Housing affordability is broken, and the old model of “cheap upfront, expensive forever” is the reason why. Here’s how to solve the quandary.
Housing affordability didn’t break overnight. It eroded quietly under the weight of a metric that was never designed to measure what modern homes actually do.
Last week, Green Builder Media, IAPMO, and TimberTech convened Reclaiming Affordability, a high-voltage conversation focused on untangling one of the most persistent contradictions in housing: how homes can be simultaneously cheaper to buy and more expensive to live in.
Builders, developers, lenders, manufacturers, and code experts came together to confront a reality many in the industry are already feeling but rarely naming out loud.
I opened the event by identifying the problem: in the building sector, we continue to rely on price per square foot, an outdated metric that tells us how big a house is and what it costs today, but it excludes resilience, energy independence, wellness, and long-term performance. By ignoring those factors, we systematically undervalue sustainable homes, quietly burdening homeowners with higher operating costs, greater risk, and diminished peace of mind.
Our housing stock is wildly heterogeneous, ranging from barely code-compliant homes to net-zero, resilient, high-performance buildings. Treating them as equivalent because they share square footage makes no economic sense—a truth that sits at the heart of today’s affordability crisis.
Green Builder Media President Ron Jones followed by dismantling what he called The False Affordability Narrative. “The industry has equated affordability with lowest first cost, confusing cheap with attainable and cost with value,” he avowed. Through a deeply personal story about his grandparents’ journey to homeownership, Ron reminded the audience that homes were never meant to be commodities. They were meant to represent stability, pride, and intergenerational opportunity. “The dollars-per-square-foot evaluation is the lazy man’s arithmetic,” he said. “It measures quantity, not quality.” True value, he argued, must include dignity, equity, and long-term security—not just what fits neatly into a spreadsheet.
Todd Usher, Founder and President of Addition Homes, grounded the conversation in business reality. He described his own journey away from the industry’s “race to the bottom” and toward a model centered on quality systems and continuous improvement. Discovering green building standards early in his career, Todd recognized them not as constraints, but as a blueprint for delivering consistent value. “When performance becomes the standard, not the upgrade, builders become more efficient, costs come down, callbacks decline, and customer satisfaction rises,” he insisted. “If we do it the right way every time, we get efficient at doing it right.” His homes, he noted, sell not because of checklists, but because occupants feel the difference—quiet interiors, fast hot water delivery, consistent comfort. “These are benefits buyers don’t want to give up once they experience them.”
Developer Lucienne Pears, VP Economic and Business Development at Kitson & Partners, offered a clear example of Value Per Square Foot in action: Babcock Ranch, a resilient, fully solar-powered community in Florida. Designed from inception as a systems-based community, Babcock Ranch prioritized location, hydrology, elevation, stormwater management, and energy redundancy decades before climate resilience became a buzzword. By restoring natural waterways, elevating all structures out of flood zones, and interconnecting stormwater systems with wetlands, the development eliminated flood risk entirely. By building homes to withstand 175 mph winds—years ahead of code—residents avoided catastrophic damage during multiple Category 5 hurricanes. During Hurricane Ian, while surrounding communities suffered massive losses, Babcock Ranch experienced no flooding, no structural damage, and no prolonged power outages. The result? Residents avoided insurance shocks, repair costs, business disruption, and emotional trauma. “That upfront investment,” Lucienne noted, “will deliver value for 50, 70, even 100 years.” That’s real affordability, realized over time.
Lender Don Worthington, Division Manager at PRMI, tied the conversation to finance basics. He explained why traditional affordability calculations using PITI (Principle, Interest, Taxes and Insurance) are fundamentally incomplete.
“Utilities, insurance volatility, and maintenance costs are eroding household budgets, yet remain largely invisible in the underwriting and appraisal process,” he conveyed. “If a sustainability benefit is invisible to appraisers, it doesn’t go into the MLS. If it’s not in MLS, it’s invisible. If it’s invisible, it’s unfinanceable. And if it’s unfinanceable, it’s not scalable.”
With appraisal forms evolving and new lending products emerging, Don explained how reducing utility bills can unlock tens of thousands of dollars in buying power without increasing monthly payments. In many cases, eliminating a $300 utility bill translates into roughly $60,000 in additional mortgage capacity.
Amanda Cimaglia, VP Sustainability at James Hardie, reframed the role of manufacturers in the affordability equation by introducing an often overlooked stakeholder: insurance companies. As climate events intensify, insurers are now directly influencing material selection. In many markets, homes that are not fortified are becoming unaffordable to insure.
Amanda highlighted how resilient products, such as noncombustible fiber cement siding and ignition-resistant decking, materially reduce wildfire risk and, in many cases, qualify homeowners for insurance discounts. “Seven in ten insurers now offer premium reductions for resilient material choices,” she relayed. “The challenge isn’t availability, it’s awareness. Homeowners don’t what to ask, and builders and designers aren’t talking enough about resilience.”
John Watson, EVP Industry Relations and Business Development at IAPMO closed by tackling one of the industry’s most persistent habits: oversizing and overbuilding systems out of fear.
“Big is not always better,” he reminded the audience. With modern tools like water demand calculators, leak detection systems, and right-sized mechanicals, homes can perform better at lower cost while improving public health and safety. These aren’t experimental ideas, many are already validated through codes, standards, and certifications.
“The water demand calculator outperforms outdated 1940s-era sizing formulas while costing less to implement,” John explained. “We’re not talking about conservation. We’re talking about efficiency—and there’s a big difference. The technology exists. What’s needed is collective willingness to change.”
The takeaway from Reclaiming Affordability was unmistakable: affordability isn’t about making homes cheaper. It’s about making them smarter, safer, healthier, and more resilient, so families aren’t paying for poor decisions for decades to come. Price per square foot may be easy to calculate, but it is increasingly expensive to live with. Value per square foot, by contrast, reflects how homes actually perform—on an economic, environmental, and human scale.
Want to learn more about Value Per Square Foot? Check out our microsite and subscribe to COGNITION Smart Datato access the industry’s most innovative insights and intelligence about market transformation.
As cofounder and CEO of Green Builder Media, Sara is a visionary thought leader and passionate advocate for sustainability. A former venture capitalist, she has participated in the life cycle (from funding to exit) of over 20 companies, with an emphasis on combining sustainability and profitability. She lives in Lake City, Colo., with her husband, where she is an avid long-distance runner, snowboarder, and Crossfit trainer. She is also on the Board of Directors at Dvele, runs the Rural Segment for Energize Colorado, and is a former County Commissioner.
Reclaiming Affordability
Housing affordability is broken, and the old model of “cheap upfront, expensive forever” is the reason why. Here’s how to solve the quandary.
Housing affordability didn’t break overnight. It eroded quietly under the weight of a metric that was never designed to measure what modern homes actually do.
Last week, Green Builder Media, IAPMO, and TimberTech convened Reclaiming Affordability, a high-voltage conversation focused on untangling one of the most persistent contradictions in housing: how homes can be simultaneously cheaper to buy and more expensive to live in.
Builders, developers, lenders, manufacturers, and code experts came together to confront a reality many in the industry are already feeling but rarely naming out loud.
I opened the event by identifying the problem: in the building sector, we continue to rely on price per square foot, an outdated metric that tells us how big a house is and what it costs today, but it excludes resilience, energy independence, wellness, and long-term performance. By ignoring those factors, we systematically undervalue sustainable homes, quietly burdening homeowners with higher operating costs, greater risk, and diminished peace of mind.
Our housing stock is wildly heterogeneous, ranging from barely code-compliant homes to net-zero, resilient, high-performance buildings. Treating them as equivalent because they share square footage makes no economic sense—a truth that sits at the heart of today’s affordability crisis.
Green Builder Media President Ron Jones followed by dismantling what he called The False Affordability Narrative. “The industry has equated affordability with lowest first cost, confusing cheap with attainable and cost with value,” he avowed. Through a deeply personal story about his grandparents’ journey to homeownership, Ron reminded the audience that homes were never meant to be commodities. They were meant to represent stability, pride, and intergenerational opportunity. “The dollars-per-square-foot evaluation is the lazy man’s arithmetic,” he said. “It measures quantity, not quality.” True value, he argued, must include dignity, equity, and long-term security—not just what fits neatly into a spreadsheet.
Todd Usher, Founder and President of Addition Homes, grounded the conversation in business reality. He described his own journey away from the industry’s “race to the bottom” and toward a model centered on quality systems and continuous improvement. Discovering green building standards early in his career, Todd recognized them not as constraints, but as a blueprint for delivering consistent value. “When performance becomes the standard, not the upgrade, builders become more efficient, costs come down, callbacks decline, and customer satisfaction rises,” he insisted. “If we do it the right way every time, we get efficient at doing it right.” His homes, he noted, sell not because of checklists, but because occupants feel the difference—quiet interiors, fast hot water delivery, consistent comfort. “These are benefits buyers don’t want to give up once they experience them.”
