Stop Guessing, Start Planning - The Truth About EPCs, MEES & Retrofit with Simon Bones

This week on The Viking Chats, I’m joined by Simon Bones, founder of Genous - a retrofit specialist on a mission to bring clarity, logic and (frankly) some much-needed honesty to the world of energy efficiency.

Because let’s be honest… right now?

Most landlords and agents are guessing.

MEES is coming.
EPC targets keep shifting.
Government messaging is inconsistent at best.
And if you try to get advice? You’re usually just being sold something.

Cavity wall insulation? “You need this.”
Heat pumps? “This is the future.”
Solar panels? “Don’t bother with anything else.”

The problem is - none of those answers are wrong.
But none of them are complete either.

And that’s exactly where this conversation starts.

Simon breaks down the three biggest challenges facing anyone trying to improve a property’s energy performance:

▪ People don’t know what to do
 ▪ They don’t know who to trust to do it
 ▪ And they don’t know how much it’s actually going to cost

From there, we get into the reality behind EPCs - why they’re often misleading, based on outdated assumptions, and completely disconnected from real-world costs and decision-making.

We talk about:

▪ Why EPC recommendations are often nonsensical (and sometimes impossible)
▪ The danger of taking “sales-led advice” from single-solution providers
▪ How different upgrades interact - and why there’s no one-size-fits-all answer
▪ The confusion around MEES and what landlords should actually be doing right now
▪ Why waiting until 2029 is a very, very bad idea

There’s also a fascinating deep dive into how the retrofit market actually works - from government schemes being scrapped overnight, to the unintended consequences of policy decisions, to the looming skills and supply crunch that could hit hard as deadlines approach.

And one thing becomes very clear:

👉 The biggest risk isn’t the legislation.
👉 It’s leaving it too late to act.

Because when everyone rushes to upgrade at the same time…
Prices go up.
Trades disappear.
And suddenly “we’ll deal with it later” becomes a very expensive mistake.

We also explore a smarter way forward.

Simon explains how technology - including digital modelling of properties - can give landlords and agents something they’ve been missing:

👉 Clarity

Not a sales pitch.
Not a generic checklist.
But a proper understanding of:

• What can be done
• What should be done
• What it will cost
• And what impact it will actually have

Whether you manage hundreds of properties or just one, this episode is about moving from reactive panic to proactive planning.

Because like it or not, this isn’t going away.

Energy efficiency, compliance and property performance are becoming fundamental parts of the industry - not optional extras.

And the people who win won’t be the ones who wait.

They’ll be the ones who understand, plan… and act early.

🎧 Tune in now to The Viking Chats.

Because in a world full of noise, confusion and competing agendas - sometimes the most valuable thing you can have… is clarity.

