Copy article

April 1 EPC deadline and bridging loans

ended 10. February 2023

From 1 April 2023, commercial landlords must not continue letting a non-domestic property which is already let if that property has an EPC rating of band F or G. In short, the clock is ticking. In recent months, and today, are you seeing more landlords use bridging finance as a way to quickly bring their properties up to the necessary standards? Or are some simply selling up? Any trends you're seeing, tell us and we will issue this story to the media tomorrow AM.

2 responses from the Newspage community

Copy all

Copy

Gary Bush
Financial Adviser at MortgageShop.com
Landlords, poor landlords, is not something you often read but in recent years this group of investors, often family members or groups of friends, have suffered from numerous hits to their portfolios. The latest of these is a requirement to improve the energy efficiency of their properties to a rating of at least E, the deadline for which is coming at a time when the buy-to-let mortgage market is still reeling from the Truss/Kwarteng effect of last year. If it had been business as usual, we would have seen good activity up until this April deadline with further funding applications and bridging loans being put in place to fund the improvements, but because of the hapless mini-Budget many potential plans to arrange improvements were put on hold due to far different rate structures being presented to landlords.
Copy

Marcus Wright
Managing Director at Bolton Business Finance
It's been a tough year so far for commercial property owners. First, we have seen interest rates pretty much double and commercial mortgages are already more expensive than residential to start with. Now we have the new EPC commercial rules sneaking up on us. We have not had that many enquiries yet for commercial bridging loans due to EPC work but expect this to increase after the 1st of April. Many are simply unaware of the new rules and will likely find out when they come to find new tenants.