My newest report of the high-performance home sale market of
2013 will feature some surprising statistics regarding Massachusetts real
estate sales professionals reporting of green-home features.
We are fortunate to have one of the top ten multiple listing
services, the data base that agents use to detail home features, in
Massachusetts. Many people don’t know that the Multiple Listing Service (MLS)
is actually a network of approximately 900 independently owned organizations in
the U.S. that vary widely in how home data features are recorded. The
predominant MLS in Massachusetts is Multiple Listing Service Property
Information Network (MLS PIN) located in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. MLS PIN was
one of the first MLSs to adopt specific green fields in their database in 2009.
MLS PIN’s green data fields include several fields for listing
agents bringing a high-performance home to market. For a developer that has
hired a real estate agent to bring their green home to market, it is important
that the listing agent accurately enter all of the homes features accurately in
the data base. Inaccurate representation of a home’s green features are
problematic for a variety of reasons. Over stating the homes energy features is
known as ‘green-washing’ a opens all of the parties in the transaction to potential
litigation; under-reporting of the homes green features is marketing opportunity
lost to a growing audience of home buyers searching the data base for energy
efficient homes built with sustainable products. Under-reporting of data also can make valuing
the home accurately by real estate appraisers and underwriters a challenge.
In my upcoming report, I discovered a substantial amount of
evidence that both under-reporting and over-reporting of a home’s green
features was prevalent in Massachusetts real estate sales of 2013.
MLS PIN offers a listing agent an opportunity to note if a
home has been green certified by independent third party certifying
institutions. When a listing agent checks the ‘Yes’ box asking if the home or
condominium has been green certified, a drop down menu allows the agent to
check if the certifications is Energy Star Home Certified, LEED certified, NGBS
certified, or Other (See Remarks).
I first discovered there might be a problem of
under-reporting when I was searching form green condominiums for a buyer
earlier in the year. When I searched for available green certified condos, I
realized that there were units not appearing in the search although I knew that
they were, in fact, green certified. I decided to investigate this issue more
closely for my 2013 report.
I discovered that there was evidence that supports for every
one green certified single-family home accurately recorded in Massachusetts in
2013, 1.5 was under-reported. For condominiums sales, evidence of accurate
reporting by listing agents was even worse, for every one condo accurately
recorded two were not.
There was also evidence that the MLS PIN data field ‘Solar
Features’ was over used by listing agents. Evidence suggests that this field
may have been inappropriately used 39% of the time in 2013, up from 28% that I
reported in my 2012 study.
Given that the signs of a vigorous high-performance home
market are taking hold in Massachusetts, real estate agent education about the
accurate use of MLS PIN’s green data fields seems in order. Evidence suggests
that real estate sales professionals need an immediate update on the
high-performance home systems. Quite frankly, real estate agents and brokers
should have a deep understanding of all aspects of a home that they are
selling. Those agents that are not taking the responsibility to increase their
awareness of features of a home’s energy efficiency are a challenge that must
be faced in our industry.
