Energy Star homes fail to resell at a premium.

• Position: Housing Market - Energy-efficient homes

Consumers pay extra for an Energy Star home, expecting its greater energy efficiency will save money. They apparently plan to recoup the extra cost of purchase by passing it along to the next owner--except they do not, asserts Carmen Flores, an environmental economist at Binghamton (N.Y.) University. "People who pay a premium expect increased value. Developers are selling houses at a premium but, when I analyze the repeat sale, the owners are not selling at a premium."

Flores, in collaboration with researchers from Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, looked at home sales in Gainesville, Fla., from 1997-2009. She corrected for differing neighborhoods, arm's-length transactions, house layout, and the collapse of the housing market in 2008. The numbers tell a very real story: within five years, owners no longer recoup the extra cost to buy Energy Star's efficiencies.

Flores has several hypotheses as to why:

* The Federal Energy Star program did not keep up with local building codes. In the first years of the study, Energy Star homes were 20% more energy-efficient than houses built simply to code but, by the last years, local code had become more stringent, and Energy Star homes only were 13% more efficient. That makes the Energy Star home's value difficult to compare.

* Owners do not...