The Actual Cost: Making Sustainable Housing Tangible

I am a fairly regular reader of Scott Adam’s Dilbert Blog and enjoy many of his occasional forays into saving the earth. Most of these ideas for a brave new world are fairly untenable (as Scott himself admits), but now and then he hits on something that just might make a difference. Today was such a day, and while I am sure this idea has already been developed and presented somewhere else (a phenomenon to which Scott will also happily admit), I still thank him for bringing it to my attention.

Essentially, Scott’s idea is to require an actual cost assessment with the sale of a home. He compares this to the APR requirement for loans which is intended to allow borrowers to understand the full cost of their loan and more easily compare their options. This “actual cost” would be the asking price of a house adjusted for a variety of important factors.

For a house these factors might include:

• Water Use
• Energy Consumption
• Maintenance Costs
• Property Taxes
• Insurance
• And More (Suggest others in the comments)

So, instead of just seeing the asking price for the house and comparing that with the asking price of other houses that appear similar, one would have a house price adjusted by the above factors to reflect the actual cost of ownership. A listing might look something like this:

2 Bedroom Row House
1200 Square Feet
List: $250,000
ACA: $330,000

or

2 Bedroom Row House
1000 Square Feet
List: $300,000
ACA $270,000

As Scott mentions in his post, many people are uncomfortable paying for benefits that seem intangible to them. While education regarding green building techniques and sustainable lifestyles has helped consumers to get a grasp on the benefits (both environmental and financial) in going green, it is still sometimes difficult to convince a consumer who has grown up in a “bigger is better” barrage that the smaller more “expensive” house is actually a better deal. LEED certifications and Energy Star compliance certainly add a perception of value but not in the same concrete way an actual price tag would.

Of course, developing an algorithm that everyone could agree on will be nearly impossible, and the enforcement of an actual cost standard would be a bit of a nightmare with the regionally varying real estate rules. The idea, while valid, requires legislation and administration that is daunting to say the least.

But, what if one real estate company took up the cause? What if one one bold company began presenting “actual costs” on each of their listings, not an intangible list of possible benefits, but a concrete, easily understood number?

Is this a useful idea? Is anyone doing it yet? What are some other ways of introducing this concept to the public?

Use the comments. That’s what they’re there for.


Nic Darling is a writer and marketing guy who also happens to have an interest in the happenings at postgreen. While not an avid hugger of trees, he has been known to gently stroke them and, on occasion, engage them in fierce philosophical debates. He claims that the majority of these debates are civil and mutually beneficial except when an oak is involved. Oaks, he claims, tend to be staunch and often angry defenders of Cartesian subjectivity and are loathe to concede points they deem in opposition to this “I think therefore I am” dogma.