New Visible Value Blueprint Shows Strategies to Value Clean and Efficient Home Upgrades in the Real Estate Market

Six years ago, in 2013…

• The cronut — a perfect hybrid of a croissant and a doughnut — was born;
• Candy Crush took Facebook by storm;
• A meteor crashed in Chelyabinsk, Russia;
• And the Visible Value Blueprint rocked the energy efficiency world.

Elevate Energy and the Building Performance Association are thrilled to announce the release of an updated Visible Value Blueprint. Making the Value Visible: A Blueprint for Transforming the High-Performing Homes Market by Showcasing Clean and Efficient Energy Improvements presents strategies for energy efficiency advocates to engage the real estate industry to set in motion a cycle of market transformation. (Spoiler alert! Relationships matter.)

Home buyer demand for high-performing homes – homes that are comfortable, healthy, and energy efficient and/or generate and store energy – has grown steadily for decades. Survey after survey shows that buyers want these homes because they value the benefits of a high-performing home: comfort, healthy indoor air, low energy bills, and their own power. However, buyers have a hard time finding the homes they want. When high-performing homes are sold, they are rarely marketed as such. When they walk through a high-performing home, they may never learn about its “invisible” technical features, such as its air sealing, highly efficient cooling system, or “performance testing.”

If buyers had a clear understanding of the benefits and features of high-performing homes, available evidence suggests that they would pay more for them. This would launch a cycle of market transformation (visualized above) in which homeowners upgrade their homes not only because these improvements make their homes more livable and less expensive to operate, but also because they can reasonably expect to capture the value of these improvements when they sell the home, similar to expectations of resale value for other types of home improvements.

The original paper, released in July 2013, was a first-of-its-kind document for the energy efficiency industry. The goal was to provide step-by-step guidance to make high-performing homes visible in the real estate transaction. Since its release, efforts to make the value that clean and efficient home upgrades provide visible have advanced; we’ve learned new lessons and we have new stories to share (also since then, Hamilton debuted, the Chicago Cubs broke their 108-year losing streak and won the World Series, and, in 2015, Game of Thrones left us with one heck of a cliffhanger).

In this new edition of the Blueprint, you will find:

• New and impactful actions to implement
• Updated graphics and resources
• A “Real Estate Industry Cheat Sheet”
• Case studies showcasing innovative ideas for working with real estate to transform the market
• Not one pop culture reference

If you have any questions, please contact us at info@ElevateNP.org.