Developer Lucienne Pears, VP Economic and Business Development at Kitson & Partners, offered a clear example of Value Per Square Foot in action: Babcock Ranch, a resilient, fully solar-powered community in Florida. Designed from inception as a systems-based community, Babcock Ranch prioritized location, hydrology, elevation, stormwater management, and energy redundancy decades before climate resilience became a buzzword. By restoring natural waterways, elevating all structures out of flood zones, and interconnecting stormwater systems with wetlands, the development eliminated flood risk entirely. By building homes to withstand 175 mph winds—years ahead of code—residents avoided catastrophic damage during multiple Category 5 hurricanes. During Hurricane Ian, while surrounding communities suffered massive losses, Babcock Ranch experienced no flooding, no structural damage, and no prolonged power outages. The result? Residents avoided insurance shocks, repair costs, business disruption, and emotional trauma. “That upfront investment,” Lucienne noted, “will deliver value for 50, 70, even 100 years.” That’s real affordability, realized over time.
Lender Don Worthington, Division Manager at PRMI, tied the conversation to finance basics. He explained why traditional affordability calculations using PITI (Principle, Interest, Taxes and Insurance) are fundamentally incomplete.
“Utilities, insurance volatility, and maintenance costs are eroding household budgets, yet remain largely invisible in the underwriting and appraisal process,” he conveyed. “If a sustainability benefit is invisible to appraisers, it doesn’t go into the MLS. If it’s not in MLS, it’s invisible. If it’s invisible, it’s unfinanceable. And if it’s unfinanceable, it’s not scalable.”
With appraisal forms evolving and new lending products emerging, Don explained how reducing utility bills can unlock tens of thousands of dollars in buying power without increasing monthly payments. In many cases, eliminating a $300 utility bill translates into roughly $60,000 in additional mortgage capacity.
Amanda Cimaglia, VP Sustainability at James Hardie, reframed the role of manufacturers in the affordability equation by introducing an often overlooked stakeholder: insurance companies. As climate events intensify, insurers are now directly influencing material selection. In many markets, homes that are not fortified are becoming unaffordable to insure.
Amanda highlighted how resilient products, such as noncombustible fiber cement siding and ignition-resistant decking, materially reduce wildfire risk and, in many cases, qualify homeowners for insurance discounts. “Seven in ten insurers now offer premium reductions for resilient material choices,” she relayed. “The challenge isn’t availability, it’s awareness. Homeowners don’t what to ask, and builders and designers aren’t talking enough about resilience.”
John Watson, EVP Industry Relations and Business Development at IAPMO closed by tackling one of the industry’s most persistent habits: oversizing and overbuilding systems out of fear.
“Big is not always better,” he reminded the audience. With modern tools like water demand calculators, leak detection systems, and right-sized mechanicals, homes can perform better at lower cost while improving public health and safety. These aren’t experimental ideas, many are already validated through codes, standards, and certifications.
“The water demand calculator outperforms outdated 1940s-era sizing formulas while costing less to implement,” John explained. “We’re not talking about conservation. We’re talking about efficiency—and there’s a big difference. The technology exists. What’s needed is collective willingness to change.”
The takeaway from Reclaiming Affordability was unmistakable: affordability isn’t about making homes cheaper. It’s about making them smarter, safer, healthier, and more resilient, so families aren’t paying for poor decisions for decades to come. Price per square foot may be easy to calculate, but it is increasingly expensive to live with. Value per square foot, by contrast, reflects how homes actually perform—on an economic, environmental, and human scale.
Want to learn more about Value Per Square Foot? Check out our microsite and subscribe to COGNITION Smart Data to access the industry’s most innovative insights and intelligence about market transformation.
By Sara Gutterman
As cofounder and CEO of Green Builder Media, Sara is a visionary thought leader and passionate advocate for sustainability. A former venture capitalist, she has participated in the life cycle (from funding to exit) of over 20 companies, with an emphasis on combining sustainability and profitability. She lives in Lake City, Colo., with her husband, where she is an avid long-distance runner, snowboarder, and Crossfit trainer. She is also on the Board of Directors at Dvele, runs the Rural Segment for Energize Colorado, and is a former County Commissioner.Also Read