Transcript

Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of The Viking Chat and I'm delighted to be joined today by Simon Bones of Genus. Simon thanks for joining us. Pleasure. Now we haven't met before we actually got introduced via a mutual acquaintance so for those who haven't come across you or indeed Genus before do you want to just give us a little bit of a blah blah blah of kind of your journey to date and then give us kind of a high view of what Genus is. Sure, well I check I'll start with just very briefly what Genus is so we're a retrofit firm so we help improve the efficiency of people's houses or flats mostly houses but I used to do totally different things so I started after I left university as a management consultant so sacking people putting prices up doing all the stuff that everybody hates. The devil's work. The devil's work are quite lucrative, the devil's work, worked in a couple of different places, helped start my own firm with some other people, grew that, ran it, sold it. And was that Credo the consultant's firm? Yes, yeah, cool Credo. And sold that in 2017 to a US company called Tenere, stayed there for another three years and then left. And while I was a consultant, most of my work was in kind of energy services, property services, building services, infrastructure services, kind of anything to do with guys in vans basically. And I left and kind of thought well probably too young to retire. My wife told me I had to get another job actually. And I did also retire in Cove. It's a cover story, either the partner or it's just so we're getting bored at home and being like you're sitting around doing nothing all day isn't quite as exciting as I thought it might be. Yeah, I mean, my problem is I retired in 2020 and I wasn't allowed to leave the building because we're in Covid. So the kind of jet off to foreign places like you can't do that. So anyway, I had a long had an interest in climate change since kind of about turning the millennium. And so on one hand kind of went into academia a bit and I stopped now but I think I've still got got on my LinkedIn, I should take it off. I was a visiting research fellow in climate change science at University of Bristol, published some stuff on effectively why rich people have destroyed the planet and didn't want to become an academic full-time, it was not for me. I wanted to put it into practical. Well, I think I'd fixed up three properties myself, two that I'd lived in and one that my brother who's disabled had to adapt, his flat and took the opportunity to do some energy efficiency stuff to as well, put in a heat pump and insulation and all those kinds of things. And found that process all three times incredibly painful for all sorts of reasons, which I'm sure will come on to. And I kind of thought, well, I understand how you can build a good business that does energy services, property services, services. I know how you run field teams and I know a bit about tech. So because I'd also run a startup back in 2000, first.com boom, raised a million quid, spent it, closed it down. Wasn't a great success, but interesting. At least closed it down solvent. Which is, that's quite rare. Yeah. So I decided to go and do something similar. So, Genus as I said is a retrofit business so Without kind of laboring it too much When I did some research because I'm a consultant. So of course I went and did some market research I mean, it's not rocket science, but there are three things that people generally struggle with in making their homes more energy efficient They first of all don't know what to do. Yeah, they don't know what's actually green will actually save the money anything like that So they don't have that knowledge gap Secondly, they don't know how to get it done. Where do you go? 'Cause there aren't big brand names that do this kind of stuff and people are effectively builders and so most people think they're unreliable. And then of course, that is, it's really expensive to do. So most people don't have the money for it. And I wasn't trying to solve the third problem though. Hopefully I'll be able to announce something the next month or so that does. But our aim was to say, right, we can build an advisory capability that is based around tech because you can't do this by just talking to people on the telephone, that can help people to understand what they can do. And then a delivery business that gets it done painlessly, whether that is cavity wall insulation or solar panels or a heat pump or all three, because no one actually can do that except in what's called the eco space, which is the government policy that they've just canned and which finishes the end of March. Yeah, there's a lot of uncertain disruption in this kind of space at the moment, or confusion really coming down from government. Yeah, I mean, so they published the Warm Homes Plan a couple of weeks ago, which is the kind of flagship document. I'm sure we'll talk about this consultation response on minimum energy efficiency standards for landlords. Yeah. planning to announce or they have announced that there'll be some price cuts to utilities but they haven't said how that will fall yet. They've talked about loans, they've talked about other things. So there's a lot of uncertainty but for I don't think it was probably 15 years, I don't actually know, but ECO was the main program which is energy company obligations. So effectively British gas, octopus, whatever, they all had to pay a certain amount of money to get what has turned fuel poor low income or vulnerable customers. So if essentially poor people in poor quality housing, it would be fully funded. That would all get fixed for them. And that was running a billion something a year and they announced in November or October in the budget, it's gone from March. So a number of companies have gone into administration and that doesn't affect us because we didn't do that. We're able to pay. So which is a terrible phrase, but you have to be able to fund it. Otherwise we don't do it. but that market has been really decimated and obviously at the same time-- - When it's always the challenge with anything underpinned by a major government approach or strategy like that, isn't it? The moment they kind of repeal it. - Yeah, and we've seen that before in things like apprenticeships and other spaces where and PFI where certain things were done. I think the challenge, the specific challenge here for the future is that if you look at what the warm homes about. It's all about skilling up a new generation of people to go into green jobs and how great those green jobs will be. At the same time, there are 64 people in Cardiff, I think, from a company that I won't name, but it's public domain that went into administration that lost their jobs overnight, and they were green jobs. So why would I, as a, I'm thankfully not a teenage adult? I think interesting politically, there's obviously a lot of debate about this with the major parties and the kind of the newer challenger parties at the moment. You're obviously getting two very different messages at the moment from Reform and the Greens to very different approaches. But I think it's something really interesting you say there. I mean there was, I think it was Richard Tice who was talking on the news or being interviewed the other day and he was talking about how a lot of their stance is to repeal a lot of this net zero and environmental objectives or targets whatever you want to call them and a really interesting question raised in that was so what