Real estate
BY PRESTON RAVIN
Home Edition
2024
Readers, welcome to your annual CI Home Edition! This guide features news ranging from key real estate trends and new developments unique to your neighborhood to an overview of the housing industry across Texas. All of the stories were written by our team of local journalists, and all of the advertisements are from nearby businesses who support our mission to provide free, useful news—show them your gratitude by supporting local businesses. There is a lot to explore in this year’s Home Edition. Our page 14 story provides a closer look at how upcoming changes to Multiple Listing Service platforms could change the home buying process. Other content includes a snapshot of the current market, which we work to provide every month. You can take a look there for more information on Richardson’s real estate market, and keep reading the special section for more information from our cover story, including how the recent storm may impact insurance rates. Anything we forgot that you’d love to see in next year’s Home Edition? Shoot us an email at ricnews@communityimpact.com.
What's inside
See how the recent storm may impact insurance rates (Page 12-13)
Tracy Ruckel General Manager truckel@ communityimpact.com
National changes could affect how real estate brokers are paid (Page 14)
Find recent real estate data broken down by ZIP code (Page 15)
What North Texas homeowners should know about solar panels In an effort to explore the growing impact of solar energy within the community, Lori Clark, senior program manager at North Central Texas Council of Governments’ Transportation Depart- ment, broke down how solar panels can be useful for homeowners. She also advises how homeown- ers can find more information about solar panels. How do solar panels work? Solar panels are made out of primarily silicon sheets, but the sunlight energizes electrons in the solar panels themselves, which start moving around and create current, which creates electricity. As long as you’ve got sunlight, and it doesn’t have to be full sun—cloudy days, work too—those solar panels are able to create energy on site. What are the benefits of having solar panels? The benefit of higher electricity cost is that it makes solar more beneficial economically, because you’re generating your own power, so that’s power that you don’t have to pay the utility for. You still have to pay every month to be connected to the
electric grid, and you do have to pay the capital cost of installing that solar array, but the cost of installing solar has come down like 90% over the past decade, so it’s much less expensive now than it used to be. There’s also a resilience benefit. During the winter storm, there were several people who had solar and battery storage in their homes, and they didn’t lose power—it’s able to run off of solar. What are some drawbacks of solar panels? The number one drawback is that they can be expensive, depending on how much you install at a home. You’re not necessarily going to see the payback in a single year. It may take a few years for you to see the cost savings, so you have to be able to handle that upfront capital cost. What factors should homeowners consider if they decide to install solar panels? First and foremost, how much power is that solar installation going to produce, and how much is your home going to use? You want to consider the experience of that solar installer. Check with the Texas Solar Energy Society or the North Texas Renewable Energy Group. Both of those are interest groups, advocacy groups, that are well-networked and know a lot about what’s happening in the solar industry in Texas. So you want to ask what kind of certifications those solar installers have. North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners is one of the industry’s kind
COURTESY LORI CLARK
of one of the highest certifications. Solar United Neighbors is a nonprofit that does a lot of con- sumer education and kind of consumer protection things related to solar, so checking out the Solar United Neighbors website and tips and things like that for recommendations.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version, visit communityimpact.com .
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RICHARDSON EDITION
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