Comment 29143

By Mike B. (anonymous) | Posted February 26, 2009 at 13:17:31

Adrian wrote:

Energy audits are great big bargaining chips for anyone looking to buy a house. An energy audit on my house is going to turn up problems. When that happens, it's going to cost me a lot more than $300. It will probably cost me thousands of dollars: for a problem that if I could fix, I absolutely would.

Absolutely; but you're only dealing with this from your narrow perspective as a current homeowner with an inefficient house. Having just spent 20% of the cost of my Beasley-neighborhood rowhouse on efficiency upgrades, my partner and I know it's damn expensive to make the necessary changes in a 100yr old house, and yeah, you likely won't get it all back (depending on how quickly you are envisioning selling it), but I would certainly have liked having the results of an energy audit on our home before we purchased it. Not because it would have changed our minds, but because it's an extra piece of information that can be used in determining which home best fit our lifestyle, budget, personal convictions, etc.

Let's put it this way, if your home is energy inefficient, it's not the audit's fault, and just because you have a low rating doesn't mean you need to do any upgrades; but potential buyers who are concious about energy use (and I believe people are becoming more concious about the advantages of energy efficiency) should be entitled to know how your home stacks up to other homes that may have been upgraded. In time, I believe that people will pay a premium for these homes, so I'm uncertain as to why you believe that efficient and inefficient resale homes should be marketed on the same playing field as one another.

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