5 Benefits of Buying an Energy Efficient Home

In today’s real estate world, the buyer is king. It wasn’t always this way, and if you were in the game just five or ten years ago you probably remember when property values were at an all-time high and you’d have to put a bid in the day you saw a house in order to fend off the other aggressive shoppers. Today there are thousands of houses on the market at any given time, and the sellers must take the time to consider their property from all angles, and make the renovations that will get a deal done. That means you should have no problem finding everything you want in your next home, including the most modern energy efficiency. And in case you think that’s just a buzzword, here are five of the benefits of buying an energy efficient home.

The most obvious benefit of the energy efficient home is that it saves you money. Taking on a mortgage and property taxes can be a real stretch of your resources, but you can’t forget about the monthly utility bills that will also come your way. Gas, electric, heating and cooling all cost money, but with a home stocked with Energy Star-rated appliances you’ll trim those bills by as much as 30%. This will lead to hundreds or thousands of dollars in savings each year, depending on the size of the home.

You might be surprised to hear that this financial benefit doesn’t stop at your front door. An efficient home can actually help turn around the recession. As a whole, energy efficiency saves the economy over $500 billion each and every year. Constructing your home from scratch or bringing an old home up to modern energy standards provides jobs to skilled professionals, and all told that’s more than 800,000 jobs across the country every year. Efficiency methods weren’t discovered out of nowhere, either. By voting with your money you’re showing the government it needs to invest in research and policies that support further conservation work.

An energy efficient home is also much more comfortable. It’s a major quality of life jump, whether you notice it or not. Since an energy efficient home has been built with proper insulation and a keen eye towards avoiding gaps or broken seals around doors and windows, your HVAC system will work much more efficiently. You’ll heat the house quicker, the temperature will remain steady longer, and the same goes for your air conditioning. Less time spent in canned air with the utilities pumping will help you sleep better, your skin will feel softer and you’ll be impacted less by the allergens and toxins in the air.

Speaking of toxins, you cannot overstep the huge benefit you’re making for the environment by purchasing an energy efficient home. Modern construction and efficiency upgrades have trimmed the energy bill of the country by more than half. The amount of power saved by all of these collective energy efficient homes could actually run twelve whole states for a year if put together. That saves natural resources and softens the demand on power plants. Your home helps cut down pollution and reduce greenhouse gases. And if you have solar panels or wind turbines you could even help generate additional energy for the grid.

Finally, your efficient property actually benefits the balance of national security. By demanding less power from the grid, you’re helping the government depend less and less on foreign powers to provide the energy we need. This probably doesn’t come up that often when you’re shopping for whole house humidifiers and HVAC systems, but the fact that your family requires less energy may lead to American lives saved thousands of miles away, as many battles rage over power supplies during a war. That may be the most important benefit of them all.