When was the last time you went into a shop and instead of looking at the price tag for an item or service and just paying up, you asked for a lower price?

The art of ‘haggling’ where a negotiation takes place between buyer and seller to arrive at a mutually acceptable price is a skill which has been allowed to wane. There are many reasons. Some of us don’t have the time to argue and many of us are too embarrassed or just fear having our offer rejected. Internet shopping also gives us little or no chance to ask for a discount. Have you ever tried to talk to a human being at Amazon, for example?

Yet, while there is plenty of encouragement to find the cheapest deals, the prices are set by the sellers. How much of a better deal could you get if you just asked for a lower price?

This is particularly pertinent to the charging for car breakdown cover. In a previous newsletter, we talked about new legislation to stop insurers from funding massive first year discounts on car and home insurance from existing customers paying premiums which escalate every year. The new law did not include breakdown cover where the evidence of existing customers subsidising premiums for new customers is very clear.

The majority of car owners have private breakdown cover. Currently you can pay a minimum of £95.00 for vehicle recovery and any amount from £180 for motorway roadside assistance and recovery. We all know that having private breakdown cover provides peace of mind, but are you aware of whether your current provider is increasing your premium while enticing new customers with a much lower price for exactly the same cover?

When you receive your next renewal letter and are unhappy with the cost, pick up the phone and either ask why your premium is so high, or say that you are looking at alternative quotes from competitor providers.

In many cases, your existing provider will offera new lower quote which could save you a considerable amount of money. If everyone queried their renewal quotes, premiums would tumble across the board. Until the law catches up and includes breakdown cover along with the car and home insurance to stop the exploitation of existing customers, it is up to us to haggle!

WHAT YOU CAN DO

With the government committed to reducing greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, what can we do individually or as family units to ‘do our bit’?

Heating and other activities in domestic homes are responsible for 15 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK, so let’s look at what measures we could take to make our homes more efficient and potentially save on our energy bills.

Insulation
Poor insulation leads to 45 per cent of heat loss. Cavity wall insulation stores heat within inner walls, while loft insulation sits between the joists in the roof space. Also consider floor insulation too.

Costs vary depending on house size, but budget for £500 to £1,000. Consumer body Which? and the Energy Saving Trust calculate you could pay for it with reduced energy bills after five years.

Solar Power
Solar panels convert sunlight into electricity and can be a way of reducing your electricity bills by selling electricity generated by your panels to the National Grid under the Smart Export Guarantee tariffs scheme. 

Depending on the size of your roof and the number of panels you have, prices can start from £5,000 for a three bedroom house. However, effective capture of solar energy depends on the weather and the siting of the panels. The best position is on a south facing roof. Therefore, it can take anywhere between ten and twenty years to recoup initial costs in electricity bill savings, at existing rates.

Double Glazing
Double or triple glazing will help cut energy bills but, without blinds and particularly if the windows are south facing, double glazing can magnify the effect of sunshine and cause overheating. 

Double glazing a typical three bedroom home is likely to cost between £5,000 – £7,000.

Low energy lighting
According to research from the Energy Saving Trust, if all 28 million homes in Britain switched to 100% LED bulbs, we could save 1.7 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually. Replacing every bulb in a typical house with LED lights could cut carbon dioxide emissions by 75 per cent.

A traditional halogen bulb lasts around two years or 2000 hours, based on three hours’ daily use. An LED under similar conditions lasts 10,000 hours upwards, for 10 years or longer. You can save £2 to £3 per year for every traditional halogen bulb you switch to a similarly bright LED bulb.

Upgrading a boiler
Modern gas boilers can save you money, particularly if you have an older model, as well as reduce the amount of CO2 emitted. Upgrading to a new modern combi boiler is likely to save you between 20-35% on your gas bills. The older the boiler, the less efficient it will be, so a new one can start to instantly repay your costs by reducing heating costs immediately.

‘A’ rated boilers including installation can start from £1,000-£2,000.

Currently a Leasehold Reform Bill is being debated in parliament that will abolish ground rents charged on all new build property.

Not to be confused with standard monthly rent paid to the owner of the property, ground rent is a rental charge attached to the ground on which the property sits. It is paid annually or half yearly, and failure to pay can result in the freeholder seeking to obtain possession.

The Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill will put an end to ground rents for new, qualifying, long residential leasehold properties in England and Wales. This is part of the most significant changes to property law in a generation.

It will be the first of two part legislation to reform the leasehold system. This Bill will mean that if any ground rent is demanded as part of a new residential long lease, it cannot be for more than one peppercorn per year (notional value) meaning that future leaseholders will not be faced with financial demands for ground rent. The Bill also bans freeholders from charging administration fees for collecting a peppercorn rent. Fines of up to £5,000 will be levied on freeholders that charge ground rent in contravention of the Bill. 

