Guest Column: Home energy score is the wrong approach at the … – The Bulletin

The Bend City Council has passed a new rule that would mandate homeowners pay for a home energy score before selling their home. To say this seems like a bad time to add more cost and complexity to housing is an understatement.

Sure, $250 may not seem like much. But it’s another cost to housing in a market where prices continue to climb, and those costs add up. Since 2015, an average of 2,330 transactions per year were recorded in the Multiple Listing Service of Central Oregon. If that trend continues, collectively Bend homeowners would pay $582,500 per year for energy assessments (assuming the cost is only $250 and the lack of trained assessors doesn’t lead to price increases or “rush fees”).