It’s no longer just a fad, the movement toward Green Homes is a Solid Market Trend.

The green housing market is growing on all fronts—new construction, retrofits, single family and multi-family are all seeing strong growth in the area of green practices and products. The green housing market is following the classic growth pattern of innovative technology adoption progressing through various stages of market development. We are now at the stage where we are starting to move beyond the early adopters—a highly segmented group that is generally less price sensitive—into more mainstream market acceptance.

Although green technology has been around for many years, it is just now beginning to take root. Unfortunately, even though there are tens of thousands of green homes all across the country, we have very little quantifiable market data. I see this as a big problem. I admit, I am a bit of a data guy, maybe even a geek in that regard (I am sure my wife would have more to say about that…), but for me data can give us visibility about market activity and demand. Data can help guide the decision process on all fronts including development of new construction and renovation of existing homes. This is true on both the professional and consumer side of the business.

But all is not lost. There is some green market data out there if you're willing to dig deep enough and piece it together. The problem is that it is spread out and not well organized or segmented. Some of the market segments we need to know about the green housing market activity include geographical region, price range, house size, leading technologies implemented, and consumer uptake. When this information becomes available developers will build smarter, agents and EcoBrokers will market green homes more effectively, and consumers will become more empowered to make better and more informed green home buying and selling decisions. But until that time, we'll have to get by with what we got.

Okay, enough of my rant. Here are a few morsels of data about the green housing market that I’ve gathered from a McGraw Hill Construction report compiled in cooperation with the U.S. Green Building Council. In Part II of this post, I’ll present some of the other data I’ve collected from various sources.

Green home building products are gaining ground according to a report produced jointly by McGraw-Hill Construction and the National Association of Home Builders (2008 &; 2009). The chart above is from a presentation I recently gave showing the market forecast for new green construction.

• The market for green homes is expected to rise from $49 billion to $140 billion over the next five years.

• Standard homes are becoming increasingly green, with home owners using green products for 40 percent of their remodeling work.

• Most Americans find out about green homes through word-of-mouth, followed by television and the Internet.

• Green home owners are happy with their homes and are recommending them at rates significantly higher than recommendation levels of other industries.

• Home owners are buying green homes because they are concerned about the health of their families, as well as to reduce energy and other home operating costs.

• Education and awareness of green ranks as the most important obstacles, slightly higher even than the additional first costs associated with building green.

It's interesting to note that if the new construction part of green building is growing so rapidly, we can only assume that the green renovation market is growing even faster. But this is where I've hit a brick wall. The good news is that the Federal government's Recovery Through Retrofit program announced a couple of weeks ago will likely inspire the market analysts to get to work and start giving us data geeks something to chew on.

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