Mortgage shoppers and home buyers are choosing green home loans and energy smart homes.

Home buyer Shift. Archicentre’s Victorian manager David Hallett says home buyers and home owners want to know whether they are buying an energy guzzler or a well-designed energy-efficient home that will save dollars.

Hallett says the questions being increasingly asked revolve around people wanting to save money on energy and water, but also wanting to create a “green-friendly environment” and to design a home or renovation that in the future can be marketed as eco-friendly.

Pre-purchase inspections are also being used to provide home buyers with a negotiating tool for the purchase of property – especially older homes or poorly designed apartments which are energy-inefficient or do not have any insulation.

Archicentre says that in some older Australian suburbs more than half of the homes inspected still don’t have any insulation.

Nor are rainwater tanks in abundance.

“Changing weather patterns, which forecast less rain, but in heavier less frequent falls, mean that roof design and the ability to harvest rainwater has also become an important consideration for home buyers,” Hallett says.

A recent Archicentre online poll asked the question: when purchasing a home, which one would you favour if all other things were equal?

Seventy-nine per cent of the 1006 participants voted for a house with a tank for garden use, while only 14.3 per cent voted for a home with a spa in the ensuite, and just 6.4 per cent for a large plasma screen.

Other innovations are expected to become more common, including grey water systems, roof cavities that release hot air at night and suck in cool air, and water tanks that form part of a wall or fence where space is tight.

Archicentre is not the only industry participant to notice the shift in public thinking.

Property commentator Michael Matusik believes a water-wise home will attract a premium and may become the major contribution to achieving a sale.

Matusik also recently conducted a poll on rain tanks, asking if they added value to a home.

Two-thirds of respondents said yes and 30 per cent of these thought a tank added between 2 per cent and 5 per cent to a property’s overall value. Twenty per cent thought it added 5 per cent or more, and just over 10 per cent thought the premium would be under 2 per cent.

But Matusik says that even a 2 per cent premium would add $8500 to the average capital city house, about twice the current cost of installing a 5000-litre tank.

With Australians continuing to renovate (the amount spent on renovation rose 5.1 per cent in the past 12 months), Matusik also asked in another survey what type of residential renovation would give the highest return. Just over half the people participating said renovating the kitchen, 26 per cent favoured painting the house and 10 per cent felt doing up the garden was the right way to go.

But revamping the kitchen will set you back a fair bit more than a water tank.

In Archicentre’s latest cost guide, which can be downloaded from its website, the cost of a kitchen renovation is put between $9200 and $28,000.

About: Rick Adlam: Rick Adlam has been helping clients with home loan finance since 1985 when he was home consultant with AV Jennings. Rick started Equity Home Loans in 1996 to help homeowners become property investors. Rick currently consults in the development of Mr Mortgage for mortgage brokers and HomeMate for new home buyers. Website: http://www.mrmortgage.com.au