GreenYour.com

Home buying involves a series of careful decisions: home location, size, financing, real estate agents, appraisals, and more. Now you can add a green layer to all those decisions because an increasing number of home buying services, along with the homes themselves, are going green. A 2006 report by McGraw-Hill notes that green homes owned just 0.3 percent of the construction market in 2005 at almost $2 billion. The report predicts that growing demand will boost the market to $20 billion by 2010.[1]

And with that demand has come a host of green services to support it. Home buyers can now hire a green real estate agent or eco-broker who specializes in finding new or existing green properties certified by various agencies. Or buyers may hook up with a home builder who follows energy efficient and/or eco-friendly construction guidelines. Additionally, the purchase of a green home may qualify you for a green mortgage, which brings favorable discounts or rates based on the home’s increased market value and lower operating costs.

Energy efficient homes

Operational cost savings and environmental concerns are the top two reasons home buyers are turning to green homes.[1] And with good cause. Homes in the US are responsible for 21 percent of the nation’s energy use and belch 335 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Cars usually get a bad rap for their greenhouse gas emissions, but the average house releases twice as much into the atmosphere as the average car.[2] In contrast, a home built or remodeled to green standards, such as an ENERGY STAR or LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified home, can cut energy use by 15 to 30 percent, which means fewer greenhouse gas emissions and lower utility bills.[3]

True green homes

The eco-conscious home buyer is not limited to just buying an energy efficient home, however. The definition of a green home extends to other features that conserve resources and promote a healthy home. The McGraw-Hill study defined a true green home as one that has features in at least three of following five categories: energy efficiency, indoor air quality, water efficiency, resource efficiency, and site management.[1] Any of these environmentally friendly objectives can be achieved in various ways. For example:

• Moving into a smaller house or condo, even if it’s not certified by ENERGY STAR or LEED, can still use less energy per person.
• Buying in a mixed use neighborhood where residents can walk to shops instead of drive cuts transportation emissions.
• Buying an existing home instead of a new home lessens your exposure to harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that off-gas from new cabinetry, carpet, paint and other construction materials. Plus building a new home consumes a variety of resources, including trees. The amount of lumber required to build a 3,000-square-foot home, if laid end-to-end, would stretch for more than 4 miles.[4] New home construction also generates approximately 4.38 pounds of trash per square foot that goes directly to the landfill.[5]
• The purchase of a townhouse, condominium, or apartment rather than a single-family home reduces land disturbance and uses less electricity and per unit. In general, multi-family dwellings create more efficiencies and use less resources.[6]
• Living in a cohousing community where residents own their own dwelling but share common areas, reduces the use of several resources. In general, cohousing residents use 75 percent fewer lawnmowers, 30 percent fewer washers and dryers, make fewer car trips per person, use less energy and water, and live in half the space of the typical US citizen.[7]
• Buying a home that has been certified by ENERGY STAR, LEED or other credible agency gives a home buyer credible assurance that the home meets specific guidelines for energy efficiency and other eco-friendly features.

Ideally, a home buyer will want to consider as many of these options as possible. For example, living in an existing green certified townhouse in a mixed use neighborhood near a mass transit line would garner the eco-conscious home buyer mucho green points. But, realistically, that scenario may not exist where you need to live, nor meet your most pressing housing needs.

Controversies

Can a big house also be a green house? Since 1950, the size of the average US family has decreased while homes have quadrupled in square feet per person.[8] According to the National Association of Home Builders, in 1970 houses with 2,400 or more square feet comprised just 10 percent of the market. In 2005, that market share increased to 42 percent[9] and one in five homes are more than 3,000 square feet.[10] Some of these large houses, often referred to as McMansions or starter castles, are being built with energy efficiency in mind and earn ENERGY STAR certification. Yet, a study published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology found that a small home with moderate energy efficiency uses substantially less energy for heating and cooling than a large house built to very high energy-performance standards.[11] Additionally, building and maintaining a large house requires significantly more raw materials and consumes more land per person than a smaller home.

An article in the Washington Post notes that there will always be people who want larger homes and that this segment of the population is actually spurring the green trend in home building.[12] In addition to costly solar and geothermal systems, large home owners may also choose flooring made from rapidly renewable materials, recycled glass tile in the bathroom, or other eco-friendly building materials. Their eco-choices may build the market for these features, eventually making them more affordable and accessible to mainstream home builders.

But how much house does a person really need? As quoted in the Washington Post article, David B. Goldstein of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) says, “It's really a matter of moral or economic judgment as to whether the home you're asking for makes environmental sense. Only the individual homeowner is in a position to know how much size satisfies basic needs, how much satisfies basic wants and how much is silly extravagance."[12]

Tax credits and incentives

At this time, US federal tax credits are limited to home builders or contractors who build energy efficient homes.[13] However, individual states and local utility companies may offer incentives to homeowners for appliance and other energy efficient upgrades. Check the Tax Incentive Assistance Project website and the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency.

Glossary

• volatile organic compounds (VOCs): Organic solvents that easily evaporate into the air.[14] VOCs are emitted by thousands of products including paints, cleaning supplies, pesticides, building materials, and furnishings and they may cause immediate and long-term health problems.[15]

External links

• Rocky Mountain Institute - Indicators For Sustainable Communities, A Strategy Building on Complexity Theory and Distributed Intelligence
• Commission for Environmental Cooperation - Green Building in North America
• Natural Resources Defense Council - Affordable Green House
• TreeHugger - This House Isn’t Green