The DPE note (energy performance diagnosis) is now mandatory to rent or sell your property. Problem: it is not always reliable.
The result of the DPE is a mandatory document to sell or rent, and since January 2023 the most energy-intensive housing is prohibited for rent. The energy performance diagnosis is therefore a crucial step for owners. Francoise, for example: she was about to place an ad on the site Particular to particular to find a tenant in Paris. The reception of the result of his DPE had the effect of a cold shower: “The ax fell: the apartment is classified G. To get a better rating, you would have to demolish the bathroom, the kitchen area… It’s nonsense. I would have to lower the rent by around 120 euros, which is not possible.”
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Françoise is not alone in her case: the DPE makes a lot of people unhappy, and the reform of the system 18 months ago did not change much, selon 60 million consumers, who proposed to four owners to have their house diagnosed by five different professionals. In theory, we should have had the same result five times; in fact each house received at least two different ratings. These assessments are full of errors, says Fanny Guibert, who conducted this survey for the magazine:
“For example, the surfaceshe explains. We have a house of about 140 square meters, a diagnostician puts it at 162 square meters. More surface area will divide emissions and therefore promote housing, with a big DPE letter error at the end. There are other gross errors: the accommodation was heated with a heat pump and auxiliary electric radiators, the diagnostician had only taken into account the electric radiators. Obviously, this has terribly penalized housing, the heat pump being much more economical. In another house, there was a ceiling with 20 cm of insulation for a diagnostician, 40 cm for another and two others put ‘unknown’…”
“The diagnosticians don’t do the job well, and you risk getting the wrong diagnosis. It’s a lottery.”
Fanny Guibertat franceinfo
However, the stakes are high: Since the beginning of the year, it has been completely forbidden to rent the most energy-intensive accommodation, classified G+, those that are sometimes referred to by the expression “thermal strainers”. In two years, it will be all properties classified G, then F, and even E in 2034. Nearly 13 million homes will be affected. Already for six months, the rents of housing F and G have been blocked.
This letter from DPE, from A to G, has also become opposable, that is to say legally questionable. And the conflicts are numerous: “Every week, someone comes to my office to ask me a question about incorrect DPEs, testifies Maître Martin Peyronnet, lawyer in real estate law at the bar of Bordeaux. For example, someone who bought to rent out his property, who receives a complaint from his tenant informing him of disproportionate energy consumption compared to the label he thought he had. He finds himself with the obligation to compensate his tenant and to carry out energy renovation work, in order to be able to continue to rent his property. The costs are quite significant: if we take the difference between a letter G and a letter C, we can talk about 50,000 euros.
Consequences on the real estate market
IOwners are clearly starting to get rid of their thermal colanders: we see twice as many of them in the classifieds as in 2020, and if they manage to sell these properties suffer a discount of around 4%. “The ECD has become a real criterion of choice, in the same way as the balcony or the extra room for teleworkingconfirms Thomas Lefebvre of the site Housing. Five years ago, people didn’t pay much attention to it. Today, nearly 90% of buyers say they look at the DPE before visiting a property.
“For some, a bad DPE is a hindrance to the visit, for others it is a bargaining lever.”
Thomas Lefebvreat franceinfo
From April 2023, new constraint: to sell a property F or G, it will be necessary to carry out an energy audit in addition to diagnosis. These are work recommendations. For this new document, it will cost the seller from 500 to 1500 euros.