FAYETTEVILLE — Prospective buyers have a new tool to help them find energy efficient homes.

The Arkansas Regional MLS that includes 9,800 real estate listings in Northwest Arkansas, southern Missouri and northeast Oklahoma, now features a range of “green” criteria.

More than 1,750 real estate agents use the multiple listing service to find properties that meet their clients’ needs, according to Tina Gaston, regional service administrator.

Agents and prospective homebuyers for years have been able to search online for all three-bedroom, two-bathroom homes in Bentonville listed between $200,000 and $250,000, for example.

But there hasn’t been an easy way to figure out if different properties are Energy Star qualified, have programmable thermostats, low-flow shower heads or other green features.

The information might be included in the technical description of a property, but it’s often not available to the public and cannot be easily searched by real estate agents.

“You have to literally go through the list,” said Rachel Harr, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Harris McHaney & Faucette. “It can be really time consuming. There’s no way to pull out energy-efficient homes or homes that are off the grid.”

Todd Jacobs, a partner with Fayetteville-based Jacobs + Newell Co., said the highly efficient insulation and ventilation systems his company puts in houses it builds might add $15,000 to the sticker price. Some customers just see that added cost without considering the money they could save long-term on utility bills, he said.

“With some of this stuff, you really can’t tell the difference if you’re just looking at two houses side by side,” Jacobs said. “It costs a little bit more to build an efficient house, and, if it doesn’t show up in appraisals, there’s not a lot of incentive to buy green houses unless it’s your pet peeve or passion.”

The new criteria could help real estate agents understand that trade-off and communicate it to their customers.

“This will allow people who are more conscious about energy-efficient homes to be able to search and find those homes,” said Doyle Yates, past president of the Arkansas Realtors Association and a member of the Arkansas Regional MLS committee. “Consumers have been asking for copies of utility bills for ages. This will give them a better qualifier than just utility bills.”

Yates said five new fields were added to the website where real estate agents input information about properties they have listed. Yates said it will take some time to fully implement the system and have the changes appear on other websites.

Yates and Gaston said agents need to be trained to fully understand the dozens of green features and how they could affect buyers’ bills. Through the new criteria, “R values” for ceilings, floors and walls could be listed, for example. An R value measures a material’s resistance to heat flow. A higher R value signifies more efficient insulation.

“New things take a while to catch on in the real estate community,” Gaston said. “As we get training, it will catch more.”

“I only see this as being a positive for our MLS system,” Gaston added. “It’s obvious that this is the way the world is going.”

Members of the Fayetteville Forward Green Economy Group, a collection of real estate agents, bankers, builders and home energy auditors, plan to provide training beginning next month.

The group has been working with the Regional MLS for about two years to implement the new criteria. Group volunteers donated the money to upgrade the service’s software, said Angela Wisely, group facilitator.

Wisely said they developed the set of green features based on what other cities, such as Austin, Texas, have done.

According to the National Association of Realtors’ Green Resource Council, more than 25 cities, counties and states have made similar adjustments to their multiple listing services.

Wisely emphasized the new criteria are completely optional.

“If you as a Realtor — that’s not your market — you don’t have to use these features,” Wisely said. “It’s not being imposed on you.”

Mark Zweig, who designs, builds and renovates houses in Fayetteville, said the adjustments to the listing service probably won’t have a big impact on his company, because he does a lot of custom work for individuals and receives most of his business through word of mouth.

Zweig added, “It’s good to see people care about something other than just trying to maximize their square footage.”

“The majority of buyers pretty much have used the Internet exclusively as their pre-screening tool,” he said. “To a great extent, they’ve pretty much decided what they want. Maybe this is a good tool that will help people make some better decisions.”