Builders believe there are many things raters can do to differentiate themselves.
• Back the builder’s approach. Sometimes homeowners question a builder’s
choices; supporting a builder with the homeowner reinforces his credibility and
can help him ensure his customers are satisfied.
• Inform and advise—don’t just test and report. Builders appreciate when
raters explain how and why a building received a specific score. Raters deliver
most value when acting as trusted advisors and consultants.
• Provide marketing assistance. While builders see value in HERS scores and
HERS raters, most expressed a desire to extract more value for the score from
homebuyers. With this in mind, builders suggested a few ways raters could add
value, including educating realtors, educating homebuyers and even educating
builders’ sales teams on how to better sell “greener” homes. One example
shared was a rater who educated realtors before a series of open houses to
make sure they could talk up the efficiency of the homes. The builder who
shared this story indicated it was a successful approach.
• Help make lower HERS scores mean more dollars. While there is a desire for
general marketing assistance, the “holy grail” for builders is to extract incremental
value as they proceed further and further down the HERS rating system towards
net zero. Helping them crack the code on this would make a rater invaluable.
• Make building science understandable for homeowners. Builders want to
see scores, efficiency metrics and the other outcomes associated with “green”
homes translated into value propositions that can be understood by the average
homebuyer. Raters who do this will differentiate themselves. In many ways, this
is an enabling component of the previous bullet on marketing assistance.
• Share your ideas. Builders indicated they want raters to offer ideas early on,
not just accept their approach. This shows that builders consider raters to be
experts. The builders voiced the opinion that part of why they pay an expert is
to get good ideas.
• Train the trades. Builders were split on whether this part of a rater’s job was
a given or added value a rater could offer. Given the split, it would be helpful to
set expectations on proper subcontractor training in advance with builders.
• Save builders money. If raters can offer different ways to deliver
comparable performance outcomes (e.g., similar scores) for less money,
builders want to be told about them. Examples of this would be valuable in
rater’s marketing materials.
• Provide a quick turnaround for scores. Builders felt that it took too long to
get scores. Besides creating anxiety over results, score delay can impact work
schedules should remediation be necessary.
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