What Do Real Estate Agents Have to Do with Raters?

Green real estate has been one of the featured themes at this week’s RESNET 2016 Conference. As a rater, are you keeping up with these developments and the business opportunities they present for you?

In short, you should be making friends with appraisers and real estate agents. These players are key to mainstreaming the HERS Index, Home Energy Score, and green home certification systems that can help formally capture the value of green home upgrades.

At RESNET, Build It Green’s Deputy Executive Director Bruce Mast joined a panel of other national experts to discuss the opportunities in Realizing the Market Value for High Performance Homes. Other RESNET presentations focused on communicating HERS to appraisers and real estate agents, and expanding your business via the real estate market.

If you missed RESNET, get up to speed on the big-picture aspects of green real estate and “greening the MLS” initiatives with these two articles:

• Trend Watch: Greening the MLS (Build It Green)
• Home Energy Efficiency, Meet Real Estate: A 2015 Year in Review and a Forecast for the Future (Home Energy Pros Blog)

Below is a summary of the presentation Build It Green took part in at RESNET, Realizing the Market Value for High Performance Homes: Reports from the Field, with presenters Pamela Brookstein, Anthony Roy , Jeffrey Gephart, and Bruce Mast.

The energy efficiency components of a home are often invisible to the key parties involved in a home sale: buyer, broker, appraiser, and lender. Using Elevate Energy’s 7-Step Visible Value Blueprint as a framework, this session reviews recent progress in making energy efficiency features and their benefits visible throughout the entire real estate transaction chain.

• Step 1-2: Document and report energy efficient home inventories. Colorado is documenting its growing inventory of high performance homes using RESNET data to identify progress and opportunities
• Step 3: Provide education and training. California is leading the nation in training and certifying real estate professionals to the National Association of REALTORS® Green Designation
• Step 4: Reflect energy efficiency improvements in for-sale listings. Chicago now requires utility bill disclosures at time-of-sale, with intriguing implications for sale prices and time on market.
• Step 5: Incorporate data into the appraisal process. The Pacific Northwest has completed new valuation studies that can be replicated around the country. Both RESNET and California’s GreenPoint Rated program have developed hands-on experience populating the Green and Energy Efficiency Addendum as part of the HERS rating.
• Step 6: Develop standardized IT solutions. Colorado offers a leading example for developing IT solutions to populate MLS systems with home performance data, building on US DOE’s Standard Energy Efficiency Data (SEED) platform.
• Step 7: Work with partner financial institutions. Vermont Green Homes Alliance offers a leading example of how the appraiser assignment process can be recalibrated to better ensure a competency match, triggered by a completed Green and Energy Efficiency Addendum. Colorado’s mortgage incentive program engages lenders and appraisers in valuing high performance homes.