I recently spoke with someone in Alameda County and they shared a few great case studies. I think that one that we must keep in mind is that going green is simply the 'right thing to do' - but there are real financial benefits to doing so!

An example of installing lighting and occupancy sensors. With incentives, the payback is less than one month! Even without incentives the payback is under 8 months. (http://sfenergywatch.org/pubs/JordanHousingCaseStudy.pdf)

An example of changing out metal halide lights with CFLs. With incentives, again under one month! If your area doesn't provide incentives at this time, the payback will be fully recognized in under 3 months. (http://sfenergywatch.org/pubs/TheWatermark.pdf)

These types of easy improvements are wins all the way around, renters are happier, operating costs are reduced, and more eco-friendly.

We recently dug up survey results from Rent.com from a year ago and excited how the data supports exactly what Green Renter is doing. Simply, renters prefer eco-friendly living. Included in their results are the following key points:
"...Nearly 9 in 10 Americans (86%) would prefer to live in an eco-friendly spare; and more than half (55%) of these are willing to pay more in rent to do so. Renters were almost three times as likely as non-renters (11% vs. 4%) to say living in an environmentally-friendly home is absolutely necessary for them. According to the survey, 42% of respondents were willing to pay up to $100 extra to live in a green apartment, and 13% would pay even more than that. Even though respondents are willing to pay more in rent to live in an eco-friendly apartment, 2/3rds said that money was the biggest barrier to making eco-friendly choices...."

At Green Renter, we continue to work on our GreenRenter Score so that renters can better compare between rental options. It is exciting to see data that supports what are customers having been communicating to us for over 3 years.

As I talked to owners and property managers around the US, there continue to be very positive feedback about GreenRenter. Many start out as general support for such a tool that connects green minded renters with apartments and houses that best align with their needs. However, it does see that each story starts to evolve into how beneficial
it has been to connect directly with green renters.

"GreenRenter is great and focuses on the right things. We don't actually actively rent our property because of such high demand. In fact, the last two units we filled were on our waiting list and broke their other lease to move into our building when it became open. Oh, I guess both of these leads came to us from GreenRenter!"

I started thinking that it would be good to reach out and see if other buildings can share their stories with us as well. 

So, if you have an experience that you would like to share with us - please email it to info@greenrenter.com. 

Thanks,

-Nick

Things got busy around GreenRenter at the end of the year and there were a back log of properties to be evaluated. Well, we have been hard at work reviewing each listing.

 As of today, we are caught up and have given out GreenRenter Scores for 25 properties so far in 2011!

 Continue to spread the word about the best place to introduce green renters with green properties.