Selling an eco-friendly home

Many people go above and beyond simply recycling their trash and turn their home into an eco-friendly environment. They may have large windows to let in the natural sun, concrete floors to better hold in the heat or a solar or geothermal heating system to help out Mother Nature.

Many times these improvements add to the value of the home, but how important is being environmentally friendly to the average home buyer? The answer: Not very. The truth is that the average person looking to buy a home worries more about the cost of their heating and electric bill than on their carbon footprint.

The good news is that being environmentally friendly actually helps the pocket book in the long run, but it’s not easy to convince. Environmental heating systems can be difficult to explain because they often are on the forefront of technology and are not common. Instead, simply focus on how much you pay every month for heating and cooling. They’ll be much more impressed with that than any piece of machinery.

Many of the eco-friendly aspects of your home aren't readily seen. If you use lead-free and non-toxic paint on the wall, then odds are your average home buyer isn't going to know. If they have small children, then it could be a deciding factor. They aren't going to know about the energy saving light bulbs or your high efficiency water heater. They’re going to be looking at the size of the rooms and the overall cost of the house.

The truth is that environmental improvements can add a lot of value to your home, but it might not be a value understood by home buyers. Instead of an environmentally friendly house, they are going to see an overpriced house. It’s going to be up to you and your Realtor to show them why your house is better than all the other ones out there.

Unless you get someone that is knowledgeable about the environment and cares about it, then you might find selling an eco-friendly house to be an uphill battle.

Photo courtesy of ILTWMT