Home shopping going green
Listing services promote features of green homes
Home buyers can search for properties with any number of characteristics: the number of bedrooms, for example, or the number of baths. You can even search for items such as fireplaces, garages and first-floor master suites. But when it comes to features that make a home green — Energy Star-rated appliances, geothermal heat pumps, solar heating, low-flow toilets or other energy-related attributes — buyers in most places usually draw a blank. The only place to find them is in the descriptive portion of the listing, if they are mentioned at all.
That may be about to change.