Pearl Certification drives residential energy efficiency, benefiting your state and its inhabitants for years to come.
The Chicago Bungalow Project: Ensuring Fair Valuation of High-Performing Homes
Research has shown that homeowners of color do not benefit nearly as much from increases in home equity as white homeowners. A 2018 Brookings Institute study found that “homes in majority Black neighborhoods were undervalued by $48,000 per home on average.” The Chicago Bungalow Association (CBA), Elevate, and Pearl Certification are working to ensure high-performing homes in Chicago’s “bungalow belt” are fairly valued. Many of these homes are owned by low and moderate-income African American and Latino families.
A midwestern utility, the Chicago Bungalow Association and Elevate have been working for years to improve the energy efficiency, comfort, health, and safety of Chicago’s bungalows through the Home Energy Savings Program and previous initiatives that date back to American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus and before. These homes are also systematically undervalued because buyers do not recognize their superior performance and energy savings at time of sale. By addressing this problem and ensuring that high-performing homes are fairly and accurately valued, CBA, Elevate, and Pearl seek to begin to also address the issue of systematic undervaluation of Chicago bungalows owned by people of color.
Elevate used funding from the Energy Foundation to conduct a mailing to Chicago bungalow owners whose homes were improved through grants administered by Elevate during the ARRA period. Homeowners were encouraged to reach out to Pearl if they would like their home certified and were connected to Ani Real Estate, a trained, local, African American-owned brokerage, if they are interested in selling their homes and want a qualified agent.
Pearl and Elevate are also working to identify qualified appraisers who both understand high-performing homes and will appraise homes in communities of color fairly. Ani, and other brokerages recruited for this project, will work with the buyer’s agent to encourage the lender to include these appraisers in their AMC panels and to qualified appraisers
A second, expanded phase of this project would involve a mailing to homes improved through utility rebate programs. Ideally, the mailing would target a subset of the approximately 11,000 homes improved through the Illinois Home Performance (IHP) program located in target zip codes.
To support this mailing, Elevate and Pearl would recruit two to three additional brokerages that serve low-income communities of color and would continue to expand the pool of qualified appraisers.
Your home reveals what you value, whether cherished heirlooms or cutting-edge technology. There’s so much more to your home than a shell of walls and wires. How your home performs directly affects you and your family.
Pearl provides third-party certification of high-performing home features, helping homeowners build equity and contractors prove the value of their work.
Pearl Certification changes the game for high-performing home value, making it visible today and decades from now. When you join the elite Pearl Network, you’ll be well equipped to add lasting value to your services and stay on top of your market. This differentiates you and your listings.
Pearl Certification's Public-Private Partnerships Division will collaborate with you to create a custom home certification program for your state to increase residential energy efficiency and educate homeowners about high-performing homes.
Pearl Certification is transforming the housing market. We’re making a visible difference nationwide for homeowners and the businesses that serve them.