In my opinion, green brokers face an extra, and not mentioned, challenge. They are going to be required to build long-term relationships with home buyers. Most real estate agents don’t maintain a relationship after the transaction. Green agents are going to be needed during the lifetime of the home. Renovating a house to be green can take years and to provide full ‘value’ the agent must be there whenever the home buyers have questions.

Green agents are educated by NAGAB on six main areas as part of their Greenrealestate™ training:

1. Help reduce energy waste through increased energy conservation,
2. Promote environmental awareness,
3. Reduce monthly home energy costs,
4. Lead to increased sale prices of Greenrealestate™ certified homes,
5. Help leave the world a better place for future generations,
6. Reduce energy reliance on offshore interests.

Unfortunately, the NAGAB website ‘Find a Member’ does not work so finding a green real estate agent can be very difficult. HomeZilla starting a project to collect a list of green brokers and agents across Canada. If you are a green agent reading this blog, drop us a line to be added to our directory.

Keep watching this blog to see when we launch this feature.

There are several groups around Canada helping home owners to ‘green their house’. In Vancvouer, you can find Vancouver Renewable Energy Cooperative. In Toronto, there is a voluntary group called Our Power who promote and facilitate community-based sustainable energy projects. Our Power works with the Toronto Renewable Energy Co-op, a organization that has been in operation for over 10 years.

These groups and others like them around the country are helping to make sustainable energy common place in Canada. Do you know of more groups like these? If so, lets us know…

Finally, the HomeZilla team has been talking about some great new features that could help promote or showcase green energy. If you are a ‘green tech company’ working with home owners, we would love to hear from you.