If you're serious about purchasing an energy-efficient house -- and surveys indicate that more and more people are -- you'll want to download a copy of the Checklist for Home Energy Efficient Attributes.

Produced by the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP), a regional nonprofit started a decade ago to accelerate energy efficiency in the building sector, the checklist is part of a suite of resources the group is building to assist buyers, renters, appraisers and realty agents in working with energy efficiency.

It is meant to allow real estate professionals to make "a fairly quick assessment" of a home's efficiency. But there's absolutely no reason a would-be homebuyer can't use it to do the same.

The list is organized into seven categories: lighting, appliances, HVAC, water usage, building envelope, fenestration and third-party evaluation. For those who want efficiency but have no clue about the terminology, it also has a glossary of energy efficiency terms.

You can find the checklist at NEEP's website: www.neep.org. Search for it, and then click on the big green dot.

Meanwhile, here's a sampling of what homebuyers should look for:

-- LIGHTING. Compact fluorescent bulbs use 25 percent of the electricity used by a standard incandescent bulb of the equivalent brightness. And light-emitting diodes use only 10 percent.

Of course, you can change the bulbs once you move in. But you can't change whether the home you like has natural lighting.

Here you want large, south-facing windows with large overhangs, which can keep the sun's rays out in the summer and allow them in during the winter when the sun is lower in the sky. Deciduous trees, which have a full complement of leaves in the summer but shed them in the winter, work the same way.

-- APPLIANCES. Energy Star-certified appliances are designed to save energy without sacrificing performance. A certified refrigerator is 9 to 10 percent more efficient than federal standards, dishwashers 10 percent more efficient, dryers use 20 percent less energy, and washing machines use 20 percent less energy and 35 percent less water.

These, too, can be changed out once you move in, but that is a much more expensive proposition.

-- HEATING AND AIR CONDITIONING. The yellow label attached to the HVAC system -- the "V" stands for ventilation -- will tell you how efficient the system is and give you an idea of the cost to operate it on an annual basis.

Also look for a programmable thermostat and sealed and insulated ductwork. Operated properly, a programmable thermostat can save about 10 percent on your heating and cooling bills. But unsealed or uninsulated ducts can lead to an energy loss of up to 20 percent.

-- WATER. If there is a hot-water system that heats water on demand rather than a whole tank 24 hours a day, it should be certified. Again, look for the yellow label.

Other things to look for include insulation on hot water pipes and water tanks, and low-flow faucets, showerheads and toilets.

-- ENVELOPE. Check for insulation and sealing around windows, doors and any other places that enter or exit the house, such as pipes and wires. The proper sealing and insulation can cut your total energy costs by a whopping 30 percent -- and increase your comfort.

-- FENESTRATION. Known to regular folk as windows, doors and skylights. You want to look for high-performance windows, hopefully those with a coating that reflects radiant heat. Doors should be weather-stripped properly.

-- EVALUATIONS. Many utilities and private entities offer free or inexpensive energy audits that will tell you where the house falls short and make recommendations for improvements. Some utilities also offer rebates for energy-efficient appliances and other items.

New companies and new technologies are continuously breaking ground in the housing sector. Even "old" real estate science is getting better and better.

Here's a look, in no particular order, at some of the fresh and promising tech ideas that have entered the space recently, or are about to.

-- BoostUp. This free social savings platform helps people save for a downpayment by offering a dollar-for-dollar match on their savings from brand-name partners such as Quicken Loans, as well as from family and friends. Hence the name "Boost."

Savers create an account, set a goal and automate deposits to reach that goal through responsible savings.

-- HomeTrackr. Some 40 percent of all houses have serious issues. This free service aims to tell would-be buyers about them.

While there is loads of information available about houses, it is largely scattered about and driven by advertising dollars through listing sites. This site, which hopes to become the "Voice of the Home Buyer," provides critical, property-specific data that can make or break a sale -- but only if the buyer knows about it.

-- Solo. Want to go it alone, but need some help? This community platform will connect you to agents who offer specific unbundled services -- writing up a contract, for example, or building a comparative market analysis -- for a small fee.

Most buyers use all the services agents have to offer, or none at all. But one size does not fit all. Agents aligned with this site offer their services on an a la carte basis, so you can customize the level of services you need. And you save up to half the commission in the process.

-- Sindeo. Claiming that the mortgage marketplace is broken, antiquated and inefficient, this service has a lofty goal: to become the trusted place where buyers can plan, shop, qualify for and close their loans, and receive expert, unbiased service along the way.

This site takes buyers through a four-step process, including helping you come up with a personal plan to afford your first or next house, and guiding you every step of the way until the loan is funded. Rookies will learn about first-time buyer programs such as downpayment assistance, and receive a personalized action plan to improve their eligibility for financing.

