Goal: To increase your home s value in .NET

Generating QR-Code in .NET Goal: To increase your home s value

Suppose you re planning to sell your house five years down the road If you put in a solar water heating system, at that point in time the savings from the new system will be $48 per month, or $600 per year A home buyer will pay more for the home when you sell it because of this built-in cost reduction How much more The following factors come into play: A lot of work is involved in installing a new system, and most buyers don t want to do it themselves Most home buyers take out a mortgage, and balancing monthly payments with a fixed income is the game Energy cost savings of $48 per month translate into $48 that can be spent elsewhere A buyer could get a larger mortgage, for instance For $50 a month, after taxes, he may be able to borrow an additional $14,000 Look at it this way: A potential buyer looks at your energy-efficient home and the same home, minus the energy-efficient system, next door Your home costs them $48 per month less If you charge $5,000 more for your home, the buyer is still ahead of the game if he is using a mortgage Giving a ballpark figure for how much appreciation you can expect is impossible In the best case, you may double your original investment after five years In the worst case, you may not get anything at all if the equipment is old and obsolete The most likely case is you ll get around the same as new equipment costs

Doing nothing is not an option because now you have a broken washing machine, dryer, gas fireplace, you name it Now you must spend money, and probably a good chunk of it How much more do you have to spend for a new energy-efficient system Probably not much Now is really the time to go for it

If you play your cards right, saving more on energy costs than the payment on a mortgage equity loan used to purchase energy-efficiency equipment is common You have no upfront cost when you finance an investment because you pay for the investment with the loan proceeds From day one, you can often save more than you pay Your cash flow is in the black Suppose you borrow for the solar water heating system that promises $27 per month in savings An interest-only home-equity line of credit at 6 percent tax-deductible interest for $1,400 is only $8 per month That s a net gain of $19 per month, making the payback period for this scenario 74 months (1,400 / 19 = 74) At some point the loan must be repaid; most likely this will happen when the house is sold or refinanced

The investment: a whole-house fan Equipment costs $350; installation takes three hours and requires brains, ladders, and decent tools An energy audit determines that the fan will save $25 per month in airconditioning (AC) costs over a four-month summer period, while costing only $10 per month to run At $60 per year, the payback is around six years A whole-house fan offers other benefits, too: The house is a lot more comfortable on the days when it isn t hot enough to turn the AC on And there are more of these days, so the home is more comfortable most of the summer Plus the house smells better because whole-house fans ventilate so well

Say you live in a 3-bedroom, 2-bath house with good roof exposure for solar equipment Your home is all electric and your average monthly electric bill is $260 Energy consumption is 1,600 kWh per month You had your home audited and, through making smaller changes, you decreased the bill 15 percent to 1,360 kWh per month, or $221 Now you decide to completely eliminate your electric utility bill and, in the process, reduce your home s carbon footprint to nearly zero You find a 5kW system that will do the job and costs $40,000 a lot of money, for sure, but you take into account the following: