Buy to let landlords are due to be hit with costs of £5,000 from April 2018 to comply with new government energy efficiency legislation introduced on rental properties.

Around 330,000 rental properties in the UK, usually older character properties, fall into bands F and G on the energy efficiency rating, and these properties will need improvements to bring them up to at least E rating in order to legally rent them to tenants.

The Green Deal scheme which offered loans for improvements is no longer available and the government now expects landlords to finance the improvements themselves.

In a presentation from the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, they stated: ‘Data suggests around 60 per cent of privately rented properties are currently owned outright. So we assume that these landlords will have a significant amount of equity against which they might borrow.’

Policy advisor at the Residential Landlords Association, Richard Jones, said: Unless they make funding available, landlords will be forced to pass these costs on to tenants in the form of higher rents.

‘It could also make being a buy to let landlord prohibitive. They could struggle to find such a large amount of money upfront.

‘Landlords have been harshly treated. This is an extra stealth tax on top of all the other measures that threaten the finances of the sector.’

Click here to view the original article “Landlords Hit With Extra ‘Green Tax’”

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