Blogging The Oregonian: Green Real Estate Listings

Thanks to Kria Lacher, a Portland, Oregon real estate agent who bills herself as "Portland's Green Realtor®", it's gotten a little easier to buy a green home... if you're looking in or around Portland.

According to this article, which appeared earlier this year in the Oregonian, Lacher worked with the Regional Multiple Listings Service, the database of homes for sale, to add fields that describe green certifications and other features, defined as those "that can contribute to energy efficiency and ecological design. Some of those features include whether the house has a high-efficiency furnace, cork or bamboo flooring and partial solar power."

Is it a perfect solution?

Not quite; some green houses aren't certified as energy efficient, and not all certified houses perform well. We'd like to see more data added to the listings, like a listing of energy use for the past several years, and the ability to search on these new criteria from the RMLS website; right now, the advanced search is only available to agents. But it's a great first step.

If you've looked for a green home lately, we'd like to hear about your experience. Was it easy to find one?

Comments (2)

I looked for a "green" home a two years ago in Hunterdon and Mercer Counties in NJ and Bucks County, Pa. In seeking something green, I wanted a home that came with high efficiency HVAC and hot water, high performance glazing, small lot with lower maintenance vegetation. If it didn't have these features, I at least wanted a house that could be easily retrofitted. I looked at probably 60 houses and countless ones on the internet real estate sites. Not once did I discover a house at any price level that was either efficient or incorporated any sort of green design. In fact the home I lived in at the time with its little bit of passive solar design elements, was more efficient than anything I saw on the market.

Given the real estate industry's penchant for exaggeration, I think they would have to provide a fairly comprehensive and independently verifiable set of evaluation criteria before the public would really use such a tool. I also suspect that any house that fits in their "green" category would likely be very expensive.

posted by John H on August 15th 2007 at 11:08am
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I think this is an excellent start. I recently read some survey results indicating that most people would choose a house with green features even if more expensive, as long as they could count on reduced utility bills. But realtors seem to be blind to energy efficiency - try to find a listing that advertises features like tankless hot water, energy star appliances, and such. Ha!

I think that realtors need to start talking about energy efficiency, and they would find that customers would respond. Eventually we'd have realtors and customers who know what they're talking about when it comes to green.

Hmmm, perhaps it would be fun to call a few realty companies and ask if there's anything available with a geothermal heat pump....

Cheers,
Joanne

posted by JoanneM on August 15th 2007 at 4:08pm
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