Installing a heat pump might increase the value of your home

If you have a heat pump (a single system that both heats and cools a home using electricity, more efficiently than a gas furnace) mentioning it in your listing when you sell could pay off. A new report from the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative, the customer-data firm 257, and the National Association of Realtors looked at more than half a million U.S. home sales from 2024 to 2025. Listings that mentioned a home's heat pump sold for 0.6% to 1% more than similar homes that didn't advertise one — about $2,300 to $3,900, based on a median sales price of $399,000. A ducted heat-pump system costs around $15,400 on average to install, so that price bump could recoup roughly 15% to 25% of the cost.

An earlier, differently designed study from 2020 found an even bigger premium — 4% to 7%, or $10,400 to $17,000 — by comparing the same homes' sale prices before and after a heat pump was added. The two studies asked different questions, but both point the same way: buyers are willing to pay more for a home with a heat pump already in place.

The catch is that most sellers aren't getting credit for it. The report found heat pumps were mentioned in listings only 8% of the time, even though buyers increasingly ask about energy-efficient features to help control utility bills. More than half the real estate agents surveyed said they weren't confident explaining what a heat pump does or why it matters, which may be part of why the appliance so often goes unmentioned.