The New Year gives us the opportunity to start fresh and find renewal for a better life and make adjustments needed to experience the quest for happiness, balance, peace, optimal health, solid financial investments and more time with family? Looking inside your home, allow green building practices to influence the decision to adopt a sustainable lifestyle. Examine the areas in your lifestyle that could use improvement and then reform them accordingly.

Prior to purchasing a vehicle, you can obtain the history of the vehicle, along with crash ratings, consumer reports and fuel economy ratings. Our food comes with nutritional labels; schools and banks have a rating system. It certainly would be valuable to know how the largest investment of your life—your home—performs.

Is the air quality suitable for your family’s health? Most of us are taught to consider principal, interest, taxes and insurance when purchasing a house, without thinking of the true cost of living. How much energy a home consumes a month should also be factored into the numbers that determine the investment.

I continue to see, the selling of real estate in a market with an overabundance of distressed properties, frustrated and discouraged buyers, sellers and communities, and I wonder if the energy inefficiency of many homes and lack of knowledge by consumers has had a direct effect on our current market conditions.

If the electric bill nearly equals the mortgage payment, homeowners are sometimes faced with no choice but abandoning the house. The value that a sustainable, green home residence brings to clients is walking them through the entire real estate process and showing them the tangible and intangible benefits of highperformance real estate. The integration of a family’s lifestyle into their home environment allows them to live an authentic life of their choice.

Stephanie Ebbesen-Stuer is a Realtor and green licensed Texas real estate broker. For more information call 214-563-5769 or email [email protected].