Before you consider spending your hard-earned cash, and investing your precious time undertaking significant training and learning development to obtain the necessary qualifications, I suggest you draw breath and take time to look at the likely rewards of making such an investment.
Only a couple of years back, some companies and organisations involved in the energy efficiency and property sector, set up training courses to train new requirement for Home Inspectors and Domestic Energy Assessors, in effect on behalf the Government. The training courses were required to provide sufficient number Home Inspectors and Domestic Energy Assessors to produce the crop of Home Condition Reports and Energy Performance Certificates needed to comply with changes to legislation.
Several thousand individuals saw the opportunity to change their career and work for themselves as Home Inspectors or Domestic Energy Assessors, and they paid several thousand pounds each for the privilege.
During the passage of the legislation, the Government lost its nerve and watered down its requirement for Home Information Packs to contain the Home Condition Report. However, obligingly, the Government still allowed Home Condition Reports to be provided for the Home Information Pack on a ‘voluntary’ basis. What this means in effect is there is virtually no demand by anyone selling their property for a Home Condition Report, as they are relatively expensive. As a result, the individuals that made significant investment in their time and money to train as Home Inspector have been ‘cast adrift’ by the Government.
The training bodies also went into overdrive and inducted thousands of individuals onto courses to churn out Domestic Energy Assessors. The first cohort of individuals undertaking the training and obtaining the qualifications found themselves being able to command £120 or so for providing an EPC. The only difficulty for those people was that the Government restricted the size of residential properties requiring an Energy Performance Certificate to 4 bedrooms and above, which reduced the market size.
As the training bodies put more and more people through the Domestic Energy Assessor ‘sausage machine’, the price qualified DEA’s could command began to drop sharply.
Some of the training bodies diversified their business interests to provide ‘panels’ of qualified DEAs to provide the Energy Performance Certificates, which they ‘resell’ to Estate Agents and Home Information Pack Providers. It is fairly common now for DEAs to be providing an Energy Performance Certificate for £50.
With the current depression in the housing market, there is less properties coming onto the market, therefore competition in the Home Information Pack market is intense. HIP providers need to cut their costs as low as possible to win work and an obvious target is the fee DEAs can command.
If you are considering investing your time and money to enter this industry, then you should definitely test the market in the first instance. You will inevitably find that there are far too many people servicing a limited marketplace already.
In my view the companies still enticing people onto training courses for Home Inspectors or Domestic Energy assessors are taking money under false pretences. The Government has been culpable in allowing over-supply of qualified individuals and has in effect conned many out of the not insignificant sum they have invested in both money and their time.
You can find out more about Home Information Packs and Domestic Energy Assessments at http://www.hip-hips.co.uk.