Not-YET-Green

Tweet

My previous post looked at Affordability Selling Homes – And Driving Energy Efficiency!  The article showed that in a post-foreclosure world, home buyers want homes that cost less to own – and energy efficient homes are the means to that end.

I also mentioned that this trend spins the home performance industry on its end.  For four years this industry has embraced me as one of their own.  And I’ve heard time and time again that it’s comfort, safety and often environmental concerns that sell jobs.

But this is your wake-up call and your opportunity.  The housing trends of this spring are a signal that the tipping point for energy efficiency is upon us – and monthly savings will deliver it.  Are you ready?

Malcolm Gladwell’s book Tipping Point placed that term in our vocabulary.  He outlined how trends become epidemics.  It appears energy efficiency is ripe for a popularity explosion. Here’s why.

As Gladwell explains in his book, good ideas don’t tip on their own.  First, a group of visionaries embrace an idea.  But many great ideas never tip because those early adopters never successfully translate their innovation into something the less risky main population is willing to try out.

The home owners you’ve sold work to in the recent past are the early adopters.  They were looking to solve specific improvement issues at home, or trying to help the environment.  Today’s home buyers are the early majority.  And as my previous article Affordability Selling Homes – And Driving Energy Efficiency! shows they just want to know, “Am I going to save money today?”

They have translated the early adopters’ interest in energy efficient measures into an early majority appreciation for money in their pocket.

Other scholars on tipping point have described a chasm that stands between the early adopters and the majority.  Products and services that can navigate that chasm thrive while the great ideas that don’t die out.

So here’s the wake-up call for home performance.  If we can translate work done into monthly savings, home owners can translate that to buyers and we’ll create a new definition for what a “well-maintained” home is all about.  And the best part is that if we build this expectation on on the home owner side, we’ll get away from the polarizing idea about labeling homes for energy efficiency at the time of sale that in turn spins the real estate industry against efficiency.

So, do you keep selling comfort and safety because that’s what worked so far?  Do you hold back on quantifying monthly savings for consumers because there are too many variables to ever be 100% precise?

Bottom-line – Are we going to cross this chasm or not?

The next big opportunity ahead is the chance for efficiency and real estate to work together more effectively.  Concepts of affordability, quality and “well-maintained” will bring us together.  Learn more in Part 3 of this series.

Tweet

Did you know the Realtor nation is about one million members strong?  This month I re-upped my license in Illinois for two more years.  To confirm my commitment (ha!) I forked out over $625 in renewal and classroom fees, and dedicated over 24 hours of training and testing to meet the state’s upgraded continuing education requirements this year.

In the course of my renewal I earned NAR’s Broker Price Opinion Resource designation (BPO’s are known as a tool for banks to assess the value of a short sale property), learned about the legal issues of short sales, and reconfirmed my commitment to equal housing and other important housing laws.

But what sticks with me most, is NAR’s Code of Ethics which binds our massive organization and I believe positions us for success.  Every four years every Realtor must complete a course on the Code of Ethics which I did as part of my continuing education.

The Code is an impressive document that pre-dates nearly every real estate licensing law and next year will celebrate 100 years in essentially the same format since it was adopted in 1913.  Ask any Realtor and they’ll tell you the Code addresses our duties to clients and customers, the public and other Realtors.

For those watching the real estate industry from the sidelines in the home performance and energy efficiency industry, I think there are some important things to know about the real estate profession as a result of our Code of Ethics.

First, the Code sets minimum expectations for doing business – honesty, a culture where parties from competing firms cooperate to serve a client, and a mandate for arbitration of disputes that goes back to the Code’s inception.  The Code is a part of the Realtor DNA and our brand and drives consumer confidence in what we do.  Why does this matter to Home Performance?  Not bad to have some consumer consistency in a market served by many different and highly competitive players.

With that DNA and commitment to honesty comes a general paranoia about disclosing properly and avoiding liability.   Bottom-line:  we tend to rely on third-parties like a seller disclosure, home inspection, etc. to get information exchanged between buyers and sellers.  Why does this matter to Home Performance?  We’re just not going to go out on a limb to promote the measures you have installed in a home unless you are going to go out on a limb to document what you put in there.

Article 11 of the Code states:

REALTORS^® shall not undertake to provide specialized professional services concerning a type of property or service that is outside their field of competence unless they engage the assistance of one who is competent on such types of property or service, or unless the facts are fully disclosed to the client. 

Why does this matter to Home Performance?  We’re starting to see Realtors specialize with additional training like EcoBroker and NAR Green, but we can do a lot better on this one!