EFFICIENCY MANITOBA CONT.
and watching their choices come to fruition during the final EnerGuide assessment,” she adds. Another advantage of enrolling in the New Homes Program is that it automatically qualifies homeowners to receive a 25 per cent rebate on their mortgage insurance premiums. Lund says those rebates range between $5,000 and $7,000 for most homeowners.
rebate a homeowner will receive through the New Homes Program, says Lund. The program requires a final performance of 25 per cent or better than a comparable reference house that is built to minimum code performance levels. That means that a home that performs 25 per cent better than the reference house will receive the $2,000 minimum while a home that has a net-zero energy rating will receive the $15,000 maximum. The rebate is generally paid to the homeowner or their builder within three weeks of the assessment being completed. “I think the New Homes Program is probably the easiest way for builders or their customers to access EnerGuide for new homes. Because we require the EnerGuide audit, we make the connection between the energy advisor, the energy organi- zation and the builder or customer,” Lund says. Lund estimates that about 10 per cent of new homes built in Manitoba come through the New Homes Program and interest in the program has recently increased, a fact she attributes in part to the new set of building codes that were adopted in the province in January 2024. “When I talk with new homeowners, one of the most common messages I hear is how beneficial it was to have access to the data about how their home would perform
“With EnerGuide, it’s less about esthetic choices and more about real empirical data and making an informed decision about what you want in your home,” Lund says. Of course, there is a cost to getting your home EnerGuide labelled. The good news is that Efficiency Manitoba, a provincial Crown corporation, has a program that can help make the process a little more affordable for new homebuyers. The New Homes Program provides a rebate on the costs of working with an energy advisor as well as a perfor- mance-based rebate of between $2,000 and $15,000 per home that is paid to the homebuyer or their builder. One of the requirements of the program is that a home must be EnerGuide labelled. As part of the New Homes Program, Efficiency Manitoba connects home- buyers and their builders with an independent energy advisor who works with them through the design phase to improve the energy effi- ciency of their new home. Once construction is complete, an on-site assessment is conducted that includes a blower door test, a type of diagnostic tool that measures how well your new home is sealed against air leaks. The assessment will help determine the amount of the performance-based
The New Homes Program provides a rebate on the costs of working with an energy advisor as well as a performance- based rebate of between $2,000 and $15,000 per home that is paid to the homebuyer or their builder.
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60 PARADE of HOMES SPRING 2025
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