By: KeyCrew Media
Buyers increasingly care about what it costs to heat, cool, and maintain a home, and that interest is opening up a valuable opportunity in real estate. The Multiple Listing Service was built to capture the fundamentals, and there is now room to layer richer performance information on top of it. According to Kat Cahill, Growth Marketing Director at Pearl, closing this information gap gives sellers a way to showcase the unique features of their homes and stand out in the market. It also helps buyers confidently tell apart properties that look similar on paper but perform differently in daily life. Pearl SCORE™ is the national standard for how homebuyers evaluate home performance.
In a more measured market where homes stay listed a little longer, and buyers weigh more options, the value of this kind of clarity is growing.
What the MLS Captures, and Where There’s Room to Grow
Standard MLS fields cover the basics well: price, location, square footage, bedroom and bathroom count, and notable features. For most of real estate history, that has served buyers and sellers reliably. As buyers focus more on operating costs, comfort, and long-term maintenance, there is a natural next step for listing data to evolve alongside them.
Cahill points to solar systems as a clear example. A listing may note that a home has solar panels. Adding the size of the system, its age, its current efficiency rating, and how much of the home’s monthly utility cost it offsets would give that feature its full value.
“The size of it, the age of it, how efficient it is, how much of the utility cost it’s going to offset: those things might not be in there,” Cahill says.
The same opportunity holds for insulation. A listing might highlight “increased attic insulation” as a feature. Pairing that note with context makes the improvement even more meaningful, such as the type of insulation installed, its depth, and its practical effect on the home’s thermal performance. As Cahill puts it, richer detail can show how that insulation affects comfort in upstairs rooms.
The Features That Deserve a Field
Some performance characteristics aren’t yet part of MLS listings simply because no standard field exists for them. Cahill notes that water quality and indoor air quality fall into this category. They aren’t part of the standard listing template because not every home includes those systems.
This is a real opportunity for sellers who have made targeted investments in home health and safety. A seller who installed a whole-home water filtration system, added radon mitigation, or upgraded to high-efficiency ventilation benefits from a reliable way to communicate those improvements. The investment is there, often documented by a receipt in a file cabinet, and it deserves to surface in the listing.
The same applies to resilience features. Roof tie-downs designed for high-wind areas, wildfire-resistant landscaping, sump pump upgrades, and similar improvements meaningfully set one home apart from another in specific markets. Structured, searchable listing data can bring them to light.
Cahill says homeowners make these kinds of improvements to increase comfort, safety, and resilience, “and those are not typically caught on a traditional listing.”
Why a Measured Market Highlights the Opportunity
The information gap has always existed, and its value is more visible now. Cahill notes that the conditions of recent years, with multiple offers and homes selling above asking within days, meant sellers rarely needed to differentiate, because demand absorbed supply.
That dynamic has shifted. In a market where buyers can be selective, sellers who have invested in performance improvements now have a strong reason to make those investments visible. A specific, well-documented record accomplishes far more than a general mention of “updated systems” in listing remarks.
For buyers, clear performance data brings the total cost of homeownership into focus. Two homes at similar prices may look nearly identical in an MLS comparison while performing differently in practice. One may have sealed ductwork, new windows, and upgraded insulation. The other may have original systems throughout. With performance data, a buyer comparing those two homes can picture what everyday life will look like after closing.
Cahill describes the stakes plainly: buyers typically get about 10 minutes at an open house and then make one of the largest purchasing decisions of their lives. Standardized performance information gives them a clearer picture of how a home will live day to day before they commit, rather than after they move in.
How Pearl Approaches Real Estate Home Performance
Pearl captures and surfaces the performance information that MLS listings often miss. Pearl aggregates licensed public data and seller-provided documentation to generate a home performance profile across five pillars: Safety, Comfort, Operations, Resilience, and Energy.
For sellers, the process starts with claiming their home in the Pearl app. They then photograph manufacturer stickers and system documentation throughout the property and upload that information. Pearl scores those assets and assigns them to the relevant pillars. The result is a report that showcases the home’s performance features, so the market sees what the home is actually like to live in.
For buyers, Pearl offers free address-level lookups at pearlscore.com and in the Pearl app, along with the option to access detailed Pearl SCORE™ Reports for homes under serious consideration. Some homes have not been claimed by their sellers. For those, the Pearl SCORE™ Report provides questions buyers or their agents can bring to the seller or listing agent to clarify whether certain features are present. Agents working with performance-conscious buyers can use the Pearl app for professionals to compare homes side by side across the five pillars, a capability that complements the standard MLS interface.
A buyer might be comparing utility cost estimates across neighborhoods, or asking a home inspection professional to verify a seller’s claim about attic insulation depth. Either way, the goal is the same: making the information that distinguishes one home from another after move-in day just as visible before it.
About Pearl
Founded in 2013, Pearl is a ratings and standards company building the national standard for home performance. Pearl SCORE™ rates every single-family home in the U.S. across five key pillars: Safety, Comfort, Operations, Resilience, and Energy, so homebuyers, homeowners, and real estate professionals can understand how a home performs in daily life. As a Certified B Corporation, we’re accountable not only to our shareholders, but also to the homeowners and communities we serve. For more information, visit pearlscore.com.
Disclaimer: This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.
