Free, the US is way too deep into a housing bubble to start advertising numbers like that. It would put McMansion homebuilders out of business, and drop values of homes, economic chaos, cats and dogs living together. Won't happen. Maybe in 5 years when everybody realizes that a 4000sft home isn't practical.

Well I thought you are a free country with free advertising?

So if I am building super efficient, energy saving homes who can tell me I can't advertise like this? Look, here we have the "Prius" of the houses with and mpg of such and such, compared to a Hummer! Buy now and save tons of money!

Hey, you guys are supposed to be the masters of capitalism, start advertising!

Kwh assumes electrical heating? What if you have a wood/pellet/corn/whatever stove? How do you meter it when you can get wood for free (or "sweat equity") in some cases? I guess it's better than nothing but this is a small candle trying to illuminate a large, dark space.

No sorry I didn't make this clear: kWh means kilowatt hour (I think?) and is a unit to generally measure energy. Also, but not only electricity. (although this is where we see it most often, because it is measured like that - but it's not practical to say: "Give me 10 kWh of wood please").

For example the energy containment of wood pellets (when burned for heating) is about 4,9 kWh/kg.

You can look up the kWh for all kinds of heating.

no end in sight here in NJ that I can see..I work in their yards everyday and I can tell you the gross waste across the board from these people who live in the McMansions is sickening....The people around here have so much money that they think nothing of $3 a gallon gasoline in their huge BMW's with a 6-10K square ft. energy hog of a house..The laugh at it all as the droves of landscapers sculpt their huge yards day in and day out.

I've seen it in some places down here in the southeast too. That "conspicuous consumption" or inexcusable wanton waste is utterly disgusting.

Maybe those less fortunate -- who would otherwise starve -- can eat these bastards when TSHTF. I wonder if fat McMansionites taste like lard?

I totally agree with Free. Why not have a rating, like with a car's mpg? A house that gets signifigantly lower "mpg" could use that as a selling point. There was an article in the most recent Realtor magazine saying that "green" houses sell for more now. There's also the style issue. We went on a tour of solar houses around here and I've got to say that they were very cool. Just like it's now cool to drive a prius, the smaller, efficient house is coming into vogue.

There is a system in place to demonstrate how 'green' a building is, which (of course) includes per capita energy usage.
It is known as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which covers most construction types nowadays. It is an initiative of the U.S. Green Building Council and is highly respected in both green and architectural circles.
Buildings are rated ("silver", "gold", etc.) according to a punchlist of design items integrated within the design of that building.

Visit their website.

That's a start, but something quantitative like MPG for cars would make it easier to compare two buildings. Something like the EnergyGuide for appliances (which estimates annual energy usage in kWh and shows a range scale indicating where the appliance fits). An EnergyGuide for a building could take into account the energy costs of the appliances within it, which are the direct energy consumers (a/c, water heater, range, fridge, washer, dryer, etc). Unfurnished homes could use the average energy value of the appliance needed to fit their given size (or (L + H) / 2 method).

Seems like that would produce more meaningful numbers than just a rating. Of course there is the problem of taking the buildings intrinsic energy saving qualities (insulation, windows, size, etc) into account which this scheme doesn't address...

That's just the thing. The EnergyGuide works well for measuring energy usage of an appliance on an end-user basis, but it's too simplistic to measure the holistic energy usage of a house and, of course, the lifestyle that is needed to support and furnish that house. That doesn't mean it's not worth examining, though. I like the idea of a comprehensive report card for a house. Hell, if only we knew what it takes to make/run anything in this economy, we'd probably seriously examine how we are living as a nation.

But this would upset TPTB, tho...

*pd*

Hilarious house-flipping game on eBaum's World - interesting corollary between a fun game and the actual real estate market...
Enjoy!



Mansion Impossible

I scored 24 years. How can anyone possibly lose money if the real thing is that easy?.

I love how house values went up $4,000 a month! True to life, actually. Strange.
At those rates, you could afford to quit work and just live off your appreciation. Really strange.
Kunstler's 'hallucinated wealth' observation keeps coming to mind...

I looked up some numbers and found out the average home here is somewhere between 90-120 square meters, round and about 1000 square feet. To hear of these behemoths of 3500-6000 square feet houses.. well it's no wonder americans are so spoiled. And a thousand dollars a month just for AC ? That's insanity.