Pearl Partner Agent Advantage Spotlight

High performing homes are Melisa’s specialty, and she’s seeing demand for them.

Melisa Camp is a Phoenix-based REALTOR with HomeSmart. She’s also an enthusiastic educator, and often leads NAR’s Green Designation course and other CE classes for realtors, appraisers, architects, and LEED professionals. And she doesn’t stop there. Melisa’s also done remodeling and occasionally consults on projects, such as certifying gut-rehabbed homes to achieve national green building standards.

“In my office, I literally have a green hard hat. I like to be the change that I want to see in the world,” Melisa said. Through her HomeSmart group, Melisa partners with Pearl to help her clients make their homes perform better and increase in value. To differentiate herself in the market, Melisa promotes a few key aspects of the Pearl partnership to her potential clients. One is that her services come with a third-party energy audit from AZ Energy Efficient Homes, an ENERGY STAR Contractor of the Year. She also communicates that the Pearl certification report will highlight only the positive features of a home (such as a homeowner’s investments to improve efficiency, comfort, and health) and that it will likely sell for more and faster as a result.

 High performance homes are Melisa’s specialty, and she’s seeing demand for them. In a recent article, she wrote about the solar trends in her Arizona market. In 2018, approximately 4,000 homes sold with solar, the majority of which were leased systems versus owned.

“There are several different draws for energy efficient homes, the first being savings. Other reasons are comfort and health. People are paying attention to the environment they are living in,” Melisa said. “Healthy homes save people money on healthcare costs and have crossover to other industries as well. People are now realizing this.”

Another benefit of her partnership with Pearl is that it introduces a third-party verification into the equation. “An energy audit is very important. When we have a third party involved like Pearl Certification, it’s not about green real estate, it’s about a trained professional using scientific calculations to tell us how efficient the home is. Pearl gives the energy efficient home so much credibility,” Melisa said.

Pearl provides robust home certification reports that help make the invisible visible for homeowners and others. “I’m not always there to talk about upgraded insulation and energy efficient windows and appliances, but if people can read the report and take their time with it, it’s a great way to highlight features that they would otherwise not always recognize,” Melisa said.

In her role as an educator, Melisa used to teach people to collect data on a home’s efficiency.

“Pearl has automated the process of selling a green home. It’s wonderful. I really looked closely before I put my name on it, but I’ve learned things about my own home and I’m been teaching green homes for seven years,” Melisa said.

“On the other end, Pearl is helping buyers get information and complete the Appraisal Institute’s Green and Efficiency Addendum which takes away the risk for collecting this data. Pearl streamlines it,” Melisa said.

“Pearl provides information that can be shared and transferred to the next property owner so they can know what happened ten years ago. The data stays and we don’t have to start over,” Melisa said.

Melisa also recognizes Pearl’s role to help support forward momentum toward healthy and efficient homes, especially in the form of the home’s sale price. “You have to sell high performance homes for more. If it’s the right floor plan and location, but one home has a $700 electric bill and one has a $300 bill, people will choose the greener product every time. I would love to see this drive the market forward,” Melisa said.

“I specialize in energy efficient and green certified homes and Pearl just fits right in,” Melisa said.