Meritage Homes
Meritage Homes is the seventh-largest public homebuilder in the United States, based on homes closed in 2018. Meritage offers a variety of homes that are designed with a focus on first-time and first move-up buyers in Arizona, California, Colorado, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. The Company has designed and built over 120,000 homes in its 34-year history and has a reputation for its distinctive style, quality construction, and positive customer experience. Meritage is the industry leader in energy-efficient homebuilding and has received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year for Sustained Excellence Award every year since 2013 for innovation and industry leadership in energy-efficient homebuilding.
Meritage Homes
www.meritagehomes.com
In this month’s feature, we asked CR Herro, Vice President, Innovation at Meritage Homes to share his insights on HERS® Rated Meritage Homes. For the upcoming #RESNET2020 Building Performance Conference, RESNET is partnering with Meritage Homes to offer attendees a unique opportunity to see “tomorrow’s” home today in Phoenix, AZ. There will be a special breakout session, where attendees will tour a Meritage-built home that incorporates the best design, engineering, material science and construction practices in the industry.
Q: What is special about a HERS® Rated home?
A: CR: A HERS® Rated home provides a customer added confidence in a home buying purchase. The rating represents a dedication by a builder to build better and empower buyers to select a better-built home. Builders who don’t voluntarily construct better deliver less value, less comfort, and a worse investment to the MLS.
Q: Why should consumers ask for the HERS® Index Score on homes they are shopping for?
A: CR: A HERS® Index implies three important things: that a builder went above and beyond in building a superior performing home, a third party expert inspected and tested the home to ensure superior performance, and that the superior performance yields savings every month for the customer living in that home.
Q: Why does Meritage Homes choose to have their homes HERS® Rated?
A: CR: Meritage’s HERS® ratings are a part of our promise of a ‘Life.Built.Better.’ We recognize that we have a responsibility to our customers to leverage expertise within the industry in order to improve the value for our customers. HERS® ratings provide partners to help develop better build strategies, provide trade quality assurance, and validation for our energy-efficient claims for our customers.
Q: Why consumers should expect energy-efficient homes?
A: CR: Energy Efficient homes simply represent the quality of the design, materials, and construction of a home. The voluntary improvements in home construction result in better comfort, lower costs, and better durability. Through the modeling of better performance, testing and inspection to verify homes met or exceeded the design intentions, consumers get assurance their home is well built. The other two choices are guessing or settling for less than you deserve.
Q: How many homes does Meritage Homes build with HERS® per year?
A: CR: Meritage is the 7th largest builder in the US, and has performed HERS® ratings on every home we have built for the last 10 years. Meritage anticipates is will provide approximately 10,000 HERS® rated homes in 2019.
Q: How do you market HERS® Rated homes?
A: CR: Meritage’s marketing approach is to enable consumers to make a more informed choice in purchasing their next home. The HERS® rating provides important information to a buyer about the quality, performance, and overall affordability of their home. Through the use of an easy to understand scale, buyers can anticipate the relative performance and financial benefits available when choosing a better build home.
Q: How do your customers feel about HERS® Rated homes?
A: CR: Home buying can often be a confusing and stressful experience for homebuyers. HERS® scores allow a customer to feel safer by being able to compare and predict the benefits of a better constructed of a home. Through the HERS® scoring process, a customer gains additional proficiency in design, quality and performance improvements for their next home. The score allows customers to compare homes in the right zip code, the right size, right price range with a fourth sort: better. Better built, more comfortable, better value, better resale.
