Browsing by Subject "Seller"

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    GREENING YOUR HOME: MAKING HOME SUSTAINABILITY BUYER AND SELLER-FRIENDLY
    (2024-04-26) Tesla, Suzana
    For most, the purchase of a home is the single largest investment that an individual will make in his or her lifetime. While the purchase itself comes with a variety of strings, unexpected expenses and uncertainties, consumers have added an additional level of home sustainability into the mix. As consumers have become more environmentally conscious and educated, they have also started to demand the same from their agents and the industry. However, agents, buyers, and sellers continue to have minimal knowledge regarding residential home sustainability, especially for homes that are not newly built. Green certifications, which could provide various insights, apply primarily to newly built homes, and the green features on MLS are limited and create major gaps for understanding home sustainability. This leaves an opportunity for the development of a system that will provide greater insights on home sustainability to buyers while also being easy to develop and use by the agents and the sellers. This paper bridges this gap by assesses the current environment, green initiatives, and various stakeholder to create a set of guidelines to assist agents in developing a green score that buyers and sellers can use to easily and efficiently compare home sustainability. Six different areas are covered in the green score: indoor environment, external environment, energy efficiency, water efficiency, walkability, and landscaping. Each area is discussed in detail in terms of the components and the opportunities for improvement, and a set of questions is developed that would allow agents and sellers to assess the home’s green features and sustainability. The questions, like the property disclosures that sellers are required to fill out, are simple to answers with either a yes/no response, a percentage, a number, or a selection from the provided options. The questionnaire has a scoring criterion, which is then used to calculate the green score - first by averaging each area separately and then by averaging the average of each area. This prevents areas that have more questions from carrying more weight, and thus gives homes that do not score well in one area the opportunity to still score well overall. An initial prototype of the green score was designed and tested for feedback. Most notably, users were interested to know more about the score, its significance, and its impact on potential buyers. Others also mentioned wanting a more tangible aspect of the score, such as the financial savings associated with a particular score or the health impacts. Based on this feedback, a new design was created that presented the overall green score at the center, with the option to click on the six areas on the side and obtain more information about the scoring for that category and various resources related to the measures. This would help users further explore home sustainability beyond just the green score. This initial design of the green score is just the first step to making residential home sustainability easily accessible for agents, buyers, and sellers. From there, there are three improvements that can be made to the score: integration with outside data providers, addition of a financial savings components, and maintenance of historical data. By collaborating with other sources, such as Energy Star or the Air Quality Index, additional data can be merged to further add to the credibility of the green score. These other sources could also be used to calculate the financial savings more accurately, such as the information from the Energy Star product finder. From there, as more data is collected and the green score if filled out during each consecutive home sale, historical data can help identify trends and improvements in a home, while also making it easier for future agents to fill out the green score questionnaire by adjusting the previous one to include any changes since the last sale. Overall, the green score has the potential to bring greater transparency and information when it comes to home sustainability in the residential real estate brokerage industry. It is more agent, buyer, and seller friendly, with various improvements available down the line to allow for even greater applicability. With greater demands from buyers and increased environmental regulations, the green score can help buyers and sellers make a first, easy step toward understanding home sustainability and the potential changes that can be made. It sets the tone for future conversations and create a needed change in the brokerage industry.
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    ItemOpen Access
    The Long Side of the Market and the Short End of the Stick: Bargaining Power and Price Formation in Buyers', Sellers', and Balanced Markets
    (1995) Taylor, CR
    The determinants of bargaining power and price formation in a dynamic exchange market where new traders enter randomly over time are studied. When agents on the long side of the market possess the option to wait for the arrival of future partners, the terms of trade in the spot market must honor the value of this option. The equilibrium terms of trade are expressed in intuitive closed-form equations that highlight the distinct influences of short-run spot-market conditions and long-run market demographics. Copyright 1995, the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.