Name: Pearl
Price range: $

Dec 09, 2025

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Buyer priorities shift. You've seen it happen.

A decade ago, everyone wanted open floor plans—walls came down, kitchens merged with living rooms. Before that, it was granite countertops. Before that, formal dining rooms and home offices. The market evolves based on how people actually live, and agents who spot the shifts early are the ones who serve their clients best.

Something different is happening now. The shift isn't about aesthetics. It's about function. And the forces driving it aren't going away.

Buyers still want a home that looks great—but increasingly, that's not enough. How it works is joining how it looks as a deciding factor. Not everyone is asking these questions yet, but enough that the pattern is unmistakable. According to the NAR 2025 Residential Sustainability Report, client inquiries about energy efficiency and operating costs have surged—agents reporting that clients "never ask" about energy upgrades dropped from 57% to 29% in just one year. Meanwhile, Zillow's 2025 Consumer Housing Trends Report found that 79% of buyers now rate air quality as very or extremely important, and 65% prioritize homes with minimal climate risk.

The question "how does this house work?" is becoming as important as "what's the school district?"—and agents who understand why will be better positioned for what's coming.

Four Forces Behind the Shift

Force	What's Driving It
Affordability Concerns	Elevated interest rates + high prices = scrutiny on total cost of ownership
The Remote Work Effect	Years of working from home changed what buyers notice and expect
Environmental Stress	Extreme weather making resilience a mainstream concern
Generational Expectations	Younger buyers expect data transparency as a default

I’ve been in this space for years — greening the MLS, working on high-performance home valuation, advocating at the national level. And what I can tell you is that the shift is no longer theoretical. Agents used to tell me their clients never asked about energy efficiency. Now the NAR data shows that’s flipped. The agents who understand total cost of ownership — not just purchase price — are the ones clients trust.

Craig Foley Chief Sustainability Officer, NAR Executive Committee (Sustainability Expertise) — LAER Realty Partners, Greater Boston

Affordability concerns.

Mortgage rates are elevated. Home prices haven't meaningfully corrected. Buyers who can still afford to purchase are stretching to do it—which means they're scrutinizing the total cost of ownership, not just the purchase price. Operating costs that were once afterthoughts now factor into affordability calculations. When 81% of homeowners say their costs were higher than expected, that's not a statistical anomaly. It's a market-wide information failure that buyers are increasingly aware of—and increasingly unwilling to accept.

The remote work effect.

People spent unprecedented time in their homes over the past few years. They noticed things they'd previously ignored: the room that's always too cold, the humidity problem in the basement, the utility bill that spikes every January. Remote work made it personal—nearly 40% of buyers now prioritize home offices, up from just 22% before, and 55% of remote workers specifically seek quiet neighborhoods. That heightened awareness of daily comfort doesn't disappear when people start house-hunting. Buyers who've felt what it's like to live in an uncomfortable home are seeking a different experience.

Environmental stress.

Extreme weather events are no longer abstractions or regional concerns. Flooding in places that never flooded. Heat waves that strain electrical grids. Ice storms that leave neighborhoods without power for days. According to Kin Insurance's 2026 Homeownership Trends study, 93% of homeowners now worry their home could be damaged by extreme weather in the next two to three years—and 49% say climate concerns could influence them to relocate. Meanwhile, CNBC reports that buyers are backing out of deals at the fastest pace in nearly a decade, often because concerns surface too late. Resilience has entered the conversation because reality has forced it there.

In Atlanta, we’re seeing deals fall apart after the offer — and it’s largely because buyers encounter information at inspection that changes their calculus entirely. I work with a lot of clients interested in EVs, solar, and electrification, and the questions they’re asking today would’ve seemed unusual five years ago. But they’re not unusual anymore. They’re the new normal, and our toolkit needs to catch up.