happens to all the jobs in this sector? This has been a rapidly expanding sector And yeah, I think, you know, regardless of the conversation around it, I think that was a really interesting point that was put to them. And I don't think they had any sort of an answer for it other than, "Oh, they'll find other jobs." Well, I mean, and that is tends to be how government thinks about things until they have to say, "Oh, well, we're going to produce an employment strategy." And then it suddenly becomes something that they care about. But I mean, to be fair, the objection specifically to Eco was that it wasn't good value for money and it delivered some poor quality stuff. I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that. Yeah. So we didn't do it. Part of the reason we didn't do it is because that business has been procured to a price basis or cost basis. So you win if you're cheaper than everybody else. Yeah. If you're pushier than everybody else, if you're a little bit more aggressive than everyone else, you know, there are two types of, well, there are three types of cavity wall insulation, but the one that's often used in eco is a pound of square meter cheaper than the other one, which is much better. Why would you put something into someone's home that isn't good, can get, if it gets down, but stays down forever for a pound of square meter? Well, the answer is, because the people procuring that were only interested in the cheapest thing. If you want to buy a laptop or a mobile phone, it's in many ways like, you know, you could equate that to the cladding scandal we've got going on. I mean, a very similar thing. Builders, a lot of developers knew it wasn't the greatest material in the world, but it met the government framework and met building regs. But a lot of them knew it was crap, but it was cheap. And it got used. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't purport to say that I know what people know, but I think it is generally the case that no one in that market particularly cared about the quality. And I got lots of people who came to me saying, I've had this eco stuff done, you know, my house is a mess. Can you fix it? So, which unfortunately the answer was no, we can't. It's not what we do. But typically they would be told, I remember talking to a lady and she said, they just told me what I was having and I could either have it or I couldn't. And if I wanted it, it was their spec, it was their whatever, they were doing it, how they wanted to do it. Because they'd done the calculation, the way you could work was you got paid based on, I think it was actual bill savings, which weren't actually actual bill savings, but it was a kind of notional calculation. So someone would work out the best way for me to make money versus what it costs. is to give you this mix of stuff. And again, that's not what people want. What people want is to be able to say, you might tell me that that's great, but I don't want it. I want this, and I've got a good reason for it, or I've got a bad reason for it, doesn't really matter, but that's what I want. And unfortunately, when you get into things that are government funded, technically ECO was funded by the energy companies, but just was itself a stupid thing 'cause it meant it came onto our bills, and energy bills are incredibly regressive, So there are much higher proportion of poor people's income than income tax. Yeah, I mean, they're insane enough as they are. But I mean, a lot of them are put on to pay as you go, meters which exasperate the situation because they usually even higher tariffs. Yeah. But even if you I mean, a pair as you go is a is a separate and challenging or locked up with smart meters and so on, which I won't go to right now. But but even if you I think currently Nesta has the numbers, but it's something 18% of an electricity bill is policy costs, as they're called. Wow. Now that's what Tice, who by the way, I can't stand, and you don't have to edit that one out. I just... Yeah, not a fan. Not a fan. I just bring it up because I just think it's an interesting debate at the moment. And because we deal a lot in the residential space and obviously particularly landlords and letting agents are a huge part of our audience. has been minimum energy efficiency standards has been a very confused message within our sector for about the last five, six, seven years. The Gold Post keep getting moved, not helped by, like I said, recent statements by Reform about not only their general attitude to energy efficiency and green policies, but also, you know, we've had this, we've got this huge legislation going through this year called the Renters Rights Act, which is the biggest legislative change in our industry for 50 plus years. And they announced the other day that if they come in they're going to repeal it all. Like that helps anyone, but the trouble is it just causes more confusion. It causes more people to delay what they're doing. It means that the kind of rogue element or the kind of worst-performing element, it kind of gives them an excuse to try and cling on and keep trying to do what they do and and hope they get away with it until hopefully they're not required to do it anymore. So yeah, I just kind of bring it up just more as a... - I understood. And I think, I mean, Mies is interesting because actually it is, while landlords probably don't like it, it's quite hard politically to unwind it because it doesn't cost the taxpayer anything. The thing about the 17% whether it is, large schemes for the fuel, poor, low income and vulnerable, which is actually where most of that money comes from. It's not net zero. It's helping poor people not to freeze to death. Maybe not in the best way, but that is where most of that money goes. It should be on general taxation. It shouldn't be on energy bills. But if you look at saying, right, we're not going to subsidize poor people getting their homes improved by two billion quid, well, you can do that. That properties that they'd have to pay for technically under the new rules there's going to be some tax deduction so there is a little bit of cost associated with it but not much. Yeah actually I think that's a harder thing for reform to say unless they are prepared to say which they might say it's not a government tax. And unless it's like well we are voted for by landlords and not by renters in which case you know you could argue that point but it's not a cost. I mean one could argue whether it's the right as you say the goalposts have moved to the goalpost in the right place? Are they structured in the right ways? It's sensible as the timing fair is the incentive there. But I think there's a mix of, unfortunately, in any industry, good landlords who generally have decent properties, but they might be EPCD, not EPCC, and they're going, well, hang on, this really hits me. And then there are some people with renting properties that you just think shouldn't be allowed. Yeah, I think the challenge always is as well, it's obviously a challenge for government, but they often talk about and legislate the PRS, or the rental sector, whatever you can call it, as if it is some sort of single entity, as if a challenge faced by a landlord in Mayfair is the same as the challenge faced by a landlord in Pontypool is the same as as a landlord in the Scottish pilots. And they're absolutely not. So I think that's really interesting now. I believe the spend cap, 'cause they reduced the spend cap, didn't they, for landlords? I think they reduced it to 10,000. - So there were