If you are going to judge your homes worth on purely a cost basis only it is much cheaper to build a conventional house using conventional materials, rather than ‘green’ products and systems. That said, the environmental issue is gaining ground, even with regards to how you build your house, and in the near future an eco house will probably be worth more than a conventional house. Certainly the government is encouraging homeowners to be more responsible in their approach to the environment and the public is thinking more about green issues. So anything you can do to make your house environmentally friendly should pay off in the long run when you come to sell it. Houses with four bedrooms plus can expect to have their energy-efficiency evaluated as part of the Home Information Pack (HIP) when they come to sell it. This is a new mandatory assessment of all four bedroom plus homes that comes into effect from 1 August. As part of the Energy Performance Certificate, your home will be rated in terms of efficiency. So anything you can do to make your home efficient, the higher its rating will be. This in turn should make your home more desirable and easier to sell. The simplest and cheapest thing to do is to make sure that your home is highly insulated in order to keep your fuel consumption to a minimum. For improved green credentials use sheep’s wool or recycled newspaper for insulation, rather than the more conventional mineral fibre. If you take things further and build a ‘zero carbon’ home that is worth £500k or less (and sell it before 2012) it will be exempt from stamp duty too. This will make it a much more desirable house to potential buyers than a conventional house. To qualify,this is likely to mean the house will have to produce more energy from environmentally friendly means, such as solar panels or wind turbines, than take from the national grid (if indeed it needs to take any electricity from this source). At present, these alternative power sources are expensive, but there are grants available via the DTI’s Low Carbon Buildings programme (www.lowcarbonbuildings.org.uk/home) to help with the costs.