-- Homes. A long-running online search destination with some 3 million property listings, this site has added a "School Search" feature that allows purchasers to make more informed decisions by determining the caliber of schools in their search area.

The technology is calculated from state test data for public schools and assigns a letter grade, from A+ to D, based on their performance.

To determine the ranking, state test scores from one school are compared to those of other schools in the same state with the same education level.

-- Automatic. This $100 accessory plugs into any automobile made after 1996 and allows you to sync it to your iPhone or Android device. It then becomes an app store for your car, offering 20 functions so far, including home automation.

It will link to your Nest app, for example, so that when you turn on your car when you leave work, it will tell your house to be at the right temperature when you arrive 30 minutes later. Or warn you that you forgot to close the garage door when you headed out for the day.

Futuristic stuff.

-- EMTransfer. Set to launch this month, this site intends to facilitate the electronic collection and deposit of your earnest money, and track it online so you will know that your agent or builder isn't dipping into the cookie jar illegally.

-- ReaLync. This is a web/mobile platform that facilitates virtual tours and pre-recorded videos so you can see and hear about specific houses at your leisure, at any time and from anywhere.

At this site, you can interact live, capture photos, view local details and send messages. Better yet, all tours are automatically saved in the cloud so you can watch them again and again and share them with friends and family.

If that real estate agent you're considering listing your house with brags about having dozens of listings from other clients, you may want to consider someone else.

Agents who are "working" more than, say, six listings at one time are not as productive as those who have less than a half-dozen in their back pockets, according to new research.

"Greater agent inventory is associated with a slightly lower price and a significantly higher time on (the) market," according to the study by three faculty members at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, who were joined in the research by a colleague at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

Agents tend to prefer having a lot of listings: The more listings, the greater the probability of nabbing a commission. Their brokers, the guys who pay agents their share of the deal, like them, too: Not only does it make the company appear larger and more successful, it also means the broker will earn a fee even if the house is sold by an agent from another firm.

Indeed, brokers like listings so much that they encourage their agents to secure a seller's name on the dotted line by offering higher commission splits to the company's largest listers.

But the recent study published in the Journal of Housing Economics -- "How Many Listings Are Too Many?" by Xun Bian, Bennie Waller and Scott Wentland of Longwood and Geoffrey Turnbull of UCF -- found that additional listings place greater claims on an agent's time and energy. That, in turn, has "adverse sales performance consequences" for the client.

Most sellers want to sell at the highest possible price and as quickly as they can. But if you're just one of your agent's many sellers, you're all competing not only for buyers, but also for your agent's time and effort. And all of you are likely to become disenchanted if your expectations are not met.

One reason for sellers' disappointment is that most people neither understand nor appreciate the logistics required in selling a property, from the time a house is listed all the way through closing. That's understandable. After all, how many times in your life do you sell a house?

But sellers also fail to realize that the burden placed on agents to do their jobs increases exponentially with each additional listing.

Previous research has also found that more listings dilute agents' efforts and increase their focus on higher-priced properties. But the Longwood/UCF study goes further by actually putting the situation into numbers consumers can easily understand.

To do that, the researchers studied more than 21,000 properties listed on an unspecified Virginia multiple listing service that were sold during a 10-year period (from April 1999 to June 2009). The typical house in the sample -- 26 years old with three bedrooms and two baths -- was listed at $173,600 and was sold for $168,100. It was on the market for an average of 111 days.

Here's what the four researchers found: When an agent had nine listings, the average sales price for his or her "inventory" was only slightly below the baseline average -- not even 1 percent -- and marketing time was nearly 14 percent longer.

That works out to a $1,000 lower selling price and an extra 15 days on the market. Not terrible.

But when the listing agent represents a "very high" number of sellers -- 15 or more -- his or her typical selling price is 3 percent less and the property remains on the market for 129 percent longer than the average.

Numerically, that's more than $5,000 less than agents with more modest inventories get for their buyers. And it takes 142 days -- a month longer -- to find a buyer as opposed to 111 days for the average listing in the study.

That's significant, the study says: "While the impact on price is modest, the effect of agent inventory on liquidity is substantial." And it's true even though agents with a high number of listings represented just 10 percent of the sample.

The conclusion: "There is a relationship between agent inventory and (the) sales outcomes that sellers care most about -- selling price and time-on-market."

"The results are striking," the study continues. "Agents representing 15 or more listings may be trying to represent too many clients at one time, resulting in a substantially larger marketing duration and an important source of illiquidity for numerous homes in this market. ...

"Greater inventory diverts selling effort. ... resulting in longer time-on-market for all houses in the inventory."