I am thrilled to announce my house’s (re)certification to the Pearl Platinum standard! I was also recently able to pick up the all-electric home badge and look at the solar equity calculator to properly value my home with solar. I am very grateful to Casey Murphy and his team there for assisting with this, and actually, I’ve been certified for two years now, but just finally getting the word out now. I am excited about Pearl certification and why I want to get the word out. Here are three reasons why. The first is Pearl is a great stepping stone to call GreenStar Home Certification in much the same way energy star is the energy baseline to LEED Residential. Pearl is a great energy efficiency program that can serve as a baseline so all homes and a starting point for green. A Gold Pearl Certified level meets the baseline requirements of GreenStar Homes Certification. Next, all homes need continual improvement and maintenance, and their Green Door program offers homeowners or landlords ways to maintain their homes and make upgrades to achieve higher levels of pearl, home health, and comfort. Making sure the home is well maintained and is an easy hand-off to the next owner. In connection again with GreenStar, the silver requirements are that the owners have an operations manual, and this green door tool covers more than that.Finally, as I mentioned, the solar equity calculator has proven to help appraisers understand how to value solar properly, which is one of the biggest impediments to solar that I hear often. The complaint is that people who decide they might sell not only think they won’t get any value for the solar but worse, they think the home might not sell or have less value due to solar, which is completely untrue. Because of Pearl, I was able to eek out 3% more value on my home appraisal from solar. So I am excited to get the word out about the solar equity calculator and provide you with more details on how it works and my reports as well. The solar equity calculator uses a discounted cash flow method to estimate the solar projection, the cost savings based on utility costs, including inflation, and a low, medium, and high estimation of the system value based on its likely energy generation value. The bottom line is that Pearl + GreenStar Homes + Solar is a win-win for high-performance homes, ensuring home equity and value are communicated well. You can learn more about the features of my home that helped it meet Pearl here and the details of my solar equity calculator. My hope you and your clients do this too!