A recent poll of 2,000 prospective homebuyers by a loan comparison website has revealed which eco-friendly features rank as most important to buyers and what they are prepared to pay for a greener home.
The survey results confirmed that a home which offered 10 straightforward eco improvements could command as much as £29,090 more when put up for sale.
It turns out from the data, that homebuyers’ perception of what would add value versus the average actual cost of installing a feature differed. Some of the top ten eco enhancements are considerably cheaper to fit than buyers might reckon, but rank high up the wish list.
Take draft proofing, which when fitted reduces the amount of warm air lost and therefore means you use less energy heating up your home. Homebuyers valued the benefit to be worth around £3,028 to a property, but the approximate actual cost is only £200.
Similarly, installing a thermostat is a priority among the surveyed homebuyers, coming in at number two and adding around £2,790 to a property’s value, yet costing an average of £215 to install.
The three most affordable eco-improvements to install in your home are:
- Energy Metre Installation (£50 average installation cost)
- Low-VOC Paint (£96 average installation cost)
- Energy-Saving Lightbulbs (£175 average installation cost)
Below are buyers top 10 eco-improvements they value most based on the survey responses. The average cost of fitting all six eco-features is little over £1000 and yet potentially they would add a collective value of £15,000.
| Eco Improvement | Actual Cost (£) | Perceived Value By Potential Homebuyers (£) | Potential Added Value to Property (£) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Draft Proofing | 200 | 3,208 | 3,008 |
| 2 | Thermostat Installation | 215 | 3,005 | 2,790 |
| 3 | Energy Metre Installation | 50 | 2,796 | 2,746 |
| 4 | EV Charging Point | 800 | 3,419 | 2,619 |
| 5 | Low-VOC Paint | 96 | 2,636 | 2,540 |
| 6 | Biodiverse Garden | 500 | 3,022 | 2,522 |
| 7 | Energy Star Ceiling Fans | 300 | 2,613 | 2,313 |
| 8 | Energy-Saving Light Bulbs | 175 | 2,469 | 2,294 |
| 9 | Tankless Water Heater | 937 | 3,163 | 2,226 |
| 10 | Evaporative Coolers | 550 | 2,759 | 2,209 |
Certain ‘fashionable’ eco energy features are considerably more expensive, for example the installation of a geothermal heat pump will cost around £13,000 and the biomass boiler in the region of £8,000. However, the prospective homebuyers surveyed applied only a value of £4,041 for home with a heat pump and £4,459 for having a biomass boiler in situ. So the resounding message is that not all costly eco features are valued as highly by potential homebuyers.
