Estate agents will mostly tell you:
- Loft conversion
- Off road parking space
- New kitchen
So far what we might expect. But there is a new kid on the block when it comes to increasing the value of your home.
Energy efficiency
Zoopla did a survey of home buyers in 2022 and 70% said energy efficiency was very important to them. Interestingly, they said this whilst under underestimating the amount of money they could save. Most assumed it would be about 20% while Zoopla stated 52% savings would be the norm.
Think what a selling point it would be for your home if you produced a 75% reduction like we did!
I’m sure all the other elements that give immediate kerb and home appeal are still important, but now you have the chance to go over and above.
You can do both at the same time
It’s not rocket science. Just every time you think about making your home more beautiful, consider how you can use the opportunity to make it energy efficient at the same time.
- Opening up your loft: go above and beyond with the insulation. Think triple glazing. Put in quality heat recovery ventilation
- Improving your kitchen: choose low energy appliances. When you strip out the old kitchen, take off the plaster and add additional insulation to the external walls. If you’re in an old house, insulate under the suspended floor before you put the new floor down
- Refitting the bathroom: install water saving shower and toilet. Make sure the walls are well insulated. Include a heat recovery ventilation unit to deal with the addional condensation
It’s not that much more expense and it will add far more onto the value of your house. One summary states that “if a home improvement moves your Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) up a band it could add thousands to the sale price
£90K more he told us
We had just this experience when a couple of local estate agents visited our newly retrofitted Victorian home.
The first person had just one question for us: where are the internet points?
The second understood retrofit and building. He was fascinated by what we’d done. He priced the house at £90K more than the first person and said it would be a bidding war.
What did we do to deserve that?
- Improved our EPC up two bands from D to B
- Cut our energy consumption from 25,500 KwH per year to under 6,000 KwH
- Made an old Victorian home into a warm and comfortable place to be
At what cost?
The extra cost, over and above the work we were doing anyway, was in the region of £23K. This covered:
- Additional insulation material, excluding what the builder would have put in anyway
- Installation of an air source heat pump (minus the government grant)
- Single room heat recovery ventilation units in each room
- Additional labour time.
Once you’re on the job, the extra work to make an energy efficient home is actually minimal
You need to be informed
Don’t expect your builder to do any of this automatically. This is a new way of working so many are just not used to it yet. So you need to be informed and asking for what you want.
I wrote Beginner’s Guide to Eco Renovation to help you with that. It’s written for newbies to the retrofit world – in fact I wrote the book I wanted and needed when we were doing the work on our house.
There are also loads of experts around to help. Look in the links page of this site to get some ideas. Most eco people will be delighted to talk once they know what you’re trying to do.