Interested in other peoples experiences with selling their super efficient ICF homes as it has been a lesson in the human condition for me. I built a 3700 sqft passive solar home in Calgary Alberta. It's pretty efficient at 67 kWh/m2 annually (0.17ACH@50) but now that we are selling... no buyers or realtors seem give a rats a$$. With the world seemingly going bonkers about greenhouse gas emissions, home buyers still compare this house to typical housing product where they can get similar square feet for less $ even though they may be paying three times the utility costs... I guess what I'm asking is: 1) Has anyone had a similar experience? 2) Any tips on marketing disaster resistant super efficient homes? : )

I've been doing ICFs for a long time and this is the sad reality. People a concerned about the countertop material and the soaking tub in the bathroom not that the houses are made from compressed chip board. If you can get some numbers from a comparable stick built house to advertising the energy differences it may sway a like minded buyer. I would check out other houses for sale and see what their numbers are. You're not going to get an air infiltration rating but you should be able to find out the utility bills for comparison .

Right, you don't get much of a ROI for building and having an energy efficient home. But you do greatly reduce you utility bills while living in one. That's why I recommend folks just do a proper job insulating and sealing their home up to the point of diminshing return and don't throw money into getting any type of energy efficiency certification. Buyers will like the lower utility bill statements which might motivate them to buy your home, but they likely won't throw any more money your way because of it. Home real estate prices are pretty much just based on the home and land square footage and the location.

They are not offering anything for it because it is invisible to them. The salesmen don't bring it up because they don't know about this stuff. You need to make it visible. Put up a sign where people walk in the door. Caption it "About This House" or something like that. Go see if you can get copies of winter heating bills for other people in your town with similar sized houses. Post them to the left of your sign, post your bill to the right. The sign itself summarizes what they say. Then estimate how much they'd save every ten years. The dollar signs will catch their interest.

Next put up summaries of other benefits. Disaster resistant? Explain that the walls are six inch thick concrete, will protect them from anything and never need maintenance. Soundproof? Brag about it. Exceptional for riding out bad winter storms? Explain why. Keep it short, be honest.

I have asked similar questions to many people over the years and here are the general responses I have received:

1) REALTORS - There is not enough data available to determine if an ICF house will sell for more than a code-minimum framed house, but ICF is a selling feature. In other words, if you have 2 identical houses (one ICF and one not) they would expect the ICF house to sell first, but not necessarily for more money. This has been compared to well water vs. city water - the home with city water will sell before the home on well water but not necessarily for more money. This makes sense, although I still feel that the ICF option will yield a higher price when selling (makes sense that if it is more desirable as a feature it should increase the value as the demand is higher relative to supply).

2) APPRAISERS - They don't value the home any higher based on the fact that it is ICF. I asked if you show utility bills are significantly less that a non-ICF home, will this increase value and comment back was "No, since ICF is based on buyer's preference." I didn't ask which homeowners have a preference for higher heating/cooling bills.....

3) INSURANCE PROVIDERS - In our area some insurance providers are offering a discount on policy for a full-ICF home based on durability (ie, storm/wind/water/mold resistance, etc). This is an encouraging change, but may vary from one region to another.

You touched on a point I neglected in my initial response. Insurance. We used the ICF and highly fire resistant building construction category to allow us to obtain insurance when we otherwise would not have been able obtain insurance and certainly not at an affordable rate. We live in a southern Oregon high wildfire risk area where many homes can't get any insurance. Using ICF, concrete board exterior siding and standing seam metal roof qualified our construction as being highly fire resistant. And we proved this to be true by surviving two wildfires that went through our property without incurring any building damage or even significant loss of trees. Photos of the wildfire and airshow may be found on our website if interested.