What if you were in the market to buy a home and your No 1 priority was to be sure that you were investing all your hard-earned money into a place that was energy-efficient?
Would a gigantic nutrition label, like the one on your cereal box help?
Green prefab architect Michelle Kaufmann thinks it would.
Kaufmann thinks sellers should advertise, right up front, how insulated their homes are, how much water they typically use, and how much C02 they generally emit.
She's so serious about it, she's released a white paper (it's a PDF), and she's promised that "as soon as a sustainability labeling program is in place, even if it is at first instituted on a small scale before ultimately going national, we will be the first to commit to labeling our houses."
Her hope is that the labeling would make it easier for home buyers interested in buying a green home to make informed decisions.
What do you think? Is it a great green idea or an unfair onus to put on the seller?
image via MichelleKaufmann.com
Copyright © 2008 Apartment Therapy
Sounds a bit similar to the logic behind the newer LEEDs residential program -- although that only covers seriously green built homes. I can't imagine getting a prairie castle builder hear in Colorado to agree...but it would be nice to see it all laid out...and to have more data at my finger-tips to separate the light green homes from the truly green homes.
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Yes, please! I consider energy usage (and therefore, ongoing expenses) when I buy a car, major and minor appliances, and lightbulbs; why not when I buy a house, which will likely be my largest energy expense in my life?
view Jezebella's profile