The story of eco-technology is one of constant improvement, sporadically livened up by minor breakthroughs along the way.
As a consequence of this relatively gradual pace of change, some of the advances made in the area have only just started being adopted by the average home-owner, making very eco-friendly homes relatively rare even among new builds.
Making your property environmentally friendly before you put it on the market has the potential to make it more attractive and drive up the price, for the following five reasons…
1. Savings for the buyer
In many cases, buying a more environmentally-friendly home will pay you back a significant amount.
As a house is an investment for life, prospective buyers may well be able to factor in electricity, water and gas bill savings for as much as twenty years or more.
Making sure your house has cost-effective, permanent insulation solutions can drive up the price of your home by as much as 5%.
2. Family-friendly
One of the perceived benefits of environmentally-friendly products and technologies is that, being ‘natural’, they have few-to-no harmful chemicals in them.
Green technology and building materials have a clean, wholesome image that plays well when selling a house to families, especially families with very young children. Compare that with trying to sell a family of five an apartment filled with asbestos!
Rustic wood flooring from sustainable sources, for instance, presents a warmer, cosier and safer aspect than sheets of linoleum can offer.
3. Low maintenance costs
What makes a green house green, for me, is determined by two main things: sustainability, and availability of resources.
Did you know, for instance, that even softwood stairs last longer on average than steel stairs?
Not having to replace or repair major chunks of the building for ages is a massive selling point – make sure you highlight this to buyers!
4. Green is beautiful
One of the best things about the greenest technology – such as water purification, renewable energy and energy conservation – is that it also tends to be the latest technology. Scientists and engineers just love efficiency.
And the great thing about the latest technology? That it looks like, well, the latest technology! It’s new, it’s shiny, it’s sleek, it’s sexy and it sells.
Green technology tends to work very well purely because it’s newer than less efficient technologies. And it tends to look like it works very well, too – great news when you’re trying to sell your home.
5. Future proofing
To protect against a tax hike, or a new regulation requiring you refit your house to standard yourself, people are starting to buy houses based on how future-proof they are, especially in terms of how green or not they may be.
The metaphorical insulation from further pro-environment legislation makes the physical insulation you’ve had put in look very appealing to house hunters, even if they’re not that bothered about the environment on a personal level.
Rolling in green
Now that online estate agents are bringing property purchasing to an ever-wider audience, the average buyer is able to search for the exact kind of property they are interested in, meaning your eco-dome is now more likely than ever to find the perfect audience and buyer.
With these five arguments for how going green can really help sell your property, you’ve got no excuse to put it off any longer!
