Green Homes Don’t Actually Cost More to Build

Across the U.S. housing market, demand for sustainable homes increases year after year. And yet, there remains a widespread perception that green homes are out of reach for most homeowners, available only to those who can afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars more for eco-friendly products and engineering. As a result, the building industry has been slow to adopt sustainable building practices in the residential market, even as those practices have become standardized across the commercial market.

Green Home Builders is changing that. The sustainable-home-building franchise out of Australia has built a new model of constructing eco-friendly homes that are not only inexpensive to build but far more cost-effective than traditional homes in the long-run.

“In the ‘80s, green building really was expensive,” said Mick Fabar, the founder and CEO of Green Home Builders. “The materials didn’t exist, and designers didn’t have a good model, so it was an expensive and labor-intensive proposition. That’s all changed, but too many builders still don’t realize that.”

According to the U.S. Green Building Council, the number of LEED-certified residential homes shot up by nearly 20% from 2017 to 2019, resulting in a record-high 500,000 LEED-certified housing units globally and more than 400,000 in the U.S. alone. Green Home Builders accounts for an outsized chunk of that rapidly growing market, having built XX green homes and establishing more than 50 franchise locations in the U.S. since arriving in the states just two years ago. 

Green Home Builders has quickly become the leading U.S. franchisor in energy-efficient homes, and it’s done so by challenging outdated perceptions about the cost of sustainable construction.

Green Home Builders Has Reengineered Cost Savings

Today, just about every building-material manufacturer around the globe offers sustainable products, and Fabar says home designers have come to a consensus on a comprehensive suite of best practices that make sustainable building easier and more cost-effective.

“We know now where to place windows, how to calculate thermal mass, how to position the home to maximize the warmth and light of the sun,” Fabar said. “It’s not rocket science, and it’s not hard to do, but it requires knowledge that a lot of builders still don’t have.”

That knowledge, combined with the wealth of sustainable materials available to builders, has dramatically lowered the cost of sustainable construction in the residential market. 

How Green Building Has Changed

Because so many builders still do not understand the progress green building has made in recent years, homebuyers often get an incomplete or downright false perception of the options available to them.

“Every consumer wants a sustainable home — why wouldn’t you? — but as soon as they engage with the industry, they are met with the false narrative that green building is too difficult and too expensive, “ Fabar said. “That’s malpractice — it’s negligent. It’s bad for buyers and it’s limiting for builders who don’t understand the options available to them.”

The Many Benefits of Sustainable Homes

Of course, construction costs are not the only price-tag associated with homeownership, and green homes’ true cost-savings are often realized after the home has been sold. 

Savings on energy and utilities can be dramatic, but Fabar says the real value is in the resale investment.

“Green homes have a vastly higher resale value, and they sell much quicker,” he said. “If you are looking at your home as an investment, as so many buyers are, then sustainability has to be a priority.”

And the benefits of sustainable homes are not just financial. Increasingly, home buyers are seeking houses that provide healthier and more comfortable environments to live and work, and that’s where Fabar says green homes leave traditional builds in the dust.

“We’re coming out of a pandemic that required people to stay at home for more time than they may have ever spent at home in their lives, and people are far more attuned now to the health and comfort of the spaces they live,” Fabar said. “This goes way beyond cost-savings — people don’t want toxins in their home, they don’t want to breathe in stale air, they want naturally ventilated rooms that incorporate the natural landscape. Those are things that only green homes can provide.”

Fabar says many builders don’t understand green building simply because, in the U.S., there aren’t many regulations that have forced them to evolve. But that is likely to change, and soon. In cities like New York, new legislation is requiring builders to adopt sustainable practices, and other markets are likely to follow suit.

The Building Industry is Going Green

Green Home Builders is not the only brand capitalizing on the heightened demand for sustainable homes. In fact, the green-building market may be one of the fastest-growing industries worldwide and is currently estimated at $81 billion. 

But Green Home Builders is the first franchise in the U.S. to fully operationalize a model for low-cost sustainable home construction, offering franchisees a turnkey operation that requires little prior experience in sustainable building.

“We’ve built a system that allows us to take a builder who has zero experience in green building, and with just a week’s training, equip them with everything they need to know so that they could go to a conference with clients and explain every detail of what we do,” said Josh Hughes, Green Home Builders’ operations manager.

That model “gives builders a pathway to success in green building,” Fabar said, and it has made Green Home Builders one of the most sought-after opportunities in the construction industry. 

Now, the franchise is preparing to leverage that position for widespread growth throughout the U.S. and is seeking both franchisees and area managers to recruit franchisees and build out new markets. 

“There’s really nothing like us in the construction industry,” Fabar said. “This is a huge market, and it’s wide open right now, so we see enormous potential for growth, and we’ve got the pieces in place to take full advantage. I think we’re going to see the thinking around green building change very quickly over the next few years.”

To learn more about franchising with Green Home Builders, visit https://ghbuildersusa.com/HomeBuilderFranchise/