm not sure that the new legislation does actually abolish the 
 exemptions which permit a property with a below-grade EPC to be let if the 
 cost of compliance is excessive. The text of the Bill is complicated, 
 because it's mostly amendments to existing legislation rather than 
 completely new legislation, but I can't see anything which relates 
 specifically to EPCs. I may be wrong, though, so I'm open to correction. I 
 think it would be a mistake if those exemptions are abolished, because 
 almost all of the properties to which they apply are specialised in some 
 form and removing the exemption will simply take them out of the rental 
 market rather than encourage any changes to them. 
  
 Mark 
  
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