Empirical evidence from recent studies suggests that the price premium on energy-efficient buildings is
potentially higher than the pure capitalisation of energy savings but the empirical evidence on the size of
the non-savings components is scant. This study aims to fill this research gap by investigating whether
the mandatory energy efficiency ratings for residential properties imply benefits that go beyond energy
savings. Using a sample of several thousand apartment transactions from Helsinki, Finland, we first test if
higher ratings were significantly associated with higher prices. In addition to a large number of property
and neighbourhood characteristics, this dataset contains information on building-level energy usage
which allows us to distinguish between the cost savings effect of energy consumption and the value of
more intangible factors associated with the energy label. The hedonic model yields a statistically significant
3.3% price premium for apartments in the top three energy-efficiency categories and 1.5% when a
set of detailed neighbourhood characteristics are included. When maintenance costs containing energy
usage costs are added, a robust and significant price premium of 1.3% persists whereas no differentiation
is found for the medium and lower rating categories. These findings may be indicative of energy-efficient
buildings having signalling value – and therefore an additional incentive to invest in such buildings – for
‘green’ consumers. However, a favourable energy rating did not appear to speed up the sales process in
the analysed market.