Most buyers inspecting a home still make quick, instinctive judgements about comfort – whether it feels cool on a warm afternoon, how far the heating has to work in winter or how much natural light reaches the main living areas.
Those impressions matter more than people realise and, increasingly, are starting to show up in sale prices.
In my experience, apartment buildings have genuine structural advantages here.
Concrete has strong thermal mass properties, helping buildings resist rapid temperature swings between day and night, and across seasons.
Paired with modern double glazing and the simple geometry of a multi-storey building – where each dwelling shares walls, floors and ceilings with its neighbours, rather than facing the elements on all sides – apartments are often better placed than a standalone house to maintain a stable internal temperature without heavy reliance on mechanical heating and cooling.
That design advantage is increasingly reflected in property values. A joint report from Cotality and the Real Estate Institute of Australia, The Efficiency Edge, found each additional Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme star – the national scale used to measure a home’s thermal performance – is associated with an average 1.3 per cent increase in property value nationally, while homes with solar panels sold for about 2.7 per cent more than comparable properties without.
Separately, 86 per cent of Australians surveyed said it was important to see a home’s energy rating when buying.
The report highlighted a real example in a three-bedroom Mount Hawthorn property designed around natural light, cross ventilation and passive-solar principles.
The house sold for about 14-24 per cent above comparable homes in the area, according to the report, and has since been rented for around 32 per cent above the local median.
The agent involved noted most buyers were not using technical language about energy efficiency. They simply wanted a home that felt comfortable and cost less to run, and were willing to pay for it.
The same principle scales further in multi-residential buildings, where design and construction decisions made once can benefit dozens of dwellings, rather than a single home.
As temperatures climb heading into summer, that search for comfort becomes harder to ignore.
Buyers and renters are increasingly asking the right questions, even without the formal language to describe what they are looking for.
Apartments built with genuine attention to thermal performance stand to benefit from this shift – not because of clever marketing but because the underlying design is already doing the work.