Homebuyers are choosing homes with much higher carbon footprints than they realize

When people shop for a home, they tend to focus on the information listings put front and centre: price, floor area, number of bedrooms and location.

Rarely do listings show how a home can shape a household’s carbon footprint through energy use and commuting.

That is a significant blind spot.

A home purchase can influence how much energy a household uses , how far its members travel and how much they spend on utilities and maintenance.

Yet buyers often make one of the biggest financial decisions of their lives without a clear picture of a home’s carbon footprint or heating, cooling and maintenance costs.

Buildings account for about 18 per cent of Canada’s emissions , including electricity-related emissions, making them the third-largest emitting sector after the oil and gas and transportation sectors.

To examine the extent to which sustainability factors into homebuying decisions, we studied real housing choices in Ottawa and compared the carbon footprints of the homes people selected with those of lower-emission alternatives.

Testing real housing choices We asked 317 Ottawa residents to take part in an online home-choice experiment in fall 2024.

Participants were divided into three income groups and shown 10 real Ottawa-area listings within a price range suited to their income.

We did not tell participants the study was about sustainability.

Instead, we simply asked which home they would be most likely to buy.

The listings resembled those on a real estate website, with photographs, price, location, approximate size, bedrooms, bathrooms and the age of the home.

They did not provide an energy rating, estimated carbon footprint or comparable information about energy performance.

Each income group was shown one home with lower-emission features, such as a cold-climate heat pump, better attic insulation or energy-efficient windows.