Early this year, Lucyna de Barbaro and Ayres Freitas completed the first newly constructed passive-house duplex within city limits. A passive house is so tightly sealed and well insulated that its heating and cooling system has the same electrical-power needs as a hairdryer. They moved into half of the Squirrel Hill duplex and listed the other half for sale. Problem: The West Penn Multi-List, the region’s real-estate listing service, didn’t provide a searchable online way to tell potential buyers why the house was special.
“There is a segment of the buyers who would be interested in this,” says de Barbaro. However, she says, “West Penn MLS is keeping people in the dark.”
As MLSs around the nation increasingly include space for so-called “green fields” in their databases, critics are concerned that Western Pennsylvania is falling behind. For two years, an informal group called the ReEnergize Pittsburgh Coalition has worked to persuade West Penn MLS to make room for information about things like solar panels, high-performance windows and energy-efficient furnaces, saying it would benefit buyers, sellers and real-estate agents. Jeaneen Zappa, who heads Coalition member Conservation Consultants Inc., says the move could even benefit the environment by incentivizing conservation-minded home improvements.
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