Home buyers are arriving at open houses eager to understand how a home performs. According to Kat Cahill, Growth Marketing Director at Pearl, buyers are already photographing home systems and consulting ChatGPT on the spot, a sign of how engaged today’s buyers have become and an opening for agents ready to meet them in the conversation. Pearl SCORE™ is the national standard for how homebuyers evaluate home performance.
That growing curiosity between what buyers want to know and what agents can share creates a valuable opportunity for the agents who are prepared to guide it.
What Buyers Are Doing at Open Houses
Cahill describes a scene that Pearl’s CMO witnessed while attending an open house with an agent friend. Every buyer who walked through was photographing systems, including water heaters, washers, dryers, and HVAC equipment, and immediately consulting AI tools to evaluate what they were looking at.
“Everyone who came to the house was taking pictures of everything: the water heater, the washer and dryer. And they were asking ChatGPT, ‘Is this a good model? Is this going to last?’” Cahill says.
Buyers accustomed to detailed product specifications and comparative data on every other purchase now expect the same when evaluating a home. When they encounter a system they don’t recognize, their instinct is to research it immediately, and when they turn to their agent for context, they welcome a credible answer.
Real estate home performance, which covers the efficiency of HVAC systems, the implications of ductwork sealing, the significance of attic insulation, and the difference between a well-sealed and a leaky building envelope, is not yet part of standard real estate licensing or continuing education. Agents are experts in transactions, not building science, and that is where the right tools make the difference.
“Buyers are already talking about home performance. They just don’t know what it’s called,” Cahill says. “And then they’re going to their agent and saying, ‘I saw that they had this in the house. What does that mean?’ So now the agent is expected to be a home performance expert. That’s a lot to ask, and it’s exactly what the right tools should take off their plate.”
Why Real Estate Home Performance Knowledge Gives Agents an Edge
When an agent can engage confidently with a performance question, the benefit extends well beyond that single exchange. A buyer who has already consulted ChatGPT about a water heater model and received a detailed response will appreciate an agent who can meet the same question at a knowledgeable level.
In the current market, where homes stay on the market longer and buyers have more time to be selective, an agent’s ability to help a client build conviction around a specific property carries more weight than it has in years, according to Cahill. A buyer whose agent engages confidently on performance questions is more likely to move forward with clarity and trust.
Cahill frames the issue as one of preparation. Agents don’t need to be building scientists. They simply need to participate in the conversations their clients are already having, and the tools now exist to help them do exactly that.
“Agents are expected to be in those conversations that are coming at them, whether they’re ready for it or not,” Cahill says.
What Buyers Want to Know, and How Agents Can Deliver
The performance questions buyers raise are increasingly specific. They want to know whether a solar system will meaningfully offset their utility costs or whether it’s undersized for the home. When a listing mentions updated or upgraded attic insulation, they want to know what that actually means: was it brought up to current code, or does it now exceed code and offer exceptional protection against the loss of conditioned air? They also want to know whether the ductwork has been sealed, whether the home has been tested for radon, and what the indoor air quality looks like, details that often go beyond what a standard home inspection captures.
These questions reward more than general real estate knowledge, and they represent exactly where an informed agent can add real value. Cahill says buyer awareness of home performance is increasing, driven partly by the availability of information that makes buyers more conscious of what they want to understand about a property before they commit.
An agent who can pull up a home performance profile, walk a client through what the data shows, and connect performance characteristics to the buyer’s priorities around safety, comfort, or the total cost of homeownership holds a clear advantage.
How Pearl Equips Agents to Close the Gap
Pearl’s response is a professional network and toolset designed to give agents the infrastructure to participate in performance conversations without becoming building scientists themselves.
The Pearl Recognized Professional program trains agents on how to use Pearl’s tools and how to have home performance conversations with both buying and selling clients. The Pearl App for Professionals functions as a lightweight CRM that allows agents to track clients, manage short lists of homes, pull Pearl SCORE™ Reports, and share performance data with buyers as they narrow their choices.
The app also enables side-by-side comparison of homes across Pearl’s five performance pillars (Safety, Comfort, Operations, Resilience, and Energy), a capability that complements standard MLS tools. According to Cahill, most MLS listings capture major features like a solar system, while Pearl adds the detail that determines actual impact: the system’s size, age, efficiency, or how much it offsets utility costs. When information on features related to water quality, indoor air quality, or how airtight a home is exists in the public domain, or when homeowners add details through Pearl’s Claim My Home feature, the report includes it. When it doesn’t, the report flags those items as data gaps and provides questions buyers and agents can ask the seller to learn whether features affecting those priorities are present.
Cahill positions this as filling a specific need. Pearl is not telling buyers which home is best for them, she says. That decision belongs to the buyer, their family, and their agent. Pearl provides the performance data so that decision can rest on more than a few photos, an address, a price, and ten minutes inside the property.
“Typically, a home buyer gets 30 minutes to walk through a house, or 10 at an open house, and then they have to make one of the biggest purchasing decisions of their life with less information than they get when they buy a car,” Cahill says. Pearl’s toolset helps close that information gap, giving agents a straightforward way to bring performance data into the workflows their clients already rely on.
For agents, the practical takeaway is encouraging: buyers are already asking performance questions on every type of home tour, and the agents who can answer them credibly, with data rather than guesswork, are best positioned to earn their clients’ trust through to closing. Their buyers, in turn, can bid on a home with greater confidence in how it will perform.
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.
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.
Disclosure: Individuals or companies mentioned may have a commercial relationship with KeyCrew.