The rule most landlord software misses
Warm Homes: Local Grant (WHLG) is fully funded for a landlord's first claimed property. Every property after that typically requires a landlord contribution — usually 50%, capped in most council pots at around £7,500. This applies across your whole portfolio, not per property, and it's tracked by claim order, not by which property you'd prefer to go first.
That means the free slot is a limited resource. Waste it on your cheapest retrofit, and you've left money on the table.
What the calculator actually does
Once you have two or more properties independently eligible for WHLG, your portfolio dashboard shows a callout: "Claim [address] first."
It works out, for each eligible property, what your contribution would be if that property claimed second — based on the recommended retrofit measures on file for it, capped at the scheme's landlord-contribution limit. It then recommends claiming whichever property has the highest would-be contribution first, since that's the property where dodging the 50% contribution is worth the most.
Worked example
Say you have two eligible properties:
| Property | Retrofit cost | If claimed second, you'd pay |
|---|---|---|
| 4 Oak Court | £500 (loft top-up only) | £500 |
| 12 Mill Lane | £14,200 (insulation + heat pump) | £7,500 (capped) |
Claim 12 Mill Lane first, and you pay nothing for it — the fully-funded slot went to the property that would otherwise have cost you the most. Oak Court claims second at £500. Total landlord contribution: £500.
Claim Oak Court first instead, and Mill Lane claims second at the capped £7,500. Total landlord contribution: £7,500.
Same two properties, same total scheme spend — a £7,000 difference in what comes out of your pocket, purely from claim order.
The £315,000 ceiling
Alongside sequencing, your dashboard tracks the Minimal Financial Assistance (MFA) ceiling — a landlord's cumulative public subsidy across all schemes can't exceed £315,000 over the current and previous two financial years. Most portfolios under 8–10 properties won't get close, but it's tracked automatically regardless, and going over invalidates the excess.
Why this needs the app to work at all
Nothing about this is visible from looking at a single property in isolation — it only shows up once you're tracking claim order and remaining headroom across your whole portfolio, which is exactly the gap this tool exists to close.