Christopher Matos-Rogers REALTOR® of the Year (2023, Atlanta REALTORS® Association) — Matos-Rogers Group, Coldwell Banker Realty, Metro Atlanta

Generational Expectations

Younger buyers—when they can finally afford to purchase—arrive with different baseline expectations. They've grown up with information transparency as a default. They research everything. They read reviews. They expect data to be available, and they're skeptical when it isn't. According to the 2025 NextGen Homebuyer Report, younger buyers increasingly rely on multiple information sources when making decisions. They expect data transparency as a baseline—not because they distrust professionals, but because information accessibility is how they've learned to navigate every major purchase.

These forces aren't independent. They reinforce each other. Economic pressure makes operating costs more salient. Climate events make resilience more urgent. Generational expectations make the information gap more frustrating. Together, they're shifting what buyers value—and what they'll pay for.

The Gap in the Traditional Toolkit

A traditional listing doesn't address any of this.

What MLS Listings Capture	What They Don't
Bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage	Operating costs
Lot size, finishes, features	HVAC condition and efficiency
Staged photos, curb appeal	Storm history, flood risk
Year built, recent renovations	Electrical capacity, air quality, insulation

None of it tells a buyer what the house will cost to heat, whether the HVAC system is the right size, how the home held up during the last major storm, or whether the electrical panel can handle an EV charger.

This creates a gap. And gaps in real estate are opportunities for agents who know how to bridge them.

Bridging this gap doesn't require becoming a technical expert. It requires:

Understanding the vocabulary of home performance
Asking better questions during listings and showings
Helping buyers think about homes the way they think about cars—not just how they look, but how they run

No one buys a used car based on photos alone. Buyers want mileage, maintenance history, how it performs on the road. They accept that vehicles have measurable characteristics affecting cost and experience. Why should houses be different?

The Infrastructure for Better Conversations

For most of real estate history, there was no standardized way to measure how a house works. Home performance data was fragmented, inconsistent, or nonexistent. Energy audits existed but weren't scalable. Building science was a specialty field, not mainstream knowledge.

That's changing now:

Pearl Home Performance Registry™ now covers every single-family home in America—92 million properties with performance profiles that didn't exist a year ago
Pearl SCORE™ translates complex building science into a single rating across five pillars: Safety, Comfort, Operations, Resilience, and Energy
Climate risk disclosures are expanding in many markets
Energy efficiency is entering lending and appraisal conversations
Building performance data is becoming standardized and accessible

The infrastructure for transparency is being built. The question isn't whether this shift is coming to real estate. It's whether you'll be ahead of it or scrambling to catch up.

I’ve spent years working in new construction and energy efficiency, and the analogy to cars is exactly right. Nobody would buy a used car without asking about the engine, the mileage, the maintenance history. But somehow we’ve accepted that homes — the biggest purchase most people make — come with less performance information than a vehicle. That gap is closing, and the agents who get ahead of it are the ones setting the standard for how our homes are bought and sold.

Greg Slater Associate Broker, 2024 CAAR REALTOR® of the Year — Nest Realty, Charlottesville, VA

Being ahead doesn't require predicting the future perfectly. It requires paying attention to what's already happening. Buyers are asking different questions. Operating costs are more visible. Weather events are more frequent. Information expectations are higher.

Agents who can speak to how a house works—not just how it looks—are already differentiating themselves. They're the ones having conversations that matter to clients. They're the ones building trust by addressing concerns that other agents ignore.

The school district question isn't going anywhere. Location still matters. Aesthetics still matter. But the conversation is expanding. Buyers want to know what they're getting—not just what it looks like, but what it will cost, how it will feel, and whether it's ready for what's coming.

The agents who can answer those questions will be the ones they trust. And the tools to answer them are available now.

Are you ready for the future of real estate?

The agents who can answer those questions will be the ones they trust.

Apply to join Pearl's Early Access Program and discover how home performance data can add to your practice.

Apply for Pearl's Early Access program

Pearl SCORE™ is the national standard for rating home performance—helping buyers, sellers, and agents surface performance conversations early, keeping transactions on rails.

Buyer Priorities Are Shifting—and the Forces Driving It Aren't Going Away