consultations suggested 15, and they've moved it to 10, yeah. But you have to spend that 10 even if you're above it, whereas I believe for the 3,000 that there's currently I believe you could get an exemption that said it was too expensive I don't think you have to spend that money, but the rules on this as their Scheduled is if you're let's say EPC E and it's going to cost you 15,000 to get to EPC C You have to spend the first 10. Yeah, and then that exempts you from spending that for another decade Yeah, but you still have to spend it. You can't just say well my properties too difficult. You have to do what you can Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's gonna it's gonna be really interesting because I mean London is fascinating Obviously, I'm kind of ignoring the new bills in kind of 2000 because they're all all of them should meet that requirement. But I think obviously we've got a lot of period conversion flats. Yep. Things like that. But a lot of what can and cannot be done is dictated by the head lease and the freeholder. So it's going to be really interesting to see how much can actually be done on some of these with the restrictions because a leaseholder ultimately can't do anything outside of what are permitted under the terms of their ownership. Yeah, so I think that there are some exemptions in the MIS consultation response, which I have read, but I confess not in the last however long. So there are some restrictions that if you can't do something or your tenants won't allow you to do something, then you don't have to do it. And I suspect there will be some people who's... Then you've got other caveats listed, buildings, conservation areas, etc. Whatever is permitted. And I suspect some tenants will be encouraged to say they don't want certain things doing. And I suspect some freeholders will quite happily agree that they don't want something doing full stuff. But I think for the most part, I mean, there are an awful lot of properties. So whether it's two point something million that are below EPCC. And that can be anything from I've got 68 points out of 100 and EPCC starts at 69 So you put a 200 pound Google Nest thermostat in the hallway drop down Call the EPC guys back for another hundred pounds Make sure that they mark it as appendix Q which is what they have to do in it and then suddenly you pass through to people who've got you know electric storage heaters or LPG or at some point, but you know, and standard unit only goes up to 15 and a half kilowatts and you know, a simple combi boiler is 28 kilowatts. So that's mainly because it's doing the hot water heating, but gas can go gas like an airplane. You just pump more gas through it. I think what's really interesting actually it was it was after we'd kind of had our online intro and you'd booked in, I actually had a landlord corn in in a bit of a mad panic because of the latest kind of update on means. And I think your product is kind of positioned really well at this moment in time in terms of what I'm finding at the moment is focusing on landlords. What they really want to understand at the moment as you've just highlighted there, there is so much scope of what can and can't be done. I think for most landlords, it's about starting to gain some clarity on that. So I had a landlord call us up the other day who was panicking that this legislation was instant. Yep. And it applied now and he was like, "Oh my God, I don't... He's got two flats and I was like, first of all, calm down, it's 2030." Yep, and October 2030. Yeah, and we're not ones to advocate for leaving things the last minute. Our institution quite often landlords especially don't like to spend money before they have to. Ac rwy'n dweud bod ydy'r cyfn because they then change the goalposts of what would apply in the future, that investment will no longer apply to the latest version of that legislation. And so I think that's one of the problems that we've got is that there are these cautionary tales, there are these people who've got burnt by being proactive, which is what ultimately we want landlords and their managing agents to be. at the same time, it's helping them get prepared. So the conversation I have with the man on the other day is really start now going through the process of understanding, as we've just discussed, what can be done. - Yeah. - A, just generally from an energy efficiency basis and then obviously looking at your type of property, what's permitted, any restrictions, et cetera. Then understand the cost framework of implementing that and obviously what would actually materially be involved in actually delivering whatever those changes are. And then obviously from that, they can then develop some sort of financial plan in terms of how that's gonna be funded, but also have quite a realistic expectation of what that will mean if those works need to take place whilst there is a tenant in situ, again, as you've mentioned, so that there can be total clarity with the tenant of look, happy to do this, but just so you're clear, the house is going to become uninhabitable for a month whilst we do these works, depending on the scale of what it is. - Yeah, and I guess the first point that you raised there about getting that understanding is the bit that's incredibly hard to do. So in general, our industry is built around people who sell stuff. So have you talked to an insulation company, or you want to be fabric first mate, get an insulation, solid wall, yeah, it's fine, but you should always do the walls first. If you don't do the walls, the heat pumps, not going to work, etc. I mean, none of this is true, by the way. If you talk to a heat pump person, don't worry about the insulation, it's totally irrelevant. Just put in the tech and you'll save a ton of money. If you talk to the solar guys, like, all that stuff's nonsense, just bang a load of solar panels on your roof, big old battery, you're in. So actually being able to understand what you should do, you can't get that from an EPC because the EPC says a list of items in order which are both nonsense in that the logic to them is has been designed by committee base just rubbish and then never been a massive fan of the EPCs and the but they're changing it which will come into a minute but but in any event the EPC point is stupid but then if you look at it so if you look at cavity wall insulation for example it will say cost £500 to £1500. Now the reason it uses that number, I hope that is the right number but I'm pretty sure it is, is because that's the average when they did a survey in 2012 or whatever because stuff is... - And your prices haven't changed at all since 2012. - But it's not even that, that's an average. If you have a castle it'll say that your cavity wall insulation will cost £500 to £1500. So because we generally work with rich people they're always like but my APC says this stuff will cost a ground and you're three. Yeah, because your house is more than three times bigger than the average property. It costs more. Equally, if your property is smaller, if you've got a terraced house rather than an end of terraced house, you have less wall, so your cavities are cheaper. So it's really hard for me. PC won't tell you what the price will be at all. It won't tell you, it'll give you a halfway decent view of the energy, but landlords, I won't say they don't care about energy, but that's not necessarily the prime fact because you don't get the benefit if you put solar panels in, you don't connect that. And as you've got a separate supply, you don't connect