From the UK: HIP Homes Will Sell Faster

While house prices have fallen sharply in England since the recent credit crunch, and the market has almost dried up for people wanting to sell and buy homes, a newly hatched program called HIP (Home Information Packs) is starting to make green homes more popular and sought after than non-green ones.

HIP was established to help sellers and buyers have easy access to all information about a property including an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) that shows the "greenness" of a potential property. The environmental impact rating measures your home's impact on the environment in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and the energy efficiency rating which measure a home's overall green efficiency.

A recent study also found that 60 percent of builders believed that green features in a home would help them sell houses in a down market. While there are no figures as to the actual impact of green home features to support this claim, I do know from friends currently looking to buy that the "greenness" of a potential home has become an important criteria to them in purchasing, and is one of the "pros" offered for purchase by real estate agents showing the houses.

With the current economic downturn, more buyers and sellers must be looking closely at the EPC. The rating of EPCs start at grade A for the most efficient and bottom out with grade G, which represents the least efficient. My good friend Julian has asked the following questions whilst seeing many unsellable houses in the current U.K. market:

I did add insulation to the roof of my 1930s home in London when I purchased it a couple of years ago and, yes, I really noticed the difference on my energy bills. With England having so many older houses (which most buyers seek, by the way), the bad weather, water shortages (in London anyways) and long dark winter days are driving home costs to the top of every homeowner's list.

Almost all estate agents now highlight the HIP on their sales material. If people have not put the time and energy into making their homes more energy efficient, they may well be waiting a long time to sign on the dotted line.