May

Tech firm gets public cash to help portfolio landlords improve energy efficiency

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Proptech company Propflo is working with BTL mortgage lenders to help portfolio landlords make their properties more energy efficient.

It has been given a grant by Innovate UK to encourage lenders to explore initiatives such as encouraging retrofitting in their products, creating buyer groups to lower installation costs, and providing tools so landlords can better understand the case for improvements and investment.

Propflo explains that although lenders can influence and enable energy efficiency upgrades, the investment case currently isn’t clearly presented, while there’s also a lack of ongoing engagement after a retrofit, and little automated verification and monitoring to show the real impact.

Proposals

The company has already engaged with more than 20 lenders and will now develop proposals for a phase 2 demonstration with one or more lenders in the buy-to-let, residential and shared ownership sectors. The project will also involve lettings agents, mortgage brokers, and landlords.

According to founder and CEO Luke Loveridge (main picture, centre), this will help lenders and landlords meet looming regulatory changes while forward-thinking lenders should see it as an opportunity to help them win and retain more business by adding value for their customers.

“We’re focusing on mortgage lenders as they now have to report on the energy efficiency of their back book and have a voluntary target to decarbonise this,” he tells LandlordZONE.

“It is primarily about providing as much support as possible and lowering the barriers to retrofitting for landlords, by leveraging the scale of lenders. We want to work with lenders to explore financial incentives in the project, but this isn’t the primary focus.”

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