that to your own source that's going to your tenants and you can't mark up electricity. So there's a challenge of that. But even the EPC, the EPC is done in order. So if it says solid floor insulation, which is madness, no one ever, ever does solid floor insulation as they're taking up the floors anyway to put under floor heating. And that's the only time anyone does it. But it's always like number two on the list if you've got a solid floor. then you can't actually read what the EPC implication of the next thing will be, 'cause you've got that embedded in it, and they're not actually straight additive, they're done in combination. So the EPC is really unhelpful, and if you go to the market, they just tell you what they're selling. And even though the EPC model is being changed to the home energy model, I'm not convinced it's gonna be any better. In fact, I'm pretty convinced it won't be. So what, of course, is what we do, but what people actually need say, well, if I did that and that but not that, and actually for my house or my flat, given what type of property I've got, how big it is, whatever, what can I do? And then as you say, there's the overlay, which actually is quite hard to automate, which is, yeah, but I'm in an area for conservation area or I'm listed, actually, I mean, London, you mentioned obviously has a lot of conservation areas, not as many listed properties, but that can be an added complexity, although government to be fair to it, I'm not often fair to it, but has made certainly heat pumps a little bit easier from houses, not for flats, it's really hard 'cause of the noise wrecks, but they're gonna change those. But solar panels are still a nightmare in conservation areas and it's very dependent on your borough. Newham will let you put them on the front facing the highway, most others won't. Some object even if that you could see it from squinting out of, from half a mile away from some bit of public land. I've had someone in Liverpool where the conservation officer objected, because if you stood in one six foot part of a park, you'd be able to see over two houses, their solar panels. And those two houses had unfinished breeze block garages, sky dishes, all sorts of things. And it's like, but over that crap, you could see four solar panels of this ladies array, which in her back garden and so we now I wrote in to the exit this is Liverpool and you've declared a climate emergency etc you should just let this through and they did but I mean it's just unnecessary and and if you have to do planning you know that's depends but even delightful complexities and nuances of our planning 400 quid for a to submit your plan it's you've got to get someone to do the drawings I mean you could do it yourself but you know so it's listed buildings a couple of thousand pounds planning it's a thousand pounds and that's non-trivial if what you're trying to do is put up four thousand pounds with the solar panels yeah that's like 20% of the total cost yeah it's insane really so so so how do you guys work in terms of this original consultant seat so I think there's going to be a lot of agents and landlords like I said they're wrapping their heads at the moment around Renters Rights Act but But there's so much stuff coming to this industry. We've got Making Tax Digital starting to come in in trenches from April. And then, you know, and then we've got things on the horizon. One of those is Mies and Landlord Dostoev to talk about this. So how do you guys, how does your kind of process work? Is it initial kind of paid for? - So it starts off being free. So you can just go to the website, which is jenus.earth, and you can plug in go and 10 bits of information and we'll give you a rough estimate. So what it does is it builds slightly fancy term digital twin of your building and it runs it through and says these are the if I change that thing if I change that thing what does it do and that model we use all the way through the journey but it's a bit like if you've got a at this point it's like you got a 4k TV and you're feeding it from a VHS video if you remember those so yeah the panel is making up 90% 5% of the pixels because VHS hasn't really low resolution so we're guessing a whole load of stuff at that point and and it does require an update which will come in the next couple of weeks but isn't they yet to SAP 10 which the PCs have just changed to they changed a bit earlier so the if you were looking at it to get a detailed view of your EPC rating, you should probably weigh it a couple of weeks, but it will be plus or minus it'll be there. But to get that accurate, you've got to do an in-person survey. You just have to. We effectively replicate the EPC survey and then we add stuff to it. And you get an EPC as part of that. But we've got all the data. So whereas if you just say, I live in a 1950s house, it might be a 1950s house, but it's got 1990s extension on and a 2010 off conversion and you know that it's like you call up a builder and go I want to fit a new bathroom and you know how much is that going to cost and it's like exactly so so with a survey you know we take hundreds of measurements we do all the stuff essentially that you do it in EPC and we get your measurements for your each room and radiators and so on and then we build an automated report which is more sophisticated than that sounds but basically says right here's is what you could do, long list of stuff, how much each of them we think roughly will cost, what you'd say, what the EPC benefit is, what the level of disruption is, background stuff, and then people, and a recommended set of actions. And what people normally do there is to go either, I don't wanna do anything, just fine, they walk away. Or, I quite like that and that, but I don't wanna do this, and I think that's gonna be a bit more tricky, the council's already told me I can't do this. And then you kind of build that in, we build that into a draft specification for all the bits with the costing on it. And then people pay us again. I mean, the first thing is like 150 quid, it's not huge, but they pay us again to get full design done. That's when we get people out to the property to dig holes in the walls. If you're putting cavity wall insulation in or take up the loft boarding, look at where does the plumbing run, how does stuff work. And then we build a set of quotes which if you accept, obviously, we deliver and then you get that money you paid before back. So the idea is kind of what we try to do is to get as much information to people for as little as possible. It does string it out a bit. I mean, I mean, if I just charged you all the money up front, it would be quicker. But you don't pay much. You pay nothing at all to see the website and it's a unique tool. And obviously, again, I imagine this would vary depending on the size of property. But what typical kind of average cost would you look at for the in-person survey? The in-person survey, the feedback and the report is all in £155, including that. Good. your property is more than 250 square meters because then the survey is charge is more. But a lot of properties will fall into that. Oh yeah. I mean, so if you just bought an EPC, it would probably cost you, I don't know, £800. This includes that. It's £150. We get more data. We actually do something useful with it. We generate a report. I mean, I press a button and it comes out. So it's, I mean, we look at it and say, "Well, I wouldn't do that and I wouldn't do that and I wouldn't do that." And if I knew it was a landlord, and