New BOI mortgage rate for home energy upgrades

Bank of Ireland has launched Ireland's first "green equity release" loan. The new mortgage feature allows customers to unlock equity in their home to invest in energy efficient home improvements.  Homeowners with SEAI grant approval for their upgrades can now avail of the bank’s LTV mortgage rate of 3%.

Customers can avail of the rate on the entire cost of their green home improvements and not just the portion of the SEAI grant. They can borrow from €5,000 up to 90% of the value of their property to fund the energy efficiency improvements in their home and can also opt for repayment terms of between five and thirty years.

Josephine Maguire of SEAI said that innovative funding options are essential to convincing homeowners to undertake comprehensive energy retrofits. “The retrofit market is certainly a growing one. SEAI approve on average 1,200 applications for grants every week or over 50,000 a year, to support energy efficient projects and this is growing all the time," she said. "What we are finding is that the vast majority of applicants are funding the improvements through their existing savings with people reluctant to avail of loan funding which might allow them undertake deeper retrofits. We therefore see it as vital that the market provide innovative funding solutions to further broaden the appeal of these support programmes." 

Jonathan Byrne, head of mortgages at Bank of Ireland, said: "This latest announcement reflects a nationwide growth in desire to be energy efficient at home but also the imperative to protect our environment by reducing carbon emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels. This new green equity release finance option makes it much more affordable for customers to make energy efficient improvements to their home by allowing customers borrow at highly competitive mortgages rates and spread the cost over a longer term.”

The green equity release can be used to cover work such as roof and cavity wall insulation, external and internal insulation, installation of high efficiency boilers and heating controls upgrades. Customers can also use their grants and loans to install renewable energy heating systems such as solar heating systems, heat pumps or wood chip or pellet boilers. 

This announcement is the latest in a series of green initiatives from Bank of Ireland which includes the Halo Loan, a joint venture with ESB launched in November 2010. Bank of Ireland also offers a green personal loan that offers a 1% discount on standard loan rates for energy efficient projects.