15 December 2008

Energy effciency makes your house worth more - official

| johnboy
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Simon Corbell has proudly announced research by the Commonwealth showing houses in the ACT with good energy efficiency sell for more.

    “While historically home buyers might have focused on a new home’s location like proximity to schools, work and general amenities, this report found that even taking location into account in the ACT in 2005 and 2006, a higher energy efficiency rating also delivers a good result.

    “The findings of this report provide real incentives for property owners to invest in energy efficiency and real encouragement for the housing industry to ensure that new homes are as efficient as possible.”

It was also very charitable of Simon to give Peter Garrett a good news event to go to today.

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The cat did it10:23 am 16 Dec 08

Yes- interesting that energy awareness is beginning to have a measurable financial effect- worth almost $10,000 for a $500,000 house, so it’s worth investigating the energy conservation ‘easy pickings’ like putting decent batts in the roof if they aren’t already installed.

It would also help if the rating method was more transparent- it’s not, because it uses commercial software and apparently it’s got flaws. My architectural friends tell me that, eg it can’t/doesn’t take the thermal benefits of party walls into account. This is possibly why they study was restricted to detached houses.

Quite an interesting and legitimate study. The basic finding is that each 0.5 EER star is worth an extra 1.9% on your property’s value. So it could be a worthwhile investment in the short term just to boost the sale price, particularly for very low rating houses.

The other interesting finding was that ex-public housing properties sell at a 10% discount – probably the neighbours.

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