New Study Examines Increasing Demand for Eco-Friendly Homes in D.C. Market

A new study, produced by the first ever public-private partnership on real estate and green homes, revealed that real estate listings which highlight eco-friendly, high-performance home (HPH) features perform above average in the Washington, D.C. market.

To better address consumer expectations for more information regarding a property’s energy efficiency, MRIS, the industry-leading Mid-Atlantic Multiple Listing Service (MLS) that facilitates nearly $125 million a day in real estate transactions, is adding 14 new MLS HPH fields including ENERGY STAR Cooling and Heating Systems, LEED for Homes certification (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design), and HERS index scores (Home Energy Rating System). This will allow real estate professionals to better identify HPH features so that potential buyers can make more informed purchasing decisions.

“D.C. residents are environmentally conscious and want their homes to reflect this,” said Jonathan Hill, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at MRIS. “We want to make it easier for real estate professionals to help sellers promote the green features in their listings and to help buyers identify these homes which are more energy efficient and eco-friendly.”

The study, conducted by the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT), in association with Elevate Energy and MRIS subsidiary RealEstate Business Intelligence (RBI), examined sales trends of homes in Washington, D.C. from 2008 to 2013, comparing properties with HPH features to properties without HPH features.  

It discovered that in 2013, the highest density of HPHs has been concentrated in six D.C. neighborhoods: Cathedral Heights, Georgetown, Howard, Brookland, Brentwood and Capitol Hill. The study also found that over the past several years, HPHs have sold for higher prices when compared to non-HPHs.

“The initial indication of this data is that buyers are willing to pay a premium for HPHs,” said Cliff Majersik, executive director of IMT. “While additional analysis is needed to confirm these findings, they are inline with other recent studies that show that green premiums do exist in the residential housing market. By utilizing the new MLS green fields, real estate professionals can address the growing homebuyer demand for HPHs.”

MRIS’s upcoming update of the HPH fields will be the first and most complete suite of fields, compared to the MLS national data standard. MRIS will also track the use of these fields to better improve the process of highlighting HPH data and identify HPH hot spots.

For a full copy of the report, Greening the MLS: Bringing High-Performance Homes to Light in the District of Columbia, please visit http://www.mris.com/about-mris/original-research/greening-mls.

ABOUT MRIS

MRIS is a leading provider of real estate information technology and one of the nation’s leading multiple listing services (MLS), facilitating over $45 billion in system wide sales in 2014. The company supports over 45,000 real estate professionals in the Mid-Atlantic region, including Maryland, Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C. and parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia. MRIS provides its customers with a portfolio of best-in-class desktop, mobile and cloud-based technologies to improve the real estate transaction process for both real estate professionals and homebuyers and sellers. For more information, please visit MRIS.com or MRIShomes.com to search for thousands of available homes in the Mid-Atlantic region.