Home buyers ‘will get pollution warnings’
PROPERTY listings will include traffic light-style pollution warnings in the near future, experts predict as they report that poor air quality can knock up to 15 per cent off house prices.
Pollution has become a top concern among potential buyers, who are snubbing “unhealthy homes” and have started using sophisticated pollution websites to track air quality. The trend has prompted calls for new rules forcing estate agents to publish pollution warnings alongside energy efficiency ratings in property adverts.
A toxic air alert was issued for the first time in London over “very high” pollution levels, causing major public concern over the health impacts of living in congested areas.
Nearly 9,500 people died early in a single year as a result of long-term exposure to air pollution in the capital, a King’s College London report claimed.
It is the first time in modern history that air quality has become so important to home buyers that it is significantly affecting the price they are prepared to pay, property professionals told The Sunday Telegraph.
Buyers have now started to research granular data through websites which let them track air quality at individual postcodes, they said. Henry Pryor, a professional home buyer and property agent, said: “Home buyers used to have a blasé attitude to air pollution but now this has completely changed.
“People are concerned and are discovering they can look at two homes at different ends of a street, and one will be more polluted. I get asked about pollution so regularly I check it as standard before suggesting a property.
“If a house is in a highly polluted area, such as near a train line, it might go for 15 per cent less than a similar property in a less polluted zone.”
Mark Hayward, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents, said air quality was now “at least as important” as energy efficiency ratings and added: “I don’t think it will be long before it is compulsory to display pollution information on listings.”