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"Green" building is a hard sell in residential construction and housing sales.

The advantages of a properly sited, well-built home accrue over time in energy and water savings, and the costs of both are predicted to rise dramatically in the coming years.

Developers make their money, however, by turning over their product quickly. The average Tucson home buyer moves every five years and might balk at over-investing in features that pay off over time.

The trick is finding a level of green building that doesn't cost all that much, produces easily quantified savings and earns fee waivers for builders and tax credits for buyers. It works for hybrid cars, proponents say, why not for houses?

First, though, we need more good examples, said Leslie Liberti, director of the city of Tucson's Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development.

Places such as Civano and Armory Park del Sol demonstrate that there is a market for highly efficient, green homes, but it's at the high end of things, she said.

When builder John Wesley Miller received an award from the governor recently for his second "zero-carbon" home in Armory Park del Sol, one of the messages sent was that building green is a very expensive enterprise. The home cost $775,000.

"It was regrettable that those things happened in this context," said Yves Khawam, Pima County's chief building code official, who attributed much of the home's cost to its site. "The house straddled two lots in a very expensive location," he said.

Miller said he spared no expense in the home because he wanted to ensure that it generated more electricity from its solar panels than it used in its operation.

Miller is now working with the National Home Builders Association to develop standards for green residential building. Miller said the association will roll out its new code in February.

It won't produce the level of green home he is building in Armory Park del Sol, he said, but it will be a vast improvement, and "it will have teeth in the certification process."

Miller is one of a group of builders currently proposing to build 300 green homes with solar panels on city land Downtown. He said 25 percent of the homes, to be built by Habitat for Humanity and Chicanos Por La Causa, would be "affordable" by government standards.

It would attack the phenomenon that places the poorest people in the least efficient homes and saddles them with the highest energy bills, Miller said.

Khawam, meanwhile, is working with the city of Tucson and with the Southern Arizona arm of the home builders to develop a green building program for Pima County.

Getting the philosophy of green building into production housing holds promise, said Khawam. If you move green building techniques and materials into mass production, you create markets and lower prices, he said.

And you can do it more cheaply than you think with careful planning, he said.

"If you take what is otherwise a conventional structure, then say 'how do I turn this into a green building,' you add expense," he said. "If you wipe the slate clean, start with nothing, you can come out with a product that costs less."

Studies done in Tucson on production building have shown that you can gain 50 percent in energy efficiency with a 2 percent increase in price, Khawam said.

Ultimately, said Khawam, green principles will find their way into the building codes. "Codes in general have prohibited a lot of sustainable practices. We're trying to move from a proscriptive-based to a performance-based code."

The building code has been ramping up the requirements for energy efficiency every three years when it is updated, said Khawam.

Green building goes a few steps beyond energy savings, using materials and techniques that are more environmentally friendly and reducing waste.

Rich Michal, a Tucson green building consultant, said Pulte Homes had good results when it experimented with green production housing in Las Vegas. Its customers were willing to pay a premium and were satisfied with the product. The company received fewer warranty callbacks.

"The profit margins were higher," Michal recently told a green-building seminar hosted by the planning program of the University of Arizona.

Khawam said green practices will ultimately become part of the building code.

For now, regulators need to encourage green building by offering education, marketing, expedited plan review and other incentives, he said.