1: It adds cost for the builder. Most builders make their money off bulk. How many homes they can slap together and sell as quickly as possible.
2: Most of those costs don't SHOW. Granite counters? Travertine floors? Marble bathrooms? Brick walls? All of that stuff shows great, and most people look for things like that. But telling them they have an airtight home with R40 walls and R70 roof? Most homeowners don't care. They pay for the "lipstick", not the "good bones".
3: Most home buyers don't care about cost-savings down the road. Well, at least until they get a huge utility bill. THEN they think about it.
4: There isn't enough time-in-production for NetZero homes to see how durable this class of building is over the long haul. And the number of builders who've been exposed to it. Nor has it penetrated large numbers of building codes. Though some headway is IS being made with prerequisites for air sealing and insulation values in some areas with step codes to gradually ramp up requirements.
It's also complicated by the fact that there is no "One True Way" to reach NetZero.
Nor is there a good way to match a home of a certain NetZero capacity with a buyer's energy requirements.
In the end we need to continue educating buyers, builders, the people who oversee building code AND realtors on how to sell such things.
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