While housing with the worst energy performance diagnosis will gradually become impossible to rent from 2023, the very reliability of these DPEs, which classify housing from A to G, is called into question. In a survey published on Tuesday May 24 that franceinfo was able to consult, the association 60 million consumers relief “mistakes galore”. The same accommodation can be assessed differently depending on the diagnostician.
>> Real estate: when the future ban on the rental of energy strainers “blocks the market”
In the survey of 60 million consumers, a house located in Corbeil-Essonnes (Essonne) for example received three different ratings, C, D or E, depending on the professional who assessed it. Two of them were wrong about its date of construction and its area by adding 25 m². VSare errors on the surface it“is annoying since the diagnosis is made from square meters. If you add more, you will get a more favorable rating”explains on franceinfo Fanny Guibert, journalist head of the energy section at 60 Million consumers.
The association thus tested four houses for sale by having each one examined by five different diagnosticians. While each owner should have received the same result five times, professionals have sometimes forgotten doors, windows, or poorly taken into account ventilation, heat pumps or even insulation work. Fanny Guibert points to the diversification of heating methods, which can complicate diagnosis. “When you have housing with a part heated by an insert [à bois], a wood-burning stove, an electric heater, possibly with a heat pump, etc. it can be a bit more complicated”explains the journalist.
This could therefore change everything in the coming months for owners affected by the Climate and Resilience Law. Indeed, from next September, rents will be frozen for so-called “energy strainers” of classes F and G.
Then, housing whose consumption exceeds 450 kWh/m² per year, which concerns around 70,000 housing units in the private sector, will be prohibited from being rented. The 600,000 G-rated homes (>420KWh/m².year) will be withdrawn from the market from 2025. In 2028, it will be the turn of 1.2 million F-rated homes then, in 2034, 2.6 million of classified E housing that can no longer be rented out. “If you want to sell housing F and G, you will have to do an energy audit, so a document that commits you to do the work”explains Fanny Guibert. “If you have a very good rating and the buyer realizes afterwards that it was overvalued, there may be legal proceedings”against the seller and the diagnostician, she recalls.
“We are asking for more training for diagnosticians (…) there are not enough of them who have done their job well”, concludes the journalist who suggests in particular to the craftsmen to come “together” to spend more time making the diagnosis.
Problems with the DPE ➡️ “Normally, a diagnosis must be good”, assures Fanny Guibert, who asks for “more training”. pic.twitter.com/FSzi2orNfP
— franceinfo (@franceinfo) May 24, 2022