Our Portland Real Estate Agent Team is Green

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It’s spring and everything’s coming up green in Portland – including our real estate team!

Actually, Stephen FitzMaurice has had Green Realtor certifications since before it was cool. Our Buyers’ Specialist, Kami Price, has also earned her NAR Green Designation. Our extra training in sustainable home features, energy efficiency and more have helped us sell homes faster, and get buyers into the home they want! Here are the designations our team has earned:

Stephen FitzMaurice, Earth Advantage Broker

Earth Advantage is a non-profit organization based in Portland that certifies hundreds of green buildings and homes every year. If you’ve ever heard of the US Green Building Council’s LEED program, Earth Advantage is similar. They use a point system to verify that new homes and remodels meet their five pillars of certification: Energy, Health, Land, Water and Materials.

Earth Advantage standards give home buyers a clear and direct way in which to evaluate a home’s green features. And they offer real estate agent accreditation! With this training, Stephen can help homeowners identify which home features and building products provide the greatest energy, water, and resource efficiency. Then, he can be sure those features are listed properly in the MLS to ensure their value is communicated to buyers.

Stephen FitzMaurice, Energy Trust Trade Ally

Every time you pay a utility bill in Portland, a portion goes toward Energy Trust of Oregon. This non-profit utilizes those funds to support energy efficiency programs and renewable energy in the Portland area.

Energy Trust’s Trade Ally program enrolls real estate agents who are trained in green building practices and offers extra training in marketing energy and resource-efficient home features. This means that if or you invested in a smart heating system, solar panels or LED lights, as your real estate agent Stephen will be sure buyers know about them — and understand them!

Kami Price, National Association of Realtors Green Designation

The NAR created the Green Resource Council to “make the knowledge of green real estate practices available to everyone”. The Green Resource Council offers the Green designation to Realtors after extensively training them in sustainable building practices, marketing, and rating systems.

The rating systems are the complicated part. Most homeowners are put off by the alphabet soup that comprises the list of rating systems for green home features. But ratings are absolutely essential for translating things like low-flow shower heads and super insulated walls into metrics that can be easily compared between homes.

How home scores on the various rating systems are now included in the RMLS, which means your real estate agent can search for homes by the kind of green standards they follow, or specific features they offer. Here are a few examples:

  • Search for Earth Advantage, LEED, EnergyStar, and Passive Homes.
  • Search for high efficiency furnaces, air conditioning, solar power, and more.

Very soon Portland is going to require (a true mandate with $$ fines attached) every home to have an energy score publicly advertised for every home sale in the city of Portland’s boundaries. As green savvy real estate agents, we’re ready for the change and we’ll make sure our clients are too. We are writing more on that soon, so stay tuned!

Ready to sell or buy your Green Portland home? Contact our expert team of Portland real estate agents — we’ll get it done.

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What My Clients Are Saying

When my wife and I decided to sell our home we started to search for agents who work for less than the 6% standard commission. Slightly skeptical, I decided to call Stephen for a consultation. Stephen came very prepared with comp sales, marketing techniques, and several other items pertaining to the sale I never would have considered. We sold in six days.

Denny