In today’s home market, the value of a home can fluctuate greatly depending on the “usual suspects” in a home’s value – things like location, size, school district, and much more. There’s one factor that is becoming more and more of a focal point – the home’s energy efficiency and overall performance.
Many buyers, sellers and even home appraisers are taking a much closer look at a home’s energy performance when determining how much that home is worth to them (or to the general market). It’s becoming a hot topic; no pun intended. In this blog post series, we’re going to take a look at some of the reasons why increasing your home’s energy performance can lead to a higher value being placed on it. The second and final part in this series can be seen below:
- Energy assessments are now commonly occurring during the sales process. If you’ve ever been through a home buying/selling process, you may know that some basic energy efficiency knowledge exchange is common. Buyers will ask to see a typical energy bill from the home before purchasing. However, more and more buyers are asking for full home performance assessments to be carried out before an offer is made. Buyers are becoming much more savvy and interested when it comes to the home’s performance and efficiency. Ensuring your home is as efficient as possible will help your home pass an assessment with flying colors—and could be the factor that leads to buyers signing on the dotted line.
- An efficient home is up to code. Home building and improvement codes increasingly include home efficiency and performance measures. In many cases, you may have to increase your home’s efficiency to bring it up to code. The collective energy consumption, at both the state and federal level, is leading to many new rules and regulations for homeowners when it comes to keeping energy consumption down.
- The real “scores” are coming. At both a federal and state level, legislatures are discussing and working to implement actual numerical scores for the energy efficiency of homes. Once this occurs, it will provide a very simple metric for the housing market when it comes to valuing homes based on energy efficiency. Once these scores are implemented, an even higher (and more widely accepted) value will be placed on home performance.