Give Buyers What They Want — Greener Homes

By Brian Alvarado

As we near the midway point of 2021, the world is finally getting back on its feet. As housing flexed its muscles throughout the pandemic and continues to lead the economy to a recovery, consumers are also becoming more and more health conscious. For years, builders across the nation have began to make the switch to going green. Notable builders like Meritage and KB Home have been ahead of the curve, offering energy-efficient builds to its homeowners for years.

With the end of the pandemic coming to an end in the near future, sustainable and energy-efficient homes are becoming a main factor in homebuyers’ decisions. In an October 2020 article by NGBS’s Michele Foster, she touched on how the demand of greener homes was booming.

“Most consumers prefer more energy-efficient homes and are willing to pay more for energy efficiency,” Foster wrote. “Energy-efficient home builders report that their homes sell faster, for more money, and perhaps more importantly, that their buyers are more satisfied with their energy-efficient home than with their former inefficient homes.”

Additionally, in a survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) of its members, 59% of residential consumers “were very or somewhat interested in sustainability.”

So the writing is on the wall and the demand is there: consumers care about their health and where they live needs to correlate with that. It’s our job as an industry to push other builders who are currently not green to move the needle forward and take the steps necessary to start.

As Red Tree Builders’ Brandon Bryant told me in an interview for the last issue, you don’t have to hit a homerun the first time. Start small, whether that be finding the right certification or using alternative materials, and build from there.