Austin Forces Home Sellers to Pay for Energy Audits

June 10, 2009— -- Susan Sklar just put her Austin, Texas home on the market.

She knows it's not the best economy to be selling her house. And she knows that a fresh coat of paint and a clean yard will help attract offers.

But what she and plenty of other home sellers in Austin are learning is that they now are required to also hire somebody to audit their home's energy consumption and efficiency.

"I was like: oh my God you're kidding. One more hoop to jump through here," Sklar told ABC News. "It's hard enough to sell a house in this market. And now thanks to the City of Austin, they've added one more thing to do to make it more difficult to sell your house."

Starting last week, anybody selling a house that's older than 10 years in the city is now required to get an energy audit and disclose the results to prospective buyers.

Sklar spent $269 for the audit -- city officials estimate the cost at $200 to $300 for a typical home -- and is now worried about how potential buyers are going to interpret and use her audit.

"I'm afraid people are going to try to negotiate my price down even though my audit was ostensibly a pretty good one," Sklar said. "I'm all about being energy efficient but gee-whiz. I spent thousands of dollars already, trying to get that house ready to sell. I just don't have any more money to put into it. And I had a good energy audit. So God forbid if you have a bad one."

But Mayor Will Wynn sees it differently.

Austin's population is growing quickly and he doesn't want to have to upgrade its power plant or have the growth make a bigger impact on the environment than necessary.

"We have this responsibility to be a leading city when it comes to energy," Wynn said. "We are the capitol city of the most-polluting state in the country."

The city has passed what he calls "one of the most progressive, some say aggressive, energy building codes" in the country.

But those codes don't apply to existing homes, which make up the vast majority of sales.

Wynn said the idea behind the ordinance was to encourage homeowners to upgrade their homes with more-efficient air conditioners, better windows and insulation. The original idea was just to require sellers to disclose their electric bills, but then he realized that some people are more wasteful in their habits than others. Hence, the home inspections.