Those of us who have had a lot to do with real estate agents know that they generally have the antenna of finely tuned Stradivarius – or stockbroker. Quick to pick up every nuanced vibration in the atmosphere and transform any slight variation in data inputs into useable performance outcomes.
But on sustainability it’s been far from the case.
It’s been slow painful going. The residential agents have by and large defied their own DNA and simply not wanted to listen.
So, when this cohort finally starts to talk sustainability as a selling technique, you know our time has come.
What might surprise some observers is the direction that the action comes from.
Not the biggest markets of Sydney or Melbourne, but Perth.
So while many of us on the east coast of this vast country were busy with our own problems, such as the way some of the states want to roll back parts of the National Construction Code (on the basis that we’ve got a cost of living crisis, somehow missing the story that the biggest part of the cost of living crisis is now the energy crisis) over in the West, some people have been busy.
According to Chiara Pacifici, a buyer’s agent, provider of sustainability education to real estate agents and a member of the board of the Real Estate Institute of WA there’s been a beautiful confluence of timing and sustainability supporters in the West that have led to some serious advances in how agents now understand and link sustainability to the value of houses. And prices of course.
What we have now it seems is an embrace of this concept by the entire board of the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia, she says.
This week REIWA’s chief executive Blaine Slater launched an energy efficiency and sustainability committee, which she believes is the first of its kind in the sector.
Slater accompanied the news with the comment: “Energy efficiency, sustainability and resilience are no longer fringe issues. They are becoming more relevant to the way properties are sold, leased and managed, and to what consumers, governments and the broader community expect from the built environment. The committee would play an important role in helping the institute and its members prepare for an area of growing significance for the property sector”
It’s a committee that she says is dedicated to advancing understanding of the sector, and it marks a growing number of real estate agents happy to incorporate the value of solar, passive solar orientations, batteries, insulation and other related green goodies into a house or apartment offered for sale.
She thinks her town, Perth, and WA is probably out in front with ambitions.
“I can absolutely say that REIWA is leading,” she told The Fifth Estate on Thursday. “REIWA initiated the first ever educational training, accredited and CPD approved in sustainability.”
The planning rules are supportive she says and several local councils have upped the ante by offering fast track approvals or other incentives for developers to be more sustainable.
Of course it’s been a long time coming. And we know Pacifici has worked hard on these developments. But it’s a factor that she refers to only when prodded – things like the 17 years that she’s been agitating for exactly this change, including her thesis on sustainability at Curtin University during her real estate studies, the direct lobbying of state government, the polite but determined seeding of knowledge and insights through the real estate agents’ training program she runs through Green Gurus that she launched in 2009.
“My work has been … really better informing the real estate sector I work in around what to look out for as real estate professionals, when they walk through a home, an existing home, what are the design features? What are the sustainability features, or the energy efficiency features of a home that they can then start to communicate and value add in the experience for buyers or even renters?”
It’s not just about the energy savings possible but about comfort and the benefit of natural light, and elements such as cross ventilation – “basic, simple design features”.
“A granite benchtop looks nice and is a perceived sign of quality, but it won’t give you a financial payback like solar generation and storage. If an agent doesn’t have a mechanism such as a standardised and simple NatHERS Star Ratings Certification, they won’t have the confidence to pass relevant information over to a consumer.”
A huge boost to sustainability around the country will be the impending move for NatHERS to be applied to existing homes. “Nothing is perfect”, she says, but with the vast majority of Australia’s 11 million+ homes performing at 3 stars or less, this move will be a huge benefit to ordinary Australians buying or renting their next home.
NatHERS will be invaluable to the sales pitch, if you like.
There’s movement nationally too in the resi sector, Pacifici notes.
The national Real Estate Institute of Australia is on board with a broad trend and introduced a sustainability award three years ago, later adding a sustainability working group, chaired by the institute’s president Jacob Caine.
Naturally a big motivating factor is the evidence that’s started to come through of the price differential that sustainability can bring to the market.
The serious real estate data people have been tracking the trends and now have the evidence.
Domain, for instance, found in 2024 that energy efficient houses fetch about 14.5 per cent or $112,000 more than other comparable homes. Apartments fetched around $70,000 more.
Cotality previously CoreLogic likewise is taking sustainability seriously.
It has data to show that each additional NatHERS star rating earns about $10,000 in sales price.
Towards the end of last year the company, owned by a big US parent, appointed Richard Griffiths as head of sustainability solutions.
Griffiths is well known as an afficionado in the field. He was former global head of sustainability for Edge for seven years and head of commercial policy for the UK Green Building Council for more than five years.
Next, says Pacifici, agents will need to get their heads around even more complex issues in sustainability, such as the role of strata governance in apartments and the advance of embedded networks.
“Our members need to know more.”
A big bouquet to Donald Trump
And while WA might be leading the charge on the sustainability revolution for residential real estate, we can’t help but lay a huge bouquet for that other – in fact historic – renewable energy revolutionary, (accidental though that may be).
None other than Donald Trump.
As The Sydney Morning Herald put it this week: