4.13.2009 9:54 AM

Earth Day Could Mark a Green Tipping Point for the Real Estate Industry

Hopeful signs from Green Real Estate Education.

Photo: Duc Do / Istock

By Kerry Mitchell

At Green Real Estate Education we will celebrate Earth Day by providing training to the industry. In two locations, Kansas City and Marathon, Florida, we will train over 130 Realtors about how to help homeowners understand how their homes are emitting greenhouse gas emissions.

We have done this for over 4,300 Realtors, Home Inspectors, Mortgage Professionals and Appraisers in just under 23 months. We will tell these agents to visit their clients, offering tips on saving energy, recycling and using less toxic paint. We'll train them to do outreach in the community and to promote going green, and we feel this may cause a market transformation.

Why are so many underestimating the buyer today? Can economists not see buyers are brighter and smarter than in the past? It isn't the $1,200 mortgage payment that stops them, it is the extra $700+ a month in taxes and insurance, and then another $200 or more for utility costs that is stifling the market. We feel we need to tell Realtors and those in the industry to wake up, teach clients how to go green!

A home has to produce better and more lasting results, be better insulated in challenging weather and have a healthier indoor air quality. We train on how to lower utility bills and how a home must be better for our living environment. A property must not only meet our needs, but more and more consumers are demanding that they exceed those needs. Do you want a $400 utility bill or one that is $150? Using renewable energy to power our homes, saving energy as they do in other countries will be necessary to kickstart the real estate market.

So I beg all continue to work hard. The energy sector represents new jobs for those who are losing the ones they had. Jobs for those who can manufacture, install and sell and market these systems, for rainwater, recycling efforts and the labor needed to build windmills, plant crops that produce energy and so on. These people own homes or will buy and they need their Realtor to understand energy efficiency and how the built environment contaminates the air.

It is almost as if we have the new "gold rush" in front of us. We just need to shift our perspective to understand the possibilities. Earth Day is such a great venue to let consumers know installing solar has such benefits. Most all involved in the new "green revolution" will confirm education is needed. We provide easy-to-implement training for anyone who represents the built structure. Everyone knows a Realtor or Mortgage Professional. They need to get our first training, Green Leadership Level One Certification, which is under $100.

This 3-hour real estate agent course offers an excellent overview of what real estate professionals may see as clients begin to show interest in these new types of renovations. We review the energy rating, energy mortgage concepts and green certification process and qualify a real estate professionals' role as these new inquiries enter the marketplace.

Kerry Mitchell is the founder and course developer of Green Real Estate Education, which is on target to educate more than 20,000 real estate professionals in going green by 2009. Mitchell established the recognized certification for the real estate industry, the GCREP.GL. She worked for 14 years as a licensed real estate broker in Maryland and Florida, where she now resides.

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