Selling a home in today’s housing market can be a challenge, to say the least. With so many homes on the market at rock bottom prices, it can take a long time to get an offer on your home and it will probably be thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars less than your asking price even if your home is competitively priced. The problem is that houses have almost become a commodity. If your home is just like half a dozen other homes for sale in your area, buyers have no incentive to make you a better offer. The buyer can just keep making low ball offers on homes like yours until some desperate homeowner takes it.
What you need to do is to make your home stand out from the others so that the buyer wants your home, not a home like yours. One way to make your home stand out is by improving the energy efficiency of your home and the most fertile ground for energy efficiency improvements is your home’s heating and cooling system.
Studies have shown that homes with third party energy efficiency certifications sell significantly faster and for more money than conventional homes. Even if your home doesn’t have a third party energy efficiency certification, buyers are clearly interested in energy efficiency. Use that to your advantage by having an system efficiency analysis done by a good HVAC contractor and have them install the recommended package of energy efficiency improvements.
If your heating and cooling system is more than 10 years old, consider installing a new energy efficient HVAC system. You probably won’t recover the full cost of the system when you sell, but it will make your home more attractive to potential buyers and reduce the amount of time your home sits on the market. Be sure that your real estate agent highlights your home’s energy efficiency and provides potential buyers with information about the improvements to your heating and cooling system.
