News
Chancellor urged to give green landlords stamp duty discount
Monday 31st January 2022
Property Eye
Landlords should get a discount on stamp duty if they make a property more efficient, an energy campaign group has urged the government.
The Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group - made up of industry, businesses and charities like the likes of E.ON and CBI - has written to Chancellor Rishi Sunak about the issue.
If the Chancellor was to support an Energy Saving Stamp Duty Incentive households would be charged a lower level of stamp duty to either buy an energy efficient home, or to improve one by installing insulation or a heat pump.
David Adams, spokesman for the Energy Efficiency Infrastructure Group, said on BBC You and Yours: "Stamp duty would be calculated then nudged up and down around a neutral point based on the energy performance of that dwelling, so the better performing the home from an energy perspective, the lower the stamp duty paid.
"If work is undertaken within the first two years, you can get a new EPC and then resubmit that, and you would get a rebate for the difference in stamp duty to what you paid originally and what you would have paid had that work already been undertaken."
The government plans for landlords to have to improve EPC levels to at least C to issue new tenancies by 2025, or 2026 according to some news outlets. This could apply to existing tenancies by 2028.
However it seems there's a lack of urgency among landlords, with only one in six saying they plan to improve the energy efficiency of their home in the next five years.
As a result there's some anxiety that landlords could be driven out of the sector by the changes.
The campaign group argue that a major incentive like stamp duty is required for landlords to change their behaviours.