Portland home energy scores

Now Providing Home Energy Scores and  Energy Audits

http://nwenergyscores.com

The City of Portland Home Energy Score ordinance took effect on January 1, 2018, requiring sellers of single-family homes to disclose a Home Energy Report and Score at time of listing. 

What is a Home Energy Score?

The Portland Home Energy Score is a measurement of the energy efficiency based on an onsite evaluation of the physical characteristics of the house.  A  Score is not a measurement of the household’s actual  usage, which is influenced by occupant behavior.

If your Portland energy score is a 5, it is expected to perform comparably to an average in Portland in terms of energy use. If you score a 10, it ranks among the 10 percent of homes in Portland expected to use the least amount of energy. A score of a 1 is estimated to consume more energy each year than 85 percent of homes.

A Home energy Score of a 1 does not mean your home is poorly built. A beautiful home with up-to-date equipment can still get a low score if the square footage is high or if there is insufficient insulation. A low score just means there is significant room for improvement to reduce usage. Scoring a 10 does not mean your home cannot improve. Even a home that uses less energy than most of its peers may benefit from additional energy efficiency or renewable energy investments.

The City of Portland has partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy to use the Home Score model and software as the official scoring system for the City of Portland.

The Portland Energy Score helps consumers know what to expect from their utility bills when buying .

The city of Portland, Oregon, unanimously approved a new Portland Home  Score policy requiring single-family homes in the city to be scored at time of sale, capping off a banner 2016 for the Building Technologies Office’s (BTO) & DOE Home Energy Audit program.

Similar to a car’s miles-per-gallon rating, the Portland Oregon Home Energy Score provides homeowners with valuable information about their home’s  performance, while also recommending improvement projects that can save energy and lower utility bills. When incorporated into real estate transactions, a Home  audit allows prospective home buyers to better understand the true cost of owning a particular home, allowing them to compare the expected energy costs of different homes and affording them a measure of protection when making one of the biggest financial investments of their life.

Portland is the second city to approve a local ordinance requiring homes to be scored at time of sale, joining Berkeley, California, which passed its Building  SavingsOrdinance back in 2015. Unlike Berkeley’s ordinance, which provides a buffer of up to 12 months after sale to get the home scored, Portland’s Home Score policy requires all sellers to obtain a home energy performance report—which includes a Home Energy Score—prior to listing. Sellers must include the Score and the accompanying report in any real estate listings, and must also provide a copy of the home energy performance report to prospective buyers who visit the home while it is on the market. The policy becomes effective January 1, 2018.

The Portland Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) is providing statewide leadership in this area, having already established standards for home energy performance scores through a state rulemaking process. The City of Portland will look to these statewide standards to help define its local ordinance requirements. The Energy Department has worked closely with ODOE over the past two years, first as part of its stakeholder panel for home energy performance scores, and more recently through DOE’s Better Buildings Home Energy Information Accelerator. As an Accelerator Partner, ODOE is working with local energy efficiency programs and multiple listing services to make Home Energy Score and other home energy data readily available during real estate transactions.

During 2016, the number of homes rated using the Energy Department’s Home Energy Scoring Tool nearly doubled, surpassing 50,000 homes scored since program launch. This accomplishment was made possible by the hard work of over 420 Home Energy Score Assessors and 28 Partner organizations, including several utilities and the state energy offices of Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Vermont, all of which have launched—or are currently developing—their own statewide energy scoring initiatives.

STEP 1: Get a Home Energy Score

Order a home energy audit from Mt. Hood Home Inspections to get a Home Energy Score and Report before listing or otherwise announcing your home for sale on the market.

STEP 2: Show the Home Energy Score

Include the Home Energy Score and Report in any listing or public posting about the home that’s available to buyers when they’re shopping for homes.

How to show the Home Energy Score

The Home Energy Report should be easily available and accessible to any prospective buyer. What does this mean? It should be included in any listing or advertising. If you are working with a real-estate professional, ask for their help. They know what to do.

For sale by owner? Include the score in any online postings, If an upload is possible, include the full report. If not, include a link to the report on the Green Building Registry.

In either case, place hard copy print outs of your report in a location in the house where buyers will see it. Consider the kitchen counter or dining room table.

What happens during a Home Energy Audit

The Home Energy Audit is conducted by an authorized Home Energy Assessor and takes about an hour to complete. More than seventy pieces of home information are collected during an energy assessment. Information about a home’s envelope (foundation, insulation, walls, windows) as well as its heating, cooling and hot water systems will be entered into energy modeling software.

Information about how residents operate the house and non-permanent house features like lighting, home electronics and appliances are not included in the Home Energy Score calculation. Home energy scoring assumes standard operating conditions in order to allow homes to be compared on an apples-to-apples basis, independent of occupant behavior.

As soon as the data points are entered into the software, the Home Energy Score and Report will be available immediately at the Green Building Registry.

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