Sometimes a mundane event in a journalist’s life puts a small light on matters of public moment.
A while ago I sold my house in North Canberra after it had been tenanted for a couple of years. The real-estate agent had no sooner hammered in the second post of the “”For Sale” sign than a buyer approached and a price was settled verbally. Sure, there was no binding contract, but clearly the buyer knew what he was after. He lived in the area. He knew the house quite well.
But what do we find. Meddling legislatures demanding that we get an energy efficiency rating before the house can be formally sold. The agent told me it would be about $200 and there was no escape.
I told him I wanted the cheapest possible EER he could possibly arrange and I didn’t care if it was rated minus 20 because the buyer wanted to buy and I wanted to sell and I didn’t see what business it was of government (or more correctly the legislature) to impose that extra cost, which one way or the other would fall on both of us. The buyer could be a landlord who one way or the other would try to pass the cost on to a stuggling tenant or a struggling first-home buyer.
No-one would be wiser, wealther or in any way better off, other than the EER assessor.
The environment is the poorer because presumbly the EER assessor has burnt up some precious fossil fuel and emitted some greenhouse gas in his car journey to the house to do the EER.
I blame the Labor Party for this. One expects the Greens to have a certain amount of feel-good twaddle in their legislative program. But it took Labor’s votes to enact it. Labor should review this legislation lest it lose the valuable votes of everyone who buys or sells a dwelling before next election.
I have no further interest in it because I have already sold and been caught.
But if the non-Green won’t do something, I have since learnt of a couple of evasion methods which are perfectly legal. I thought the methods would have been widespread, but the Real Estate Institute of the ACT has not heard of them. But the evaders are not likely to be very public about it. I know of two dwellings sold evading the worst elements of the EER.
Bear in mind, this is not immoral or illegal tax evasion. It is not a public-revenue matter. Rather it is a law that requires anyone selling a dwelling in the ACT to get an EER from a private-sector accredited assessor. The assessor can charge up to $300.
House buyers and sellers