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Real Estate News Releases
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(EMAILWIRE.COM, May 22, 2009 ) New Zealand - A new scoring system that could tell homeowners, renters and house-hunters at a glance how comfortable and cheap running a home will be, is being developed in New Zealand, which could potentially add more than five per cent onto the value of well-insulated and well-designed homesÂ…
The ‘Health and Comfort’ scoreboards - which are a joint initiative between the Green Building Council, housing research group Beacon Pathway and building consultancy company Branz - could be handed out to potential buyers at viewings.
Homes in New Zealand will be rated out of 10 for overall performance on factors such as insulation and dampness, how much natural light they receive and how much water their inhabitants are likely to use because of the design of the house.
If the scoreboards become popular, they could penalise the roughly one million, mostly older New Zealand homes that do not meet modern building standards.
According to the World Health Organisation, the recommended temperature for a room is around 18 degrees centigrade or 21 degrees centigrade if there are babies, young children or elderly people living in the home.
But, a study has found that a fifth of the living rooms in New Zealand have a temperature of just 16 degrees centigrade on a winter evening, which could be damaging to occupantÂ’s health.
Homeowners who do not want to fork out for the Health and Comfort test would be able to get a rough idea by filling out an online questionnaire, but to get the official rating, they would have to pay a fee of between £193 to £387 for a professional evaluation.
Whilst most properties in New Zealand would currently score around two or three on the chart, the goal is to upgrade all of them to a four or a five rating.
A recent ShapeNZ study of more than 2000 New Zealanders found that the majority - 71 per cent of homeowners - thought their homes could be warmer and more comfortable, but many were unable to afford to do anything about it.
For more information on New Zealand property and the property market in general, please visit http://new-zealand.themovechannel.com/
-ENDS-
Notes to editors:
TheMoveChannel.com is a property website that was founded in 1999 as an online resource for buying, selling and learning about property. It now receives as many as 300,000 visits per month and advertises over 50,000 properties in nearly 90 countries, which are listed by over 500 partner organisations.
For further information, please contact:
Dan Johnson
Managing Director
www.themovechannel.com
0207 952 7650
TheMoveChannel.com
Dan Johnson
020 7952 7650
dj@themovechannel.com 
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