The high-performance home market is booming, with green
homes currently accounting for 23 percent of the
home builders still report that home buyers will not pay more for
high-performance home features?
There’s a
disconnect between what modular home builders are selling and what home buyers
want—and that remedying that disconnect with stronger messaging could lead to
more high-performance home sales. Here are four “do’s” for increasing sales
of high-performance homes.
- Do: Get your high-performance homes certified. An
independent, third-party certification not only validates that you have built
what you said you will build, but it also helps to define performance by
clarifying what “green” means. These certifications can also add
value to your home, he added, noting that as programs such as Energy Star, the
National Green Building Standard, LEED, or the Department of Energy’s Challenge
Home become more popular and gain brand recognition, this public acceptance
attaches a sense of value to the accreditations. There’s a growing awareness
that high-performance features add value to a home. The
NAHB’s 2013 “What Buyers Want” study that found 89 percent of homebuyers
surveyed would prefer an energy-efficient house over a comparable house
without energy efficiency features, even if the high-performance home costs 2
to 3 percent more. - Do: Sell them what they want, not what you know. Builders
have done a good job educating themselves in building science and energy
efficiency but that’s not what clients necessarily look for. You may have the best building envelope in the marketplace or be incorporating
PV or geothermal, but if you don’t hit what customers want, you won’t get the
sale. If they’re focus is on health, they won’t necessarily see how a tighter
building envelope factors into that. Design, amenities, low
maintenance, lower operating costs, and quality drive purchases. The secret becomes taking what you know and putting it in terms that the
consumer will understand, which means that a builder must know what shade of
green each customer is. If you talk to a light green person from a deep green
context, you get a disconnect. To gauge a buyer’s interest in
sustainability, listen twice as much as you speak. Do they value energy
efficiency or indoor air quality or water efficiency? Are they environmentally
conscious? Don’t start telling them what you can do until you have a firm idea
of what they want.” - Do: Help the buyer add value to your homes. When you learn a
buyer’s concerns and match your message to meet their top priority, be it
comfort, health, energy efficiency, or general environmental concerns, you help
them add value to your product. Creating value
involves telling the buyer not only what you have to offer, but also telling
them why they need it. - Do: Be careful of what you say and promise to a
buyer. A sale is great, but be cautious about overpromising. Be careful not to promise specific operational savings, return on
investment, or guarantees for performance. Avoid overstatements. After all,
performance can be greatly affected by home owner behavior. What builders can
do, however, is promise that their home was built to a rigorous set of
standards. You must then be prepared to define and explain what
those standards are.
