I'm waiting for the "Green Deal"

One of my tenants has recently been complaining that the double glazing in his property has "blown".  What does this mean?  Well in essence the seal between the internal and external pains has broken and as a result the air tight vacuum that was there reducing the heat loss through the window no longer works properly.  Quite often this is accompanied by moisture seeping into the gap between the two panes of glass and resulting in small patches of condensation. 

I'm keen to act but I'm holding fire to see what happens with the new Green Deal which is proposed to come into operation in 2013.  For those landlords that have not come across it, the Green Deal is
a way of financing energy saving improvements to your property which are financed by low interest loans.  In the case of landlords the costs of these loans need to be less than the expected energy savings meaning that effectively the tenant will be saving money even if they are contributing to the costs of the Green Deal loan.

Early indications from Grean Deal Assessors is that the interest rate on the loans is going to be between 7-8%.  Not horrendous, but you can get cheaper with some larger amounts on secured loans and certainly through mortgage finance.  My big question is how many tenants are really going to want to shell out more money for an improved and more energy efficient property if they have to shell out more cash up front in terms of rent + Green Deal finance.  Will they not argue that the benefit comes back to the landlord (largely erroneously in my view) in terms of an improvement in the capital value.  Watch this space for further updates as I look into what the Green Deal will really mean in practice for landlords.

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