Some leaseholders have experienced ground rents doubling every ten years on top of their mortgage and any service charges, with no prospect of ever selling the property on. Their only way out has been to buy the freehold, only to discover this is yet another area targeted by the profiteers.

Developers, including some household names, have been selling newly built flats (and houses) as leasehold, creating high annual ground rents and including provisions in leases for the rent to be increased – sometimes doubled – after a certain period of time.  A number of buyers of this type of property have, quite often, been told by the builder that they would be given the opportunity to buy the freehold at a later time before the builder developing the site, only to find that, when they try to buy the freehold, the builder has already sold it to an investment company. Critics of the bill are rightly complaining that it does not go far enough, because existing leaseholders are not included in the new Bill as it is currently structured.

Many of us have sheds in our gardens. Some were probably inherited when we moved house and are versatile enough to be a gardener’s store, a hobby sanctuary or just a place to keep bicycles and other items that won’t fit anywhere else.

However, there has been a rise in the number of structures for our outdoor spaces, which provide for less utilitarian purposes. Garden rooms provide an extra space which, when kitted out properly, can become a home office or a second room for relaxation.

After the initial enthusiasm to adopt a garden room and extend the versatility and usefulness of your property, there are several things to consider.

Most garden rooms don’t require planning permission. Being classed as outbuildings, you are permitted to build one as long as you comply with certain rules.

Permitted development rights
Most properties have this automatically. However, if the property is in a National Park, a World Heritage Site or a conservation area, it could be in a designated area where development of a property or the erection of outbuildings are not permitted, or require separate permission. It is a good idea to check with your local planning office. Maisonettes and flats don’t have permitted development rights because of the communal aspect. The rules are the same whether you live in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales.

Planning rules
Under permitted development, there are rules to follow:-

• The garden room must not be at the front of the house
• The total area of all external structures including sheds, extensions and outbuildings must not exceed 50% of the outside area surrounding the house
• The room or cabin must be single storey and less than three metres in height. The eaves must be no more than 2.5 metres above ground level.
• The room must not be for self-contained living accommodation
• The room must not have a balcony, veranda or raised platform.

Garden rooms as offices
Using a garden room as an office also presents no issues, provided it is for incidental use for working alone at a computer, for example.

However, being mindful of changing the character of a neighbourhood, councils will not approve garden offices where business meetings or appointments will be hosted.

Retrospective planning permission can be applied for, but councils can order the removal of a garden office if the rules are not met.

In summary, garden rooms rarely require planning permission, provided the basic rules on size and usage are observed. However, if in doubt, check with your local authority.

(The figures given are for England & N. Ireland only. In Scotland and Wales, the figures may vary)

The stamp duty (SDLT) holiday, introduced in July 2020, was designed to stimulate the housing market by cancelling or reducing stamp duty payments on house purchases during the holiday period when the nil band for residential properties was increased from £125,000 to £500,000.

The holiday was extended from its original end date of 31^st March and officially ended on 30^th June. Rather then reimpose the full tariff straight away from July 1^st, the Treasury has reduced the impact of an immediate return to the standard tariff by reducing the nil band from £500,000 to £250,000 and then from 1st October, reducing it further back to its pre- holiday level of £125,000.

From 1 July, stamp duty will only be applicable above £250,000 at the following rates:

• £0-£250,000 = 0%
• £250,001-£925,000 = 5%
• £925,001-£1,500,000 = 10%
• £1,500,000+ = 12%

From 1 October 2021, rates are due to return to normal. That means the point you to start paying stamp duty will revert back to £125,001:

• £0-£125,000 = 0%
• £125,001-£250,000 = 2%
• £250,001-£925,000 = 5%
• £925,000-£1,500,000 = 10%
• £1,500,000+ = 12%

The stamp duty holiday has certainly been a huge incentive for buyers. For some it meant saving as much as £15000. It also proved to be attractive for BTL landlords even though they were still having to pay the usual 3% surcharge which also applies to all second home buyers.

The main driver for the jump in house buying, apart from the stamp duty holiday, has been the pent up demand caused by lockdowns and the desire of urban dwellers to seek more space after experiencing the day to day claustrophobia of being cooped up in confined spaces with little or no access to open air spaces.

One side effect of the rush to buy has been to accelerate the rise in house prices as the supply of property could not keep up with the demand. Subsequently, UK house prices rose on an average by 13.4% in the year to June, according to the Nationwide Building Society. In popular areas such as Cornwall, the average increase was up by 15.5 per cent between March 2020 and 2021.

Since the wind down of the stamp duty holiday started on the 1st July, indications suggest that demand will begin to fall and prices start to stabilise.