Energy performance certificates in listings: what agents need to change from 2027

One cut-off date for every listing

The first provisions of the Building Modernisation Act (Gebäudemodernisierungsgesetz, GModG) have applied since 29 July 2026. According to the federal government's information portal, the Bundestag and Bundesrat passed the act on 10 July. It was promulgated in the Federal Law Gazette on 28 July (BGBl. 2026 I No. 226). The new rules on energy performance certificates (EPCs), however, only take effect on 1 January 2027.

For estate agencies, this date is trickier than it looks. From then on, there will be two kinds of EPC, and each kind requires different details in the listing. Agencies that currently use a single brochure template for all properties will have to rework it. This also affects agencies in Austria, Switzerland or Spain that market German properties on German portals.

What the EU requires behind it

The GModG is based on the revised EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, Directive (EU) 2024/1275, usually referred to as the EPBD. According to its Recital 67, an EPC should be available for buildings offered for sale or rent. The energy efficiency class and the energy performance indicator should appear in all advertisements. For the certificate itself, the directive provides for a common template with a closed scale from A to G, where A stands for zero-emission buildings.

The directive entered into force on 28 May 2024, and the transposition deadline expired on 29 May 2026. According to the Renovate Europe initiative, none of the 27 member states had reported full transposition by that deadline, and all of them received a letter of formal notice from the European Commission. Germany has introduced new advertising obligations through the GModG. The directive, however, applies to all member states, so the rules for listings are changing there too.

Old certificate or new certificate

Under the new law, what matters above all is the certificate's issue date, not the date the listing is published. Certificates issued before 1 January 2027 remain usable until the end of their ten-year validity. There is no need to replace them early. For listings with such a certificate, the familiar details continue to apply under Section 112(3) and (4) GModG: the type of certificate, the final energy demand or final energy consumption and the main energy sources, plus the year of construction and the efficiency class for residential buildings.

An everyday example: a three-room flat in Leipzig with a consumption-based certificate from 2019 will be listed in 2027 exactly as before. If the house next door goes on the market and its owner ordered a new certificate in February 2027, the new list of requirements applies to that listing. Two properties on the same street, two different sets of mandatory details.

The details required under Section 87

For certificates issued from 1 January 2027, Section 87 GModG requires the following details in the listing, among others: the type of certificate, i.e. whether it is a demand-based or a consumption-based certificate (the act refers to Sections 81 and 82 for this), the issue date, the annual primary energy demand in kWh/(m²·a), the efficiency class, the year of construction and the main heating energy sources. Check the certificate to see which type it is, and if in doubt, ask the issuer.

The listing will in future show the primary energy demand instead of the final energy figure. Take the value directly from the certificate and do not convert anything yourself. Another new element is that the list requires the class and year of construction without the previous restriction to residential buildings. Both therefore also belong in listings for offices, shops or warehouses.

Accounts of the efficiency scale differ. The federal government's information portal explicitly mentions classes A to G for non-residential buildings (Annex 10a). A guidance portal for homeowners, on the other hand, states that residential buildings keep the existing classes A+ to H. Before you finalise templates and drop-down fields, check this against the official text of the act or ask your professional association. The efficiency class field should allow both scales, at least for a transitional period.

Responsibility also lies with the agent

Under Section 87(1) GModG, estate agents are explicitly obliged alongside sellers and landlords if they are responsible for publication. This is not entirely new. The Federal Court of Justice already confirmed agents' responsibility for energy details in listings from a competition law perspective in 2017 (I ZR 232/16).

Breaches can result in fines and cease-and-desist letters. How this should be assessed in your own case is a matter for a specialist lawyer. Anyone responsible for a listing should therefore check the details against the certificate themselves rather than relying solely on what the owner says.

What else is changing

Under Section 80 GModG, an EPC must in future also be issued and presented when a tenancy agreement is extended if no valid certificate is available. The previous exemption for listed buildings no longer applies. Anyone marketing a listed period villa can therefore no longer rely on the old rule.

According to the government portal, the act no longer provides for consumption-based certificates for non-residential buildings. From 2027, only demand-based certificates are permitted for sale or letting, at least for newly issued certificates. Whether an existing consumption-based certificate for a non-residential building may continue to be used until it expires is not clear from the sources reviewed for this article. Clarify this point with an energy consultant or your professional association.

In addition, from 2027 EPCs will be issued digitally and in machine-readable form, with paper versions available only on request. In the long term, this will make data transfer easier. In the short term, you should expect owners to send you a file rather than a printout.

Reworking templates, data fields and feeds

A specialist website focused on EPCs advises agents to set up a listing process in two variants. The reasoning is sound: errors often arise not in the text itself but in the fields from which the text is generated. The changeover can be worked through in this order:

• Go through your portfolio and record the certificate type, issue date and expiry date for each property.
• Create brochure templates and text modules in an "old certificate" variant and a "new certificate" variant.
• Add fields for issue date, certificate type and primary energy demand in your real estate software.
• Test the XML export to each portal individually and check whether the values end up in the correct portal field.

The feed test deserves particular care. If a portal does not yet accept the primary energy value as a separate field and the software pushes it into the final energy field instead, the listing will contain incorrect information. Nobody in the office will notice, but an attentive competitor will. After the changeover, create one test property with an old certificate and one with a new certificate, and look at the finished listing on the portal. If anything is unclear, the portal's technical support, which knows the current field specification, can help.

Talking to owners

Many owners will assume, on hearing the words "new law", that they need a new certificate immediately. As a rule, that is not the case. A valid old certificate may continue to be used, and that is exactly what you should explain during the acquisition meeting. It saves the client money and saves you delays. Only in the case of a consumption-based certificate for a non-residential building should you first clarify whether it may be used until it expires.

The situation is different if the certificate is about to expire. A certificate that ends in spring 2027 may no longer cover a marketing period of several months. Raise such cases early, ideally when you take on the instruction. With non-residential buildings, there is the added factor that a new certificate must be a demand-based one. This requires more documentation and an energy consultant who has time for it. Anyone who only enquires in December may have to wait longer.

Spain and the other countries

According to the valuation firm Tinsa, Spain had transposed around 60 per cent of the EPBD by the deadline. For listings, Real Decreto 390/2021 continues to apply there, under which all sale and rental offers must include the energy label. A Spanish guidance portal classifies a breach as a minor administrative offence carrying a fine of 300 to 600 euros. How the mandatory details will change once transposition is complete remains open.

For Austria, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus, we were unable to find reliable information on the state of transposition while researching this article. All that is certain is that these countries must also transpose the EPBD. Agents there should check with the competent authorities and professional associations and set up their templates now so that additional fields can be added later without much effort.

The first step before the turn of the year

Set aside an hour in the coming weeks and export your active properties into a spreadsheet with three columns: certificate type, issue date, expiry date. If any information is missing, request the certificate from the owner. The spreadsheet will show you which properties will be listed under the old format and which under the new format in 2027, and where a conversation about a new certificate is due. Clarify any open legal questions about your portfolio with a specialist lawyer, an energy consultant or your professional association.