A gap of 39% between A and F certificates
“The PEB has become essential, underlines Johan Krijgsman, CEO of ERA, one of the largest real estate agencies in the country. Buyers explicitly ask for this. We have also made it a separate search criterion on our website. Unlike, for example, the risk of flooding, which buyers hardly pay attention to today.”
PEB certification: what every owner needs to know
ERA’s CEO insists: “The energy label plays an increasing role in the real estate market, creating, for example, a three-speed segmentation in Flanders. In 2024, homes with an A or B label saw their prices increase by 4.8% on average, while those with a C or D label saw an increase limited to 1.4%. Energy-intensive goods (EF) saw their prices decrease by 1.2% compared to last year“.
gullEnergy-efficient homes and those with a C or D label remain highly sought after, as they do not require mandatory renovations in the coming years.”
Result ? “In Flanders, a house with an A label sold on average 26% more expensive than a similar property with a D label. And houses with an F label sold 13% less than those with a D label. For example, a house with an F label sold for 348,000 euros could have been sold for 502,000 euros with an A label.according to the head of ERA. “And although the barometer is based on Flemish data, it is also a trend that we observe in Wallonia and Brussels,” points out Emmanuel Deboulle, Business Development Manager and spokesperson for Wallonia-Brussels at ERA.
But Johan Krijgsman believes that this price gap will not widen indefinitely: “A price gap that is too large could encourage people to buy energy-intensive housing to renovate it, provided that regulations do not tighten again.” he emphasizes.
A dream house? Not without a good PEB score
A link with the price and the time before selling
The National Bank of Belgium (BNB) also looked in depth, in collaboration with KU Leuven and the University of Antwerp, on the link between energy certificate (“EPC” in Flanders, for energieprestatiecertificaat) and price of real estate.
In Flanders, since 2023, buyers of energy class E or F housing must renovate their property to at least D label within five years of purchase.
Indeed, as noted, it is Flanders which has been a pioneer in this area: in January 2023, the Flemish Region introduced a renovation obligation which obliges buyers of energy class E or F housing to renovate their property at least with the D label within five years of purchase.
With a clear consequence: “This increased importance of energy efficiency has led to a significant divergence in the evolution of house prices since 2023. While prices in 2023 and 2024 have remained the same as in 2022 for D label houses, they have increased for label C houses and even more for label B or A houses, and have decreased for label E or F houses”.
The BNB notes, however, that “the introduction of this Flemish renovation obligation has only a limited scope in terms of the negative impact on the prices of Flemish houses with an energy label E or F. These houses have become around 2% cheaper since 2023, both compared to similar houses in the Walloon Region and compared to houses with an energy label D in the Flemish Region”points out Peter Reusens, economist at the BNB.
However, it is undoubtedly a limited impact – for the most energy-intensive houses – but it is real: “Buyers and banks have increasingly taken the energy score into account in their purchasing decisions and mortgage credit terms due to the recent energy crisis, the future carbon price of heating fuels, the increase in renovation costs, the announcement of stricter renovation requirements in the future and because banks have started to better collect energy scores for new mortgages”notes the BNB economist.
PEB requirements: “Why bother with tenants if the rental income is eaten up by credit”
Note, finally, if an obvious link exists between energy efficiency and real estate prices, there is another: that between the energy label and the time it takes to sell a house in Belgium. In Flanders as in Wallonia, the worse the PEB, the longer the period between the placing of the property on the market and the notarial deed which ratifies its sale. For a house with an F certificate, it takes almost 190 to 200 days on average in the two Regions, compared to around 150 to 160 days for a house with a nice PEB A…
