A new home-search feature helps US buyers compare long-term ownership costs, adding maintenance, utility, and replacement estimates for newly built and resale homes.
An accompanying analysis found newly built homes save buyers avg. $25.3K over the first 10 yr of ownership versus 20-yr-old homes nationwide.
The shift reflects affordability decisions moving beyond purchase price, as utility bills, insurance, maintenance needs, and replacement costs increasingly shape how buyers evaluate homes.
The scoring system evaluates US single-family homes across safety, comfort, operations, resilience, and energy, using climate data, utility costs, maintenance projections, and benchmarks.
Housing professionals increasingly focus on home performance and ownership predictability, bringing total cost estimates directly into search tools for a fuller buying picture.