What’s the EPC rating of that house?

An Energy Performance Certificate grades a home from A down to G on how cheap it should be to run, based on its insulation, its heating system, its windows and so on. The average home in England and Wales sits around D. An assessor produces one when a property is built, sold or let, and it stays valid for ten years, which is why a house that last changed hands in 2016 may be carrying a rating that predates its current boiler.

The letter is not decoration. The gap between a C and a G on the same street can be thousands of pounds a year in heating, and unlike most of a listing’s claims it comes from a register you can check yourself, which is what this page is for.

Because the asking price is a one-off and the heating bill arrives forever. Two houses at the same price, one rated B and one rated F, are not the same house financially, and the difference never shows up in a mortgage calculator.

Our view, argued at length in the guide, is that you should assume pessimistic energy costs by default and only soften them for a specific property once you know something real about the building. The EPC is exactly that something. Inside The First Move the rating sits on each property you track and feeds that judgement; this page is the same lookup, free, for anyone.

Every result on this page comes live from the Energy Performance of Buildings Register, the official record maintained by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. It covers England and Wales; Scotland and Northern Ireland keep separate registers this page does not search. For the full certificate, including the recommendations an assessor made and the potential rating after improvements, use the government’s own certificate service.

Built by The First Move, the tool that works out what a home actually costs each month once you own it. If running costs are the question, see what it costs to live in every English council area, work out your stamp duty, check a postcode’s council tax, or try the live demo.