Energy efficiency should be paramount, even for Londoners

Why is energy efficiency so low on the Londoner's property purchase priority list?

By David Field

According to a recent poll, those purchasing a property in London consider energy efficiency to be the least important thing when looking for a property.

Not living in London, I suppose I don't really appreciate the nuances of the London lifestyle demands that would lead to developing such an opinion, but nonetheless, it makes little sense.

Of course, I recognise that property prices in London are soaring, and for those with one eye out for a potentially lucrative investment opportunity that will so most likely result from an investment in property in London, even in today's climate, I can see why other factors such as location, size and transport links take precedent.

However, it is on the basis of this latter principal of size that this recent report actually fails to make sense to me.

London is of course inundated with some spectacular period properties that have been restored or kept in spanking condition from almost every housebuilding era both before and after the reign of Queen Victoria.

So of course, there are bound to be a select few who go to great lengths to find a period property that they can enjoy.

However, I submit that these are few and far between - and with the popularity of London as a financial centre as much as it is a centre of architectural design, if not more so - there is far from a shortgage of property developers trying to make the most they can out of a property.

What I'm getting at is our treasured capitals emphasis on space. In fact, according to that same survey, property in central London sells for an average of £1,000 per square foot.

Disgusting as this is for someone like me living in one of our less popular cities, this is the way it is.

But what seems to follow from this is that, unless you have an awful lot of money, then the amount of feet that your property occupies is going to be effected by price.

Taking Mr Average as our buyer - adding the appropriate London weighting - it escapes me that energy efficiency would be bottom of the list when the size of the property is going to be smaller anyway.

Surely energy efficiency comes with territory of a tiny purchase - a particularly small territory in this case.

If I was forking out London prices for a dinky flat in central London, then not only would energy efficiency pop into my mind, but good energy efficiency would also be a natural consequence of the cosy purchase anyway.

But perhaps because energy efficiency is a convenient addition to purchasing property in London, people tend not to think about it.

If this is the case, then the poll is slightly misleading, because energy efficiency is clearly not something Londoners need to worry about, especially if they're cuddled on each side by four other flats.

Nonetheless, if I were to venture in to the property market in London, I'd make sure energy efficiency was the top of my list, not least because I would have spent so much on the property in the first place, I'd want to save money.