The impact of energy performance on single-family home selling prices in Sweden
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to test whether energy performance effects single-family home sale prices. It also examines whether recommendations for supposedly cost-effective energy efficiency measures, by intervention category (construction, installation or operation/control technical measures), are perceived as untapped potential – a real option – that effects sale prices.
Design/methodology/approach
The energy performance measurement and dummy variables for three categories of improvement recommendations are included as explanatory variables in a hedonic regression analysis using transaction data and energy performance certificates data for 1,073 observations.
Findings
Results indicate that better energy performance effects selling prices positively. Energy efficiency recommendations seem to have an impact on sale price; home buyers seem to require a larger “discount” for more complex types of measures.
Research limitations/implications
The sample only includes houses in the Stockholm; so-called sustainable buildings have not been specifically studied; and the heating source has not been accounted for.
Originality/value
The EU energy performance certificates provide new information and measure energy performance more exactly than many earlier (proxy) variables. This is one of the first studies to test the effect of this information, and the first one using Swedish data.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning and Värderingsdata for data; the Valle Scholarship and Scandinavian Exchange Program for the scholarship that enabled her stay as a visiting PhD student at the University of Washington; and Professors Mats Wilhelmsson and Hans Lind (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), Dr Hendrik Wolff (University of Washington), Dr David McIlhatton (University of Ulster) and seminar participants at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the University of Washington for helpful suggestions and comments.
Citation
Högberg, L. (2013), "The impact of energy performance on single-family home selling prices in Sweden", Journal of European Real Estate Research, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 242-261. https://doi.org/10.1108/JERER-09-2012-0024
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013, Emerald Group Publishing Limited