Help, I am looking for an estate agent who will either agree to sell my house without an energy report or to sell it with them possibly paying for the report up front and deducting the cost from the sale proceeds.
Reason for this is an issue i have with the UK benefits agency who insist that my house is taken as capital in calculations for a disability benefit. However they will discount it if i am trying all efforts to sell the property, it is not good enough for them to have it for sale on the internet on various free website i must have it with an agent or at least have a letter from an agent saying they will not sell it without the energy report or they will not pay it up front.
If anyone knows an English speaking agent in the Aude 11200 area that i can contact please tell me contact details.
Thanks
Ross
'DPE en cours' means that it MUST be ready before a potential buyer asks for it, or at the latest the notaire demands it before the compromis de vente is signed. A nice, neat agents' ploy at best.
After watching a surveyor do a €600 test on my last cottage It would seem the purpose is more fiction than useful fact. The buyer wasn't interested in the least (he told me so) I assume because he had the common sense to know that an old stone cottage with no proper insulation or heating system would be expensive to heat and didn't need a piece of paper to tell him so. Some of the items that featured on the survey were impossible to inspect as the areas were inaccessible and so assumptions were made. Like a UK survey, there is plenty of fine print to protect the surveyor in case of litigation later.
Had my purchaser been British he no doubt would have used the survey results to try to beat me down even further on the price. I would have told him to be careful not to let the door bang him in the backside on his way out!
Although it is illegal to take on properties for sale without the energy report, there is a lot of houses/appartments for sale with the statement "DPE en cours". So it does seem to be an accepted practice.
Also there was a programme on French TV a few weeks ago about the DPE test, the results can vary over three scores (eg C-D-E) for the same house depending on who does the test.
Energy efficiency, so if it is a really old place, with single glaze windows, cracks in door and everywhere else, etc, it rates low. Somewhere with double/triple glaze, insulation, etc, should rate high (not always if it has been done badly). Affects the price/value of the property quite a lot because it shows how much work must go into bringing it up to standard.
What is the purpose of the test?
Yes Ross, I help my wife put up her houses and each property on offer only goes live when the energy report is live. Otherwise it is no longer legal to put them up.
The other reports need to be available for potential buyers and that includes treatment guarantees if things like capricorn have been treated. Some agents apparently wish to see those up front, especially given the unreliability of notaires on these details. She will not go ahead and put anything up live with the agency she works for until all certificates are already available having already had a house where bidders were competing for it, then the notaire announced she had none of the reports and certificates and was assuming none had ever been made.
Brian, i have been told it is not legal to advertise a property without the energy report, is this correct?
Ross
OK Dave, but what happens if you have a potential buyer who will not sign unless the entire diagnostic is there on the table. My wife has been there several times and that has been where notaires have said it was all done but have not checked to see if the certificates either existed or were valid. However, sure enough, most agents will advertise, that is quite legal although many now want to put up the entire diagnostic on the description of the property having learned from previous experience that it ensures them that the entire thing exists and that they can sell the property.
It is unlikely you will find a genuine estate agent here who will take it on without the energy test as it is illegal for him to do so. There is a way around it though. This company http://www.allodiagnostic.com/ are sometimes willing to do just the energy part of the test so a house can be advertised. They ask for a reduced fee to produce this test as long as you agree to return for the rest of the diagnostique once you have a buyer on the hook.
Difficult and dubious, without the report you'll not get the 'compromis de vente' signed, so that you have an agreed sale. Certificates of lead, asbestos and termite surveys or arrangements for them to be dealt with must be in the compromis. Unless you are in an area where the market is buoyant, it would be very difficult to get an agency to agree to do it. But simply try some of the agencies you'll find advertising through this site to see.