Pricing guidance for solar panels and more: Meet Pearl Certification

When I bought a house in 2016, the agent who listed it didn't know that it was a passive house. Neither did the seller, who had never lived in the home; they used it as a vacation rental before selling it to us. That's why the price was reduced twice before I snapped it up for $55,000 less than the original list price.

What's a passive house, anyway? It's a type of high-performing home that's much more common in Europe than in the United States. Some of the features that indicate a passive house include the insulation envelope, air exchange systems, and the HVAC setup, which are all dead giveaways that the house is highly energy efficient … but what those sellers didn't know ended up working out to my advantage.

Many agents are like the listing agent on the home I bought: They don't know what they don't know about high-performing homes, and they're probably leaving a significant amount of commission money on the table if they can't recognize and effectively market an energy-efficient home. Some of them probably don't think there are any such homes available in their area — but if it has the (now pretty standard) Energy Star appliances, then it might have other high-performing features, too.

Concerned your agents could make a similar mistake as the listing agent did with the home I bought? The professionals behind Pearl Certification want to teach them how to avoid it.

What is Pearl Certification?

Imagine a certification program that categorizes homes according to the different energy savings features they possess, documenting all of the little things that add up to a high-performing home and placing each item on a weighted scale.

The assessment examines the building shell, heating and cooling systems, baseload equipment, home management features, solar panels, and electric vehicle charging setups. Homes can achieve four different levels of Pearl Certification: Pearl Platinum, Pearl Gold, Pearl Silver, and Pearl Asset. The company also awards "badges" that signify a home's high performance in certain categories, such as a solar badge.

The certification report includes details on a home's special performance features, and homeowners who request a report will automatically get enrolled in Greendoor, an app powered by Pearl that helps them understand what upgrades will elevate their property to the next certification level.

Pearl Certification includes an official appraisal addendum that's generated in order to provide Green Certification for the home and thoroughly document the extent of any energy upgrades.

How does Pearl Certification help agents?

Pearl Certification is building an elite network of real estate agents who have been trained on the high-performing home standards. After registering, agents are provided with education and background, then must prove their knowledge before they can fully join the network. Participating agents can request home certifications for their clients, and the network connects homeowners with agents who understand high-performing homes and how to market them.

Pearl Certification is not a brokerage and has no plans to become one, so the referrals sent to agents through the network are theirs to work for free. There are no referral fees involved.

The company also offers training on navigating MLS Green fields (if your MLS has them) so that any energy-efficient homes listed by your brokerage can be properly marketed to interested buyers.

Heather Elias, Vice President of Real Estate at Pearl Certification, notes that the company can help brokerages find existing homeowners already in their databases who have homes that might be good candidates for certification and much more. "We can do things like scrub a database against past scored homes to help brokers with marketing," she explains.

Plus, the solar badge can help agents with pricing and marketing around homes that have solar panels. "Solar has been a bit like the Wild West," Elias says, "and the solar badge can go along with a full certification, but it can also stand by itself in helping sellers and their agents calculate the equity of the solar system that's on the house and properly market that information on the listing, as well as walk through conversations around the loan or lease that's on the solar systems."

And don't forget: Pearl Certification isn't just for passive homes like mine.

"It doesn't have to be a house with rain barrels and solar arrays and all the energy-efficient things you'd expect to see," Elias notes. "We can help with any house."