Getting to a sustainable home is easy when you are first building your home. The additional cost for a high-performance home is between five and ten percent. But, your home begins to pay you back immediately in the form of lower utility bills. Within a few years the payback is completed and the continued cost of running your home is permanently less.
Renovations to existing home also make sense, and the state and federal government help with rebates and tax credits that may or may not be available to you. In addition, check the website called DSIRE USA to learn what programs are available to homeowners in your own state.
If you are looking to make you’re new or existing home more eco-friendly view the chart below and learn the return on investment on some typical sustainable home solutions.
While the payback period for the above products is short and the improvements relatively low-cost, outfitting your new home, or retrofitting your old home, will see paybacks for most sustainable options between under one year to as long as ten years.
Matthew E. Kahn of UCLA and Nils Kok of Maastricht University in the Netherlands conducted a study in California. One of the study findings was that a green certification for a home brought in, on average, nine percent more than area homes without such certification. The sample size for this study was 1.6 million homes.
Increased home value and lower operating costs for eco-friendly homes is a certainty. It sometimes is an even better investment than the stock market at times with an enviable return on investment.
Sources
http://cleanenergystates.bluehousegroup.com/projects/project-information-e-lists/
http://activerain.com/blogsview/4540876/pay-back-on-green-home-improvements-
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/22/business/la-fi-harney-20120722
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