Green Residential Appraisals in the United States Context: Challenges and Opportunities

Rigorous consideration of green and high-performance attributes is rarely included in the residential property valuation process. Drawing upon the literature and interviews of property valuation professionals, in this I identify key barriers to scale-up of this emerging practice and opportunities for overcoming them. Key categories of opportunities include elevating the competency of appraisers, developing better information resources, improving benchmarking and rating tools, better characterizing and managing performance risk, integrating disaster resilience and sustainability considerations, mitigating the problem of additional time/cost for performing assignments, enhancing demand for improved appraisals, and engaging a greater diversity of market participants.