Like many people out there, with mortgage rates as low as they are right now, we are looking into refinancing. So I wanted to bring up something that Earth Advantage is doing: In the process of refinancing, buying, or getting a construction loan, banks need to know that what they are lending for is a sound investment so they send out an appraiser to determine what this property or proposed property might be worth. Unfortunately appraisers tend to only look at a handful of standardized metrics for determining the value of a home (size, number of bathrooms, garage, etc… ), and green measures are rarely if ever looked at or given value. Some of this is because of basic lack of education on the appraiser’s side, and some of it is lack of ability to give evidence of value for green measures (for reasons like a lack of comperables). Read the rest of this entry »