RESIDENTIAL EFFICIENCY SCORECARD
Looking for a point of difference when selling your home or renting a property, Scorecards can help you significantly reduce your ongoing running costs
What is a Residential Efficiency Scorecard?
Developed with residential homes in mind, the Residential Efficiency Scorecard is the first of its kind in Australia that has become a nationally recognized system. Originally starting with a Victorian Residential Efficiency Scorecard, the system has now been implemented across the country. Providing each house with an individual rating on energy use, the Residential Efficiency Scorecard is an invaluable tool in identifying major areas of energy use and the hot and cold weather performance of a home. Each Residential Efficiency Scorecard prepared by SeedHaus™ is in line with the government scorecard and tailored to the individual property and provides constructive recommendations for improving energy consumption and performance.
Whether your home is a new build or an existing property, an Energy Scorecard is a useful tool to display how your home performs in terms of its comfort and cost to run. Utilizing a similar star rating system to the familiar home appliance Energy Efficiency Rating, the Residential Efficiency Scorecard completed by our SeedHaus™ accredited assessors go one step further by highlighting areas within your home where improvements can be made that will increase the comfort levels of your home while lowering your home’s running costs.
Why do we need a Efficiency Scorecard?
The Residential Efficiency Scorecard is a national scorecard endorsed by the Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) and is an innovative new initiative. You may be looking for a point of difference when selling your home, renting out a house and wish to determine the ongoing running costs or you could be looking to improve the comfort of your existing home – the Residential Efficiency Scorecard and SeedHaus™ team are here to help you target and improve those high cost, low performing areas within your home.
The scorecard considers the construction and design, along with the fixed appliances of the property (for example, the hot water system, heating and cooling systems such as air conditioners or heat pumps). Importantly, it does not evaluate the moveable appliances within the property such as televisions or fridges – which means that it is particularly helpful for landlords or renters to determine the efficiency of a home regardless of the appliances.
How does the Residential Efficiency Scorecard work?
Our team will assess your home and a star rating between 1 – 10 (representing low to high performance) will be generated. SeedHaus™ will then present options to improve the property’s performance and accordingly its Residential Efficiency Scorecard rating.
The Residential Efficiency Scorecard:
- provides the star rating of the property
- shows the base cost to run the house, without any offset from solar electricity
- assesses both hot and cold weather performance of the property
- provides a list of measures that can be implemented to improve the efficiency of the home
compares the appliances in home against the most cost efficient on the market - displays how energy is currently used in the home and how each appliance is contributing to the overall cost to run the home
- gives a list of improvements on appliance to improve the efficiency of the home.
Who can benefit from a Residential Efficiency Scorecard
SeedHaus™ prepares Residential Efficiency Scorecards for a range of clients, including:
- homeowners looking to sell their property – a recent Australian study has shown that homes with a Residential Efficiency Scorecard, or an Energy Report, can sell 13 days faster and for 10% more than homes without. This is also a powerful addition to the home’s marketing.
- homeowners looking to renovate their property – whether it’s as part of a pre-sale renovation to assist with targeted, price-maximizing improvements or simply to increase the comfort and liveability of your home post-renovation.
- home buyers – many are now looking to add a Residential Efficiency Scorecard rating to their building and pest inspection pre-purchase conditions, to ensure that their future home is a comfortable and cost-effective investment.
- sustainably minded developers and builders keen to deliver efficient and livable homes – with assessments able to be carried out on designs off the plan prior to the build process.
- purchasers or re-financing homeowners can obtain reduced mortgage interest rates from some banks if a Residential Efficiency Scorecard has been undertaken on the property
- rental tenants seeking to determine the comfort and cost of a home before signing a lease.
With the average home scoring 3 stars, this being determined by the climate zone the property is in, along with the cost of fuel in that state, there’s plenty of potential for simple and cost-effective change that can be made with every assessment! SeedHaus™ uses specially developed software and assessment methods to ensure that we are at the forefront of residential sustainability initiatives. Helping our planet and starting with the improvements that can be made within the home is at the heart of everything we do.
