Looking for a way to sell houses in a bad market? Green building is a powerful weapon to differentiate your shiny new product from all those existing homes sporting "for sale" signs or the bland sea of sameness in competitive new-home subdivisions.
Green-built houses, neighborhoods and master-planned communities meet an emerging market head-on with a product that really is different. The best green home builders and developers find buyers — even when they're hiding — with marketing concepts that create urgency to buy out of America's fear of economic peril, health hazards and impending environmental calamity.
Why Green Is Different Today
Building a green home has been around for more than a decade, but it's only in the last few years that it found real traction in the marketplace. Why?
It might be one more example of a fundamental change in American lifestyles caused by the continuing upward spiral of energy costs. And the epidemic of asthma and allergies afflicting so many Americans might have something to do with it. Whatever the reasons, green-built houses are becoming almost as hot as hybrid cars. And green communities are attracting mainstream home buyers all across the country, not just tree-huggers in Boulder.
Successful green builders hang their marketing efforts on energy cost savings. The payback from reduced monthly heating and air conditioning bills overtakes the higher upfront cost of building green in only a few years. Improved indoor air quality is the other attribute that virtually all green builders tout. For the thousands of families fighting allergies or asthma, it's probably the most important factor driving their decision to buy a new home. What price do you put on the health of a child? But there's more behind the recent upswing in green home building than those two lynchpin attributes: bushel baskets of marketing dollars, for one thing.
Some states are establishing their own green building programs to encourage local builders to embark on this growing market. EarthCraft House is the Atlanta Home Builders Association's landmark green building program, developed in conjunction with the NAHB Research Center. Based on a point system, it allows builders to qualify for certification by piling up points in categories ranging from site planning to tightness of the building envelope, from HVAC systems to water conservation. Home builder associations in neighboring cities and states are now adopting EarthCraft.
There's a third-party endorsement aspect to this. It's a self-certifying program, but the standards are set across the local industry. Energy Star falls out of EarthCraft, and that is certified by the (federal) Department of Energy.
EarthCraft is not a tough bar to reach; the standards were designed to allow 80 percent of production-built homes to qualify. When you focus on installation and craftsmanship of construction techniques, it doesn't add a lot of cost. Buyer surveys show customers believe the value added by green building is worth the investment they make. It pays for itself over time.
A large segment of the population has loved the idea of buying green right from its inception. However, until recently people were unwilling to pay for it.
Large-scale green building programs like EarthCraft, combined with the urgency created by rising energy costs and indoor air-related health issues, are responsible for the new traction of green building in the market. EarthCraft has become a brand in Atlanta, like Energy Star in other parts of the country. When a builders' association gets behind such a program and then harnesses the marketing clout of major product manufacturers as sponsors, you can develop advertising budgets big enough to get identity in the market so that people will shop looking for that logo. The amount of money it would take for an individual builder to achieve that branding impact would be excessive.
There's another benefit from large-scale advertising of programs like EarthCraft in Atlanta and others taking root in cities across the country. They allow communities to draw like-minded buyers, interested in green, from across a broad geographic market.
These principle-based buyers make up a significant, growing, but underserved niche. They are receptive to bundling all these attributes like energy efficiency and indoor air quality and sustainability under the label 'green.' They will sacrifice square footage to have a higher quality home, and for them, a brand like EarthCraft becomes almost like the Good Houskeeping Seal of Approval. They equate green to a broader concept of quality.
This is not just an Atlanta phenomenon. Architects, builders, and contractors across the country are having success as sustainable-only businesses that are totally focused on creating green communities.
Branded Green
Many builders and developers are branding themselves as green, and many master-planned communities now require four-star certification as the entry level for a home builder to be allowed in the community. It's much easier for a large community to market green than it is for an individual builder, especially when you get beyond energy efficiency and healthy house attributes and into sustainability.
The Sales Challenge
Probably the biggest marketing challenge green builders face — especially those in the production building arena — is training a sales force to sell the complex attributes of green. Often, even the best sales people struggle with explaining the science of home systems performance. The solution is having model homes with really good displays that sales people can use to stay on track, and collateral materials for shoppers to take with them when they leave. Large boards with bullet points can show how the construction process; heating and cooling equipment; moisture management systems; fresh air ventilation; and pressure balancing work together.
If there's a shortcoming of the EarthCraft program in Atlanta, it's probably that too few builders are giving their sales people the training they need to discuss these issues with shoppers. The issues and some of the technology can be complex, but all the sales people really need to focus on are the benefits. Then the customers will start using that benefits list for comparison shopping.
Salespeople would benefit from keeping it simple. Sell the benefits to the buyer rather than features of individual components of a system. A safe, healthy, energy-efficient home is easier to sell than a tankless water heater or foam insulation.
Salespeople may need to be educated about healthy-house technology and energy savings. Anything that creates an advantage for new homes over existing homes is really important now. The key is going to be how good they get at creating an emotional attachment to greenness when people visit the models.
Marketing materials and a Web site can do a good job of getting the green message out, but it's a long way from a curious interest in green building to an eager signature on a sales contract. And it takes salesmanship to cover that distance.
Bottom Line
This year, there has been a mass tipping point toward green. You can't pick up a shelter magazine without seeing an article about some aspect of it. Even code standards are now creeping closer and closer to green.
With home builders in many markets desperate to find any advantage for new homes over the glut of existing homes on the market, going green is a logical step. But keep in mind that the great successes for green building seem to come in those markets where a builder's individual corporate branding and marketing are enhanced by HBA-led certification programs with big advertising budgets underwritten by sponsoring manufacturers, and by green communities and developers that also have money to spend on marketing and advertising.
If you have to go it alone, it's still great to be seen as green. Builders of every size ought to be making speeches at HBA dinners to rally the troops behind a green flag. Going green is obviously much easier with a green building certification program active in the market. The ranks of people who want to buy green are growing fast: they don't want to buy commodity houses.