we do work with landlords, not nearly as often as owner occupants obviously, but some people are like... Well, that's about to change dramatically. Well, yeah, but what they want to do, so I've got one landlord, for example, we took an EPC F property to an EPC A. Wow. But it did cost 20,000 quid. And he was just like, this is what I want to do. I think he was a rich chap and he wanted to make a good result for his tenants. We had another property of his which was an EPC-E. We only got it to a C because there was less room for solar panels. Couldn't do the walls. But I mean the F was basically because it had electric heating and that just kills you. In an EPC if you've got electric heating or LPG you're stuffed. So you kind of have to replace it. Which do you think has been a big push to do electric only developments? I mean we're seeing it more and more. So obviously the isn't government going to be getting rid of gas boilers in homes as well. So the future home standard I don't think has come out yet and that was definitely flip flopped enough and I don't do new builds. So the only thing we do with new builds is rip the solar panels off them and put proper ones on which is very counterintuitive. We did a job in Yorkshire, big house, two little panels in. They obviously had to put two panels in to say that everything on the development had solar panels. I think we put 16 panels on his roof. We actually had to take the two out, retile the thing. Why couldn't you just done the job properly in the first place? Yeah, it's a nice house. I mean, there's also interesting innovation I'm fascinated by the solar roof tiles as well. I think that's that's an interesting thing And they're not they're not there and they're definitely not mainstream yet But talking about the cosmetic element and the architectural cosmetic pushback Do you think that there as long as you can still get I don't believe they're as effective Yeah, so it's a great idea. I'm going to disagree with you because they don't and with apologies to anyone Who's going to correct me from the solitare whenever I've looked at them the power output is terrible? Yeah, so the problem is it's a really niche product Yeah So it's similar to and I don't want to go off too much for tangent But air source heat pumps ground source heat pumps ground source used to be the premium Option it was more efficient whatever But only really works in massive houses So obviously all the big companies have looked at R&D and gone, I'm putting it into AirSource because it's small and I can use it on anyone's property. So AirSource is now as efficient as GroundSource, even though it's got structural disadvantage in most cases. So it's a bit like, you know, everyone gave up on plasma TVs 'cause the Korean manufacturers just went, we're gonna make five billion LEDs and then plasma, pioneer and people just went, I can't compete with that. Our technology may be better, but I'm not gonna try. So I think there's a similar thing Solar panels are produced in such insane volume at a global level. We're now getting 495 watts a panel for a standard-sized panel. I put panels in my house in Wimbledon 2008 or 2009, can't remember which. They were 230 So more than twice the power output and the panels now I can buy wholesale I'm not gonna tell you what I can buy them wholesale, but under £100 And I don't want to think about what I paid for mine I mean I do because I got feed-in tariffs and I wanted to do the right thing or whatever But my 2009 array was just rubbish a 2025 array just canes it yeah, so Roof tiles the only real time that they could work I think is in a listed building But even in a listed building, I think it's gonna be really difficult. Yeah, yeah You know, I've got and we've got a listed client who has a 15th century manor house But because he's got a 15th century manor house. We're putting a hundred panels in a field down the other way. We'd never try and put them on his beautiful house. Because it's a beautiful house and the planners would have, I mean they're already kind of like, "Oh, could you move them 10 meters further that way?" But so for those kind of people, you just use big, big panels. But I think, I think tiles probably, I'd say certainly if you're a landlord looking at how do I do stuff. Oh, I didn't, yeah, I wasn't necessarily playing that into, it's a viable solution right now in this space. I just see it's, yeah, it's something interesting 'cause the cosmetic element comes up a lot, whether it's planning or just purely cosmetic. - So in-roof is really interesting, most people don't do. So that's when you take the tiles off and you recess the panels in and effectively they're kind of flushed, particularly with like a slate roof, they can look really good 'cause you've got just the thing runs across. The thing about in-roof, particularly again, if you're looking at something like, if you have to re-roof anyway, which periodically happens. So a square meter of slate, if you're going for slate, something like 55 pounds of square meter, solar panel is 1.97 square meters. So my panel is 100 pounds, your slate is 100 pounds for the same amount of space before you've got the roof or in or whatever. So actually by filling up a roof with solar panels, you can materially reduce your re-roofing costs and you got scaffolding up at the same time. And that's a big cost 'cause our panels have got really cheap, but scaffolders have not. Yes. Plumbers and electricians as Gaffildas cost the same as they always did. It's an interesting stat, a bit of a tangential. I saw an interesting stat the other day. The fastest growing job in the US right now, both in terms of job opportunities but also increased pay, is electricians. Well, I mean electrification in general is becoming, home electrification is becoming a big thing. Not just for... Well, the digitalization of everything as well. I mean, it plays into everything, right? It's data sentences. - There's commercial side, but even residential. I mean, you've got like smart home technology, you've got LED lighting, people switching over, which is just more complex than the old incandescent mob you just screwed in. I mean, electricians are busy. My home electrician who's got nothing to do with my business, I've been trying to get since November to fix some stuff that's wrong with my, just can't get him booked. He's like, "I'm really sorry Simon, I'm just super busy." And I'm sure he will be. One of the things we will come to about leaving stuff to the end is in 2029 or 2030 March, if you call someone up and say, "Oh, I want to get some solar panels and some cavity wall insulation." - They'll laugh. They'll laugh if you're like, "I'm doing two years." - I'll say for the second I can do it, but not October the first, not for that, and that's the deadline. So actually when you've got people, whereas right now with the end of ECO, which we talked about earlier, the market actually needs some business. So now's the time to get, I would suggest, to get these prices. Plus, if you get an EPC now, up until I think it's 1st October 29, it will be valid for the next 10 years. If you wait until after the new EPC comes in, we don't know what that will look like. So it may be that what would have cost you £500 today will cost you £5,000 then because the metrics will look different. Equally, of course, if it is going to cost you £10,000 today, maybe you want to wait and see if you you can put in a new time of use electric boiler 'cause that might get allowed in and that gets you through. So I'm not