Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Green features in a home can be a selling point, surveys show, and now there's a way to highlight them on Multiple Listing Services.
The National Association of REALTORS® is offering a new Green MLS Implementation Guide, designed to encourage MLSs to promote the special features of a green home.
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“The demand for green is growing; NAR’s research consistently shows that today’s consumers want homes and communities that are environmentally sustainable and resource efficient,” says NAR President Steve Brown.
“Currently, home listings with green features are not always adequately highlighted in many MLSs. Accurate marketing and assessment of green homes can only move forward with more standardized language among MLSs. The implementation guide, paired with NAR’s Green MLS Tool Kit, can help REALTORS® be part of the process to get green fields in their MLS.”
The implementation guide is a supplement to the Green MLS Tool Kit and provides a blueprint for MLS staff or their software vendors to add green data entry fields on the MLS. The guide also aims to protect agents, appraisers, and other users from the liability of posting incorrect information by keeping entries compliant with green terms defined by the Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS) Data Dictionary, which serves as a guideline and standard for entry fields in MLS databases, NAR notes. (MLSs have taken similar steps to highlight accessibility features for the disabled in listings.)
The addition of “green” fields in MLSs can help consumers more quickly identify green properties, as well as allow for an “apples-to-apples comparison when appraising green homes and for green home data to be easily aggregated for determining market trends, such as time on market and sale-to-list price ratios for green homes versus non-green homes,” NAR notes.
NAR’s Green Resource Council, which develops awareness and understanding of green real estate principles, worked with several organizations to create the Green MLS Implementation Guide.
