Buying a Green Home in Austin

The word green means less and less

What makes a home green? How do I know if I’m being green-washed when I buy a home in Austin? These are some of the questions I’m frequently asked, so here’s a quick run-down of how to tell how green a home is.

The challenge for the eco-aware buyer is that there is so much green-washing in the media - playing up to the hopes and fears of the growing environmentally sensitive market with misleading advertising and unfounded claims.

The solution was luckily born in Austin. Austin Energy’s Green Building Program evolved from the City’s Energy Star program in 1991. It’s broad aim was to spread sustainable building practices, and there’s a cookbook (The Sustainable Building Sourcebook) which shows how to achieve green building.

So how do I know if my home is green? There are several rating schemes which allow third parties to assess this. They include LEED (most prevalent in commercial building) ENERGY STAR, and Austin Energy’s Green Building Program.

The new challenge is that although these rating schemes are available, and can be recorded by Realtors in the MLS for available homes, they’re not typically used:

There are three fields in the home listing database for available homes:

• Green Building Rating Program
• Rating Achieved
• Rating Year

In Austin, only three homes have this information correctly filled in today.

There are other fields in which agents can search and record information for energy efficient features of the home - ceiling fans, conditioned space for HVAC etc, and also a field to record the nature of insulation.

So if you were to click on the “Search for green homes” button below, there’s no way for this to accurately search for only green available homes in Austin at present. It’s still a work in progress.

I think this is a bit of an oversight on the part of listing agents. Informed buyers are tired of green-washing. They want facts. They want independent verification of credentials, and they want to be able to search for green homes.

If you want a high-performance home, make sure you get an agent who can get this information verified. This is often available when you buy a new home, and is just as important when you buy a remodeled home with sustainable building claims.

Garreth Wilcock is an Austin EcoBroker® with Keller Williams Realty.

Specializing in: Green Austin Real Estate and New Green Homes in Austin.

(512) 694 8873