Do Home Buyers Care About ‘Green’ Houses?

There’s been a lot of talk over the past few years about real estate ‘going green.’  From insulation to recycled materials to rain barrels, there seems to be a new earth-friendly (or ‘green’) material/method/pitch around every other day.

Back during the epic real estate market of 2005-2007, Green-built homes were the next big thing.  Builders and developers jumped on the bandwagon by building earth-friendly homes.  Virginia adopted Earthcraft as it’s standard for environmentally friendly homes.  To earn the Earthcraft certification, the builders earn points for energy efficient design, systems, and materials…just to name a few.  (Check out the full guidelines here).

Back around 2006, Charlottesville builders were estimating that building an Earthcraft certified home could cost anywhere from 5-15% more.  That was even a lot for then.  Buyers began to question true ROI of whether it was worth the additional cost.  Some decided they wanted to do it for the environment, but many wanted hard data before they plunked down an additional $25,000 for that little Earthcraft logo.  Unfortunately, since the Earthcraft program was so new back then, there was no data as to how much utility bills were lowered in an energy efficient home.

Fast forward to today.  The real estate market is nothing like it was in 2006.  But energy efficient homes are still in the news.  With data in their hip pockets, national homebuilder KB Homes recently announced it will be rating homes with it’s Energy Performance Guide (EPG).  Here’s the gist of it: just like automobiles are rated for MPG and emissions, they’re aiming to rate homes for their efficiencies in heating and cooling costs.  KB represents just one example – other builders are planning a similar rating system.

But does the average homebuyers care about ‘green’?  The answer is no.  Today’s homebuyer doesn’t really care if a home is certified Earthcraft, LEED, or any other green-friendly name you can think of.  It doesn’t matter to most people.

Check out this chart from the National Association of Realtors Homebuyers’ Profile 2011.  It answers the question of how important a home’s environmentally friendly features actually matter.

So, according to this chart, buyers don’t seem to be as enamored with environmentally friendly homes as builders and marketers think they should be.  It actually surprises me that only 39% of buyers are ‘very interested’ in heating and cooling costs.  Over the past 12 months, our agents at Nest Realty have seen a big increase in the number of buyers asking for utility bills before they make an offer on a home.  Today’s buyers do seem to care about utility costs and efficient homes…but whether or not they are certified as ‘green’ actually doesn’t matter to most.

Actually, I think that heating and cooling costs and home efficiency are the only 2 ‘green’ factors that buyers care about.  Features like green roofs, rain barrels, recycled materials, etc make for good conversation, but do they really sell homes to the average consumer?