On July 1, 2021, France is just emerging from long months of restrictions. Summer is looming, and the French certainly do not have the head to dive into the new energy performance diagnosis (DPE) which comes into force that day. This tool, created in 2006, provides information on the energy performance of a home and, in particular, guides choices for renovation work. The DPE is displayed on real estate advertisements and is systematically appended to sales and rental contracts.
Since July 1, 2021, the DPE has lost its merely informative character to become fully enforceable. A revolution for the real estate sector. The new legislation has major impacts for professionals as well as individuals, owners and tenants. The DPE is indeed transformed into an arbiter of the value of a property. “The Carrez law (Editor’s note: on the surface area of housing) has an extremely high impact on the value of a property and this is now also the case with the DPE”, underlines to L’Express Thierry Marchand. The former president of the Chamber of real estate diagnosticians FNAIM (CDI-FNAIM), diagnostician in Brittany, wishes to recall that the DPE is “not a tool that will calculate people’s energy consumption”. “It should rather be called environmental performance diagnosis”, he believes.
The effect of the Climate and Resilience law, which gradually prohibits the rental of the most energy-intensive accommodation, is beginning to be felt. Housing labeled F or G, the two worst classes in the DPE, thus represented 17% of sales concluded in the third quarter of 2022, compared to 11% a year earlier, according to calculations by the Higher Council of Notaries presented on December 15, 2021.
Housing classified G will be prohibited for rental in 2025, and has even been so since January 2023 for the most energy-intensive, that is to say consuming more than 450 kilowatt hours per square meter per year. The Fs, also considered thermal sieves, will be so in 2028 and the Es in 2034. Without waiting for these deadlines, poorly rated properties begin to suffer a discount on the real estate market.
“It’s a bit like Russian roulette”
The diagnosis made by professionals is therefore of major importance. Hoping, however, that the class assigned to the accommodation, through a letter, is not incorrect. The DPE, “it’s a bit of Russian roulette”, illustrates with L’Express Christophe Demerson, president of the National Union of Independent Owners (Unpi), an association which advises and defends property owners. “The method of calculation should be indisputable”, he adds, because, “given the stakes and the sums granted, we cannot do anything”.
In May 2022, 60 million consumers revealed that, “for the same house, five diagnosticians do not lead to the same result”, with “at least two different letters, and sometimes three” for the energy labels. “Surface error, doors or windows forgotten, insulation poorly taken into account, heating and hot water production poorly evaluated… The results are not flattering for the profession”, estimated the magazine. In September 2022, UFC-What to choose revealed that out of seven houses tested, six obtained different energy classes. Worse: one of them was assigned labels ranging from “B” to “E”. “Consumers are therefore largely deprived today to make a confident connection with a diagnostician”, regretted the association.
“For the same property, two diagnosticians do not make the same diagnosis”, regrets to L’Express Marcel Crasnier. This owner of several small rental properties located in Maine-et-Loire, also administrator of Unpi 49, obtained two different labels, two years apart, between 2019 and 2021, for two apartments which came from to be redone: E and D as well as F and E. However, these dwellings had not undergone any work in the meantime.
Christophe Demerson evokes a similar story, for “a small house completely renovated”. “It was classified F even though we couldn’t do better in terms of carpentry,” he explains. Surprised by this allocation, he sent the file to the office of Emmanuelle Wargon, former Minister Delegate in charge of Housing. “They ran the software and they put it in E,” he says.
A revised calculation method
Thierry Marchand refutes the idea that diagnostic errors are “legion”. “Three classes of difference in the letter of appreciation of the DPE, it is impossible”, he underlines. On the other hand, when two classes are very close, such as F and E, there can be different appreciations”, he admits. Moreover, “some professionals do not go to the end of the required quality and some do not have not yet understood the impact that this tool has on the property”, he laments. The former president of the CDI-FNAIM does not underestimate the damage linked to possible errors either: “A difference class has enormous consequences.”
The DPE calculation method was completely revised on July 1, 2021. The overhaul made it possible to go from “14 measurement tools to a single universal tool”, welcomes Thierry Marchand. Before July 2021, in the old buildings, professionals mainly established their diagnoses from electricity and gas bills, particularly for buildings built before 1948. “We based ourselves on the occupants’ energy bills, we divided by the living area and we obtained an energy rating”, explains Thierry Marchand. According to this professional, around 25% of the DPEs, known as “virgin”, did not include any mention, since the diagnosticians did not have the energy bills.
In the wake of the launch of the new DPE, the number of “thermal sieves” exploded unexpectedly, in particular for those built before 1975. Alerted by the professional federations, the government urgently suspended the publication of DPEs at the end September 2021 for homes built before 1975. A new version of the DPE was launched in November 2021.
According to the government, the overhaul of the DPE, whose “calculation method is unified and made more reliable”, makes it “more readable, easier to understand and more complete”. This DPE “takes better account of the issue of the fight against climate change in the rating of housing, with a double energy-carbon threshold to determine the energy label”, estimated the executive July 1, 2021.
The diagnostic tool now uses the same method as that used for the most recent housings. Thierry Marchand reviews the various stages allowing to make a diagnosis, in particular “the measurement of the real surface” of the good and “the measurement of the walls, the walls, the windows, which are characterized by 14 control points”. “He will then enter all this data into software,” he explains.
Populated default values
“A lot of diagnosticians say: ‘I don’t have any data so I’m putting in default values’. But that’s not what we’re asking of them, regrets Thierry Marchand. the documents of the owners and, if ever they do not have them, they must put a value by default. It must be done in this sense, and not the other way around.” The former president of the CDI-FNAIM advises owners to keep all documents. Because if the building was built before 1974 and the assessor does not have information on the insulation of the property, the professional will consider that it is not isolated and will classify it “as if it were a house built in the years 1920-1930”.
In addition, the DPE tends to heavily penalize small areas, as Christophe Demerson and Thierry Marchand regret. “We would have to find technical solutions, with a weighting system, so that the notes are not catastrophic”, wishes Thierry Marchand.
Faced with distrust, the Minister Delegate for Housing, Olivier Klein, estimated on February 2 on Sud Radio that the DPE “must be reliable” and promised “more checks”. One of the avenues envisaged is the strengthening of training to carry out energy diagnoses. It only lasts three days, compared to two weeks fifteen years ago. “The training is insufficient, recognizes Thierry Marchand, specifying that around 5,000 real estate diagnosis firms exist in France, 60% of which have a single professional. “At the beginning, the training was strong, but, over the years, the training carried out by the organizations have become cramming”, notes the former president of CDI-FNAIM. However, he defends a profession “permanently controlled”, governed by “a lot of texts”, with a professional certificate renewed every seven years.
This will probably not prevent the multiplication of legal actions. As noted The world, real estate lawyers are seeing more and more property buyers coming into their offices who feel they have been cheated by a misleading energy label. The opposable nature of the DPE could therefore lead to a massification of litigation. Insurers, whose “professional civil liability” contract covers diagnosticians, have understood this. As the daily recalls, the mutual company MMA thus terminated on January 1, 2023 the contract subscribed by the Interprofessional Federation of Real Estate Diagnosis (FIDI). If it remains present on this market, the Axa group recognizes for its part that it will become more selective and will only work with quality players.