encouraging people to do stuff right now but if you've got an easy solution or you've got established technologies that will do stuff and particularly if you've got a tenant break 'cause a lot of what we do does require going inside the house. - Well, trouble is from first to May, there are no tenant breaks. - Well, no, but I mean, if someone's leaves. So if you've got, you know that next year, that dies out, schedule something in, as well as doing the kind of tender standard clean. - I think the preparation is actually even more important now 'cause at the moment landlords have a kind of known break. The challenge from the first to May onwards in the general rental market is that those breaks disappear, tendencies become periodic and indefinite. So unless a landlord sells or reoccupies, they cannot serve notice. - Right. than a breach of contract. Whereas a tenant can, which is why not only is it good business sense to get prepped now to understand cost-wise, but also as we touched on earlier, understanding logistically what that work looks like, but to have that so that the idea might be to plan to do those works in 2028. But you have a tenant serve notice late 2027, you go, "Do you know what?" I'm gonna get it done. I'm just gonna get it done. Yeah, I know what the cost is. Let's get it done It's locked in and then I don't have this problem I mean some Landl's at the same time might turn around and go well if a tenant's in and it's large-scale works And the tenants are like I'm not moving out and I can't live in an uninhabitable home And then I'll go all fine with the tenants not letting us do the work Yeah, and that's an exemption. Yeah, but indeed but but if the tenant then turns around and says no I do want that Yeah stuff it's because the other thing about minimum energy efficiency standards is is although there's a piece of paper that says you know or a digital record that says EPCC For the most part the way PC's work is they are designed to reflect the cost of Occupation which is why big houses is very hard to get to EPCC unless you've got so big solar arrays Just because they're more expensive strong because they're big and why little flats are generally particularly modern ones generally a or b So, you know, a tenant might well say, well, actually, that stuff that you're going to do is going to save me money. They might say, I don't want a heat pump because I've heard Nigel Farage saying that they're the devil's work. I'm not sure that he has said that, by the way, but if he were to say it. But let's not forget, I mean, we've got what, 97% of the world scientists agreeing on climate change, on manmade climate change, and 3% not. And there's a lot of people People who are very happy to go with the 3% It's way more than 99% That was because they did I've actually read some papers on this that they originally people there was a period where they did all these reviews where people didn't explicitly say climate change is a real thing So all academics a few years ago were told if you're writing in the field of climate change science your first sentence effectively has to be there is no doubt about anthropogenic climate change because then they didn't get It wasn't 3% disagreed, it was 3% didn't state an opinion. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But, I mean, even sticking to that metric, you know. - Whether you believe in climate change or not, I mean, the good thing about an intelligent retrofit, which is the term we call it, is you save money. So, what I generally say, not in the landlord market, but the owner-occupied market, is if you've got the funds to do it, the only reason not to do this stuff if you hate the planet more than you like making money. And if you stop and think about how many people, even Donald Trump likes making money more than he hates the planet. So actually, most people just go, and we have plenty of clients who are millionaires, you just go, yeah, 10% post tax. And there is a messaging to landlords on this as well, because the traditional rental model is that you charge rent for the property and the tenant pays the bills. Of course, there is a different way to do this, whereas you make your property more efficient and you rent your property all-inclusive with utilities, which is permitted. Yes, so I think you will know more than rules and ideas. You're not allowed to mark up utilities, but you are allowed to. You can't mark up utilities, but you can offer an all-encompassing service. The challenge on that is just that it then doesn't incentivize people to be careful with what they... Yes, although I know people who've got reasonable use caps within their tenancy agreement. So they look at historical usage in the property. You know, most of the properties we've got, we've got check-in and check-out meter readings for all the utilities, a lot of our properties we've handled for at least 10 years, if not our 22 years of operation. So we know, we know what average energy usage looks like in 90% of our stock. So we could, we don't do this at the moment, but we talked about it when bills spiked and also during COVID, when we were looking at ways to kind of simplify things. We did explore quite a lot of this. And we were like, well, you know, if we wanted to do it ethically, which is how we approach everything as an agency, we were like, you know, there's gotta be wins for both sides, but there's gotta be transparency. And the fair usage thing, we were like, really the fairest way when we've got four properties that we have that data for, which is the vast majority of ours, you know, we can go, look, we've managed this for 10 years, energy usage over that 10 years is X. And we could even apply that to go, well, these five years there was one person living there and these other five years there was a couple living there and we could even, you know, - So you can do it. I think that the challenge is first of all that, you know, people can just say, well, the last people might have been happy to live in 18 degrees, but- - I mean, it's also exposure. - I'm not. - You're also at the risk of what happens with utility costs. - I was gonna say, the second thing is you've got, you know, bills have changed dramatically in the last few years and it's an exposure that I think is quite risky. The third thing is that I was talking to someone, I'm not going to name who they were, but they gave me the number of what and they should know the current energy debt is in the UK of unpaid bills. And I'm not going to say exactly how much because probably confidential information, but it's several billion pounds that we owe as a collective group to our energy companies. So the alternative view, and again I'm not advocating for this, but is to say if you put up for example a four kilowatt peak solar panel array on your MCS certificate, which you'll get because that's what you have to do, it will say the expected production of this is 3,200 units per year, 3,200 kilowatts hours per year. Depends on the angle where you're located, as you say Scotland, Pontypool, Mayfair are not the same. But on that basis, you know what that tenant is getting as a benefit and to the extent that over time you can think throughout your rental strategy. Here is a rental that will cost you £500 less to run per year because British gas or octopus or whoever is going to give you 15p back at the minimum for what you don't use. even if you use nothing at all, you can tell that 3,200 pounds is worth, 3,200 units, sorry, it's worth 450 quid. And if you use it all yourself