Why Go Green to Sell Your Home?

"Green" is in. Green is also rapidly becoming mainstream. However, learning about what is or is not eco-friendly can be time consuming, intimidating, frustrating, and misleading. But relax…this chapter will introduce you to what green means, why it's important and how to make eco-friendly changes to help sell your home. My hope is that when you see how easy it is to make green choices in the home you are selling, you will also want to make them in your new place.

Greening up your home will give you an advantage over much of your competition, which will sell your home faster.

All the agents I interviewed were enthusiastic about green features and believe the addition of them helps sell homes faster. Make sure your agent is just as enthusiastic, as that excitement will be conveyed to buyers which can encourage them to buy your home!

Benefits to Adding Green Features to your Home:

• Make it more energy efficient. That means utility bills are reduced and money is saved. Buyers want to save money!
  
• Improve air quality, which makes the environment healthier for inhabitants.
  
• Make your home worth more money.
  
• Make your home more desirable, because people want green features.
  
• Make your home more desirable because green is hip and current and buyers want whatever is new.
  

There are a number of factors that will help to determine what green features to make in the home you are selling. Almost anyone can make minor, eco-friendly home improvements that will make a home more desirable. Major changes—like adding a geothermal pump or solar panels—would make sense only under certain circumstances and will be explored in the next Step.

If you are putting your home on the market in the future and have some time before you sell it, adding insulation, new windows and other energy efficient changes can prove to be extremely beneficial. You will be able to show how much money you have saved by making these changes. If you have less time, however, you may still make energy efficient changes, as you can compare energy used in your home to comparable homes. I highly recommend you ask your agent what eco-friendly improvements they are seeing in comparable homes.

Why Going Green is Essential

If all the talk about words like eco-friendly, green, sustainability and so on has gotten you confused, you are not alone. For all the good information that's available, there is an equal amount of misinformation. The following section presents what I hope will be an easy to understand explanation of what green really means and why it is so important for the survival of the planet and its inhabitants.

I understand that you don't need to know why it is important for our health and the planet to sell your home, but it is my hope that, if you are new to this subject, you will see why it's important and you will want to make these changes for both your current and future homes.