Limerick auctioneer critical of ‘bombshell’ for home owners
Gordon Kearney
HOME owners and estate agents have been dealt a “bombshell”, as they will have to include the BER rating on all material advertising the sale of properties in January.
Gordon Kearney, of Rooney’s auctioneers in the city, said he only learnt of the new regulation in a newspaper advertisement, with no correspondence received from the relevant body.
Failure to comply with the regulation could result in a €5,000 fine or three month prison sentence.
As of January 9, under a European Union regulation, any person or agent offering a building for sale or letting will have to state the energy performance indicator for the building in any advertisement. Such advertisements include newspaper, web-based notices, leaflets, sales hoardings and any other methods of communication.
The certificate must be produced to anyone inspecting a home. If you do not, you are in breach of the regulations and if you cannot produce the BER certificate to a building control officer you could be liable for a fine and/or imprisonment.
Mr Kearney said a minimum of five per cent of advertisement space will be given to the BER from this month, which could result in delays in bringing properties to the market - as home owners may have to wait to get an assessment, and promotional material will have to be revised accordingly.
Mr Kearney said acquiring such certificates to evaluate the energy rating could amount to €250 or more for a homeowner, and could cost thousands of euro for the owner of a commercial building, depending on the size of the property. The certificate is rated from A1, indicating most efficient, on a downward scale to G, signifying the least level of energy efficiency.
The less CO2 emissions a home has is an indication of how green, or environmentally friendly it is. “The only properties that are exempt are Georgian buildings,” explained Mr Kearney.
“Landlords will also have to comply with this. It has been a bombshell to people in the property game. No other auctioneers in town had heard about this either until recently.” A 25-page document indicating the future style of advertisements is available online.
See http://www.seai.ie/Your_Building/ber/advertising_of_ber/
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