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Living green is the goal of many young homebuyers. Once in their new home, they want to take steps toward improving their home’s efficiency. The first step to improving your home’s energy efficiency is to choose the right house.
Solar panels and LED light fixtures aside, the most efficient form of housing is an attached home. When your house nestles between the walls of adjoining homes, you share their heating and cooling through ambient temperature exchange. When a home sits above another home, their heat rises in the winter to warm that home. If it’s below another home, it’s cooled by the temperature set by the neighbor above. When energy efficiency remains a high priority for your home location, choose a condominium, townhome or duplex to improve your heating and cooling properties.
If you own a typical single-family, detached home, you’ll find a lot of wasted space being heated and cooled. But address these areas, and you’ll see a marked improvement in your energy consumption and costs:
While they won’t make a drastic different, you will see an improvement in your energy bills.
If your goal is to purchase an energy-efficient home, let your real estate agent know. That way, you won’t waste energy looking at ones that don’t fit your desire to leave a lighter footprint.
You don’t need to do this alone. I am bilingual in English and Spanish, and I have been in the industry for over 20 years, after earning my degree in Business Management and successive studies in Human Resources and Technology. Never content to let my education lapse, I also received a certification in Negotiation Skills from Pepperdine University and attended courses at Stanford University. A leader in the field, I am a member of the Santa Clara Board of Realtors and served as a professional standards ombudsman for 8 years. I completed a term as the President of the National Hispanic Organization of Real Estate’s Santa Clara chapter in 2016, now serving as this organization’s National Vice President. I pursued additional in-depth training to achieve professional designations as an ABR (Accredited Buyer’s Representative), CRS (Certified Professional Specialist), and SRES (Seniors Real Estate Specialist), GREEN certification, and RCS-D (Divorce Real Estate Specialist). Far from being a meaningless alphabet soup, this demonstrates how proactive I am in pursuing the latest knowledge so that I completely prepared to satisfy all my sellers' and buyers' unique needs. I am committed to Excellence!