at 27p, then it's worth, I'm gonna do the maths in my head, 6,700 pounds. So actually this rental, I'm not gonna charge you for that, it's absolutely yours, but this is a more valuable property. And it's got, it's warmer, it's got better radiators. It's, so a lot of what, the mindset that we're trying sell to an owner-occupier, which is make your property better, more comfortable, warmer, lower cost to run, higher compliance, whatever, more valuable. That one is really tricky to prove, by the way. Unfortunately, I wish it were true, but unfortunately, it's not obvious that this stuff makes your property more valuable to sell. Although, for Bytelec landlords, the nationwide is quite interesting analysis that did say that... Who would argue would be it's more desirable? Yeah, so what the estate agents all say to us is that you can sell an energy efficient house property more quickly, but not for necessarily more money. Yeah. So there'll be somebody who just goes, I don't care. I want a solid stone 18th century barn. And I kind of want to put an argument and to live like that. That's my call. But there'll be a lot of other people just go, I am not touching that because it's an EPCF and its bills are going to be £5,000 a year. and I'll buy the slightly newer building that's got lots of glass in it and is different and is gonna cost me a thousand pounds to wrap it. And if you're looking at two properties that are equivalent in a situation where you've got street and one's got solar panels and double glazing and insulation and big radiators and a heat pump and it's a battery, that's probably gonna be the property you'd rather buy than the one that is a fixer-upper unless you're in the market for a fixer-upper. But those are gonna be hard to rent anyway because those are typically under-occupiers who don't do anything with their properties for a long period of time. So I think there's a strategy, as you say, of what do I think about my properties? Do I lock in a new EPC tomorrow or in two years' time or whatever? 'Cause I know I'm 64 points and I can see that all I have to do is this and this. We had a landlord about a year ago who cavity wall would just tip him up. This was before Miserday even happened. And his tenants didn't want any interior works, but we got permission that we scaffold and we do the cavity wall from outside. Tenant never actually opened the door to us. We just turned up, did the work. So, you know, you've got different things that you could do. You're not going to be able to take up a floor when you've got someone in the property because you have to take everything out of it. But the good news is floor insulation kind of never makes sense unless you've got back to London, if you've got an exposed basement or something, you can do it from there, but taking up floors, I mean, sure, if you're gonna do it, think about adding to it, make sure you get evidence because EPCs will only count what you can evidence, whether it's building regs or certificates. So if you say, oh yeah, I did that ceiling, but I did it myself and then I put plaster on it, they'll go uninsulated brackets assumed and you've got nothing for it. So always make sure that you've, I would say this course, employed someone to do stuff or at least got evidence that it's been done. And then choose, do you do it now? Do you do it later? Do you look at it now? I think this is really painful. I might exit the property, I might move on. There's obviously an exemption if the property's worth less than 100,000 pounds on the 10,000 pounds piece, but not many are. So for most people, if they just think, I really don't wanna do this, maybe don't put it on the market in July, 2029, 2030, sorry, because there'll be a whole load of other EPCD properties on the market at that point, and there won't be that many owner occupiers wanting to move. So think about your strategy and plan what you want to do because it will be different for everyone. - Yeah, interesting. Well, look, I think that's been a really fascinating chat. I'm aware that you've got another meeting to get to. I mean, I'm really interested, it's been fascinating to learn a little bit more, And I can say, our wheelhouse, we always kind of look at a lot of things through the lettings lens, the residential lettings lens, but also generally prop tech, anything around that is really exciting. But I think it's a really interesting kind of time for what you're offering. I mean, literally sat here listening to you. I've been like, well, we can start. We've already got a list of like our worst offenders, ones that are red flags, ones that amber flagged and you know I'm already in my head great we can start going through the free online digital twin assessment to begin with and then we can start the conversations with landlords about getting the new EPC survey done with those works and start building that picture really really interesting and I think you know for a lot of people listening to this I think me as an energy efficiency within our sector is something that you know I could say we're aware of and it's been constantly bubbling away in the background and whatever your position is on energy efficiency and the green economy and everything else from a political or social standpoint as an industry this is something that is categorically coming down the line. But I think at the moment A there is a lot of confusion. I absolutely loved your point about you know if you approach each of these entities directly your cavity wall insulation, airpunks, whatever, they are there to sell a product and a service and the nature of the beast is they're probably going to poo poo everything else because they desperately want you to buy what they're selling. I think absolutely, I can absolutely see the value in an entity like yourselves that can help facilitate that work but fundamentally at the start, as here to go, hear all your options and like you said, here's the kind of improvement basis, here's our approximate cost to implement it. And I think, you know, whether you're an agent advising a client or whether you're a landowner trying to wrap your head around this at the moment, that is that, you know, that's a huge win in terms of just having that kind of, yeah, that kind of autonomy and that transparency on what their options are, what the realities of that, like I said, cost and results wise and a better understanding of the impact on the property on a potential tendency, etc. So a lot of it is just about preparation and planning with a lot of these things. So we're really exciting. I'm really glad you came in today. It's been fascinating to learn a lot more about Genius and your journey. And yeah, I'm definitely pretty much with the back of this. I'm going to be briefing our property management team to start to start having a tinker so and so yeah guys hopefully you found that interesting as well I will drop a link in when this goes live but it is genus.geno us.ai.air.ai will try and auto correct it because it doesn't believe we're a word but yeah resist the yeah genus.air.ai. Yeah so go on have a look check it out I'm going to start playing with the digital twins almost immediately, start seeing what we get back. And yeah, if you, you know, whatever you find, give us some feedback, it'd be great to hear what people see. I've had science been an absolute pleasure having you in. - Very good. - Thanks so much. Guys, thanks ever so much for joining us again, and I hope you catch up soon. All the best. Bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]