As green buildings become more mainstream, real estate brokers will become key players in marketing these buildings to potential buyers. However, there are as yet few mechanisms available to allow brokers to speak with authority about the sometimes technical features of green buildings.
One program, Ecobroker®, is attempting to change that. According to its website, http://www.ecobroker.com, EcoBroker is an educational and marketing program “designed to help communities across the United States and internationally take advantage of and encourage energy efficiency and sustainable design in real estate properties." The program provides continuing education credits as a way to educate real estate brokers and industry affiliates about green buildings through a series of courses that allows them to become certified EcoBrokers® and address buyers’ and sellers’ increasing sensitivity to building features like energy efficiency and environmental design.
The program, which is available online, addresses environmental issues such as radon, asbestos, lead, water, mold, indoor air quality, and other issues that may arise during real estate transactions. It also covers energy efficiency technologies, sustainable energy options, and green mortgage options for energy efficiency improvements. It explains green home certification programs, such as Built Green® Colorado, Energy Star Qualified Homes, and LEED. So if you're in the market for a green house, see if there are any Ecobrokers in your area before you start to look. It could make finding your green dream home a whole lot easier.
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Green Building and EcoBrokers...
Our company in Ann Arbor MI, currently deals with an eco-broker since green building is all that we do...the eco-broker program is not very well developed as of yet and training is rather limited for the real-estate agents. Currently they seem more focused on collecting the fees than actually providing the appropriate training. Never the less it's a good idea in theory and we are glad someone is actually doing something.
In our mind the future of green building will be heading primarily in the direction of LEED and Energy Star Qualified Homes since these are the most well developed programs that people can actually understand and appreciate. LEED is still relatively new in the residential building sector and not many people know or care about it, also it needs to be a lot more user friendly for the actual building professionals to achieve wider market penetration.