Best Green Upgrades for Home Sellers

Home buyers are often attracted to homes that include green upgrades. This post will discuss the best ways to upgrade your home before putting it on the market.

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Best Green Upgrades for Home Sellers

Posted by Gary Ashton on Thursday, November 8th, 2018 at 9:32am.

Green Updates to Help Your Home Sell FasterModern home buyers prioritize green living. If you're a home owner who is thinking about selling your property in the next few months, making energy efficient home improvements to your property can help you attract more buyers and bigger offers.

Have an Energy Audit Done on Your Home

What is an energy audit? In fact, it's a valuable tool that can help you identify where in your house energy is being used excessively to help save you money. An energy audit will check for air leaks, poor insulation, appliances, heating and cooling, and other key parts of the house where you — and your buyers — could be throwing money away.

Home Improvements to Improve Your Home's Energy Efficiency

Whether you're on a tight budget or are prepared to make green home improvements to your property such as installing a home wind turbine, you can make your property more eco-friendly and reduce your home's carbon footprint, which can be an attractive draw for home buyers, giving sellers a competitive edge in hot real estate markets like Hendersonville. Here are some of the best home improvements sellers can make to improve their home energy efficiency and bring in buyers.

Low Flow Bathroom Fixtures

Low flow bathroom fixtures like low-flow toilets and low-flow shower heads can help reduce your home's water usage while having little impact on your day-to-day life.

At one time, low-flow toilets had a bad reputation for requiring multiple flushes just to get the job done. Modern low-flow toilets are much more effective and are able to flush away waste efficiently. Low-flow toilets can save homeowners as much as 10,439 gallons per year and are just as effective as toilets from years past.

As for low-flow shower heads, these fixtures can save an estimated 5,475 gallons of water each year and they clean just as effectively as the old shower heads. Home buyers like hearing about reduced usage of natural resources and money savings, so feel free to include this information in a packet or home guide that can be distributed during showings.

HVAC System

Heating and cooling systems become less efficient as they age. Installing a new HVAC system, including a new air conditioner, furnace and programmable thermostat, is a great way to save money on utilities and save energy in the house. To ensure best performance, look for models that are ENERGY STAR® rated. After purchasing a new HVAC system, consider tracking your money savings. This information can be included in the home guide to show the ways that the new HVAC system leads to savings.

Energy Efficient Appliances

New appliances are almost always attractive to home buyers, especially if the appliances are ENERGY STAR® rated. If you're not sure which appliances to replace first, pick those that are oldest or those that use the most energy when in operation.

After the air conditioner, the clothes dryer and water heater tend to use the most energy in a typical household. If your water heater and clothes dryer are very old, it's likely that they use even more energy than modern models. Replacing these appliances with the most recent models can help your home save money and can reduce your home's carbon footprint.

Energy Efficient Windows

Many homes lose a lot of heat and cooling through their windows, which can have a significant impact on energy costs. To counteract this, most energy efficient windows are double paned and contain specialized chemicals between the panes that minimize temperature transfer. The best energy efficient windows have three panes, ensuring maximum temperature retention in the home.

How can you make your windows more energy efficient without replacing them? For homeowners not ready to commit to replacing all of the windows in their homes, tinting windows with specialized UV film can reduce heat transfer and save money on heating and cooling without the significant expense of window replacement. Both options will save money and can increase the home's value in the eyes of buyers.

Energy Efficient Lighting

Energy efficient lighting can be achieved easily by replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient light bulbs. If you'd like to go the distance with your energy efficient lighting, consider installing smart light bulbs in your home's light fixtures. Just remember that if you plan to advertise that your home is equipped with smart lighting, you'll have to leave the smart light bulbs behind when you move. Smart lighting can augment some of the most energy efficient light bulbs by fine-tuning when and how the lights are used.

Day-to-Day Tasks to Save Money in Your House

Energy Saving Tips for Nashville Home OwnersIn case you didn’t feel the heat wave that swooped through the Midwest earliest this week, the summer season is clearly in full swing. When living in Nashville, it’s hard not to love this time of year, especially with all the fun-filled events and festivals in town that take place all season long. But with the warmer temperatures can also come a much higher energy bill, unless you implement some energy-saving strategies that are sure to save you some money.

Listed below are just a few simple tips that can go a long way in keeping energy usage to a minimum and ensuring maximum savings when it comes time to pay up. So if you’re someone who dreads seeing that NES bill in the mailbox every month, consider taking the following measures to help lower summertime expenses:

Keep Your House Warmer While You're Away or at Work.

We often hear the myth that’s it’s more cost-effective to regulate your home’s temperature during all hours of the day because you’ll use more energy trying to cool it back down once arriving home to a warmer-than-usual house or condo. While that may be true if you turn off the air-conditioning entirely, remember that keeping your house as close to the temperature outside as you can will ultimately save you money. So on those mild days when it’s only in the 80s, try setting the thermostat somewhere in the high 70s, and if you need a cool down upon returning home, take down a few degrees.

Use Ceiling Fans Whenever Possible

If you don’t already have a few ceiling fans installed inside your Nashville lakefront home, you might be surprised at how cool they can keep a room. On milder summer days and nights, it’s entirely possible to stay cool with just a ceiling fan on rather than the air conditioning. So if your house is lacking in the ceiling fan department, it may be time to take a ride over to the local Home Depot to prep for another DIY project.

Keep The Blinds Shades Closed During The Day

There’s probably no easier, cost-effective way to keep you house a tad cooler than to not let a lot of sunlight in during the day. And if you plan on being gone all day, keep the shades down and the sun out and you’ll be surprised at just how cool you can keep the house just by following this simple rule.

Work With Your Real Estate Agent

A good real estate agent will know which energy efficient improvements appeal the most to home buyers. If you're thinking about selling your home and would like to make upgrades that make your home more attractive to buyers, talk to your real estate agent. They can help you decide which renovations and remodels to make that will make your home more attractive when it goes on the market.

 

Gary Ashton

The Ashton Real Estate Group of RE/MAX Advantage

The #1 RE/MAX team in the World!

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