“We know more than a mixer”
Buying a home is an important decision, but it is not always made with sufficient information. This was reported this Tuesday by the General Council of Technical Architecture of Spain (CGATE) and the Observatory of Electrical Rehabilitation of Housing in Spain (OREVE), which presented a report on the decarbonization of the residential sector in which it is stated that 51% of buyers do not know what condition the home they are purchasing is in. That is why both organizations demand that a prior technical report be required in second-hand apartment transactions—which are the majority—so that the new owner knows what he is buying.
According to the study published this Tuesday – prepared from a survey of 200 technical architects from all over Spain -, 41.5% of buyers are barely aware of the state of conservation of the property and its facilities and 9.2% are not at all aware of the real situation, to which is added 39% who are “half aware”. Only 10.2% are completely or fairly aware of the state of the home.
“We know more about a mixer than about the home that is purchased,” ironically stated the director of the CGATE Technical Office, Juan López-Asiain, in the presentation of the report, who clarified that in new construction apartments, “very high” quality standards are guaranteed, but he recalled that 60% of the building stock in Spain dates back to before the 1980s and was built long before many of the current technical requirements appeared, such as those that exist in matters of accessibility, fire protection, climatic comfort or energy efficiency, for example. According to INE data, So far this year, around 422,300 apartments have been sold, 78% second-hand.
“Has any buyer ever visited a home and opened the electrical panel? And if they opened it, would they know if it was good or bad? Or if the installations are made of lead?” exemplified López-Asiain, who recognized that the criteria that prevail when purchasing an apartment are price and location. “A second-hand home is a very important investment and we have very little information,” he stressed, adding that this lack of information can lead to additional costs in the long term, such as, for example, an “energy mortgage” due to deficiencies in its installation. “When we buy a home, we fight to get half a point differential in the Euribor, but we don’t know how much consumption the home has and the electricity bill is something that will only go up and that we will pay until the month after we die,” he said.
A report before buying
Given this situation, the report presented this Tuesday proposes that a technical analysis is required when purchasing a used homewhich details the condition of the property and its facilities to protect the buyer, encourage informed decision-making and ensure that the price of the apartments adjusts to their real circumstances.
“We need to give information to the buyer,” defended the CGATE spokesperson, who pointed out that this requirement already exists in countries like France or Denmark and that in Anglo-Saxon countries, although it is not mandatory, it is also common to have the judgment of a technician. “In France it is mandatory that there be a report stating How is the electrical installation, the gas installation, if there are termites, if there is asbestosif there is radon… these are things that can cause health and safety problems in the future. That does not exist here and perhaps it would be time to create it,” he stated, recalling that the housing law establishes that the buyer has the right to receive all relevant information about the apartment he or she purchases.
In López-Asiain’s opinion, this data on the state of the property and its facilities should be collected in a separate document from the energy efficiency certificate that currently exists, in which he also sees room for improvement. “The certificate is a measure that was put in place with very good intentions, but it has not worked because the citizen does not know how to interpret it and it is seen as just another administrative procedure to comply with,” agreed Óscar Querol, spokesperson for the Observatory and general director of the Association of Electrical Material Manufacturers (AFME), in the presentation of the report.
The study points out that the lack of information on the part of buyers usually has consequences later when it comes to facing the renovation of the home, producing a gap between the improvements that the owner wants to undertake and those that the property needs from a technical point of view. In fact, in 51% of the rehabilitations the owners’ requests only partially coincide with what the home requires and a third are “very far” from the real needs. Only in 15% of cases do the owner’s expectations and the technical criteria of what the property needs in rehabilitation coincide.
