Michigan Daily Tribune Publishes “Housing Scene: Is It Getting Easier Being Green?”

 

Hot off the press, from the Daily Tribune in Michigan, is this story about GEM and its partnership with SecurityNational Mortgage Company…

 

Research continues to show that while homebuyers prefer environmentally friendly houses, they don’t want to pay extra for the features that turn the typical home into an efficient one.

One option, the so-called energy efficiency mortgage, has failed miserably at allowing buyers to finance the cost of energy-related improvements. Although the loans have been on the books for decades, few lenders offer them because they are just too cumbersome to originate.

Thus, buyers of today’s high-performance houses have had to either come up with thousands of dollars in cash to pay for the energy extras they crave – geothermal heat pumps, perhaps, or triple low-emissive windows – or pass on them.

In short, they’ve been punished rather than rewarded for wanting to go green.

But now a Salt Lake City-based lender believes it has finally cracked the code when it comes to lending on energy-efficient houses.

The SecurityNational Mortgage Co., which has 77 branches across the country, has come up with a method for recognizing the value of energy improvements such as solar panels and rainwater runoff collection systems. It is positioning itself as the nation’s premiere green lender.

In partnership with Green Energy Money of Austin, Texas, SecurityNational is set to launch a massive high-performance pilot program with a goal of funding 10,000 energy-efficient homes by the end of next year.

Read the complete article here.