The respite for owners selling thermal strainers will be short-lived.
It is finally from next September 1 - and no longer on January 1 - that they will have to have an energy audit of their house (or in single property) carried out, announced the Ministry of Housing on Friday.
On the other hand, co-owned property is not affected by this obligation.
This measure, provided for in the Climate and Resilience law adopted on August 22, makes the energy audit mandatory in the specific case of a sale of a house classified G or F by its energy performance diagnosis (DPE).
Unlike the DPE, the audit is intended to be much more in-depth and precise in order to allow future buyers of an F or G “strainer” to know what to expect in terms of work and costs.
The objective of this new obligation is to provide them with "a precise detail of the work necessary to carry out an efficient renovation in stages and a renovation allowing to reach directly the class B", underlines the ministry.
Need for trained auditors
Through this period, the Minister in charge of Housing Emmanuelle Wargon wants to leave "the necessary time for the sector to prepare, guarantee the quality of the performance of energy audits and avoid slowing down sales of housing", according to her ministry. The necessary software and training will be deployed "during the second quarter of 2022", reassures the ministry today. This delay of a few months should also make it possible to ensure consistency between the much more in-depth audit and the new DPE, still in the running-in phase. The final version of the DPE for goods built before 1975 has only been in effect since November, after several hiccups in its method of calculation.
The professionals - diagnosticians, thermal engineers and architects - had mobilized strongly in recent weeks to request the postponement of these audits, highlighting the insufficient number of auditors, the need to recruit and train them.
The Higher Council for Construction and Energy Efficiency was itself worried about "the lack of a sufficient pool of competent professionals" to carry out these audits and demanded a postponement of twelve months.
"A new uncertainty"
This deferral of eight months finally obtained should allow "the sector to organize itself to produce these audits," said Jean-Marc Torrollion, president of the FNAIM. This is commendable but I wonder because it creates new uncertainty for buyers who will not be able to benefit from this powerful indicator that is the audit in the event of purchase of a housing classified F or G before the 1st September. And I am also wary of the reaction of the banking community, which risks being stricter when it comes to purchasing these goods F and G. ”
On the diagnostic side, the tone is just as mixed.
“This postponement is good news because neither the real estate diagnostic players, nor even the software tools are operational for January, insists Seydi Eren, co-founder of Diagadom.
But we believe that there will not be enough trained professionals to meet the demand on September 1 ”…
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The new DPE is a headache for many owners
There are 4.8 million dwellings considered to be “thermal strainers”.
As for the number of specialized professionals, it is far from satisfactory.
In addition, 80% of real estate assessors are independent, without a reference and they risk being difficult to meet demand for lack of means facing the costs of insurance, training, to which must be added the purchase of new materials, ”says the professional.
Finally, the cost will be important for the owners of thermal strainers.
The price of an audit is estimated between 700 euros to 800 euros, in addition to the DPE (most often included in a flat rate of nearly 250 euros).
