Pearl announced completion of the Pearl Home Performance Registry, the first comprehensive performance database of America’s single-family housing stock. Every one of the nation’s 92 million single-family homes has been modeled and assigned a Pearl SCORE—a 1 to 1,000 rating that quantifies how well each home performs across five universal factors of home life that are too often overlooked.
Real estate transactions traditionally focus on price, location, and aesthetics. Home performance measures something different: how well the physical structure protects health, maintains comfort, controls operating costs, withstands stress, manages energy, and holds its value. It’s the difference between how a home looks and how a home works for its occupants. While these factors are essential, home buyers can’t compare them, homeowners can’t showcase them, real estate agents can’t easily communicate them, and appraisers rarely know how to value them — until now.
“Real estate is built on information asymmetry — sellers know more than buyers, and both know far less than they should about how the home actually performs,” said Cynthia Adams, CEO and Co-Founder of Pearl. “Every party in a transaction, including the lender, is making decisions with incomplete information about the single largest investment most people will ever make. Pearl SCORE™ changes that.”
Building the benchmark: Assembling America’s first home performance registry
The U.S. housing market has never had a standardized way to capture performance data—public records, energy disclosures, and building permits are fragmented, inconsistent, and often outdated. Pearl SCORE was developed by a team of nationally recognized experts in building science, computational modeling, real estate, and consumer behavior to solve that problem.
“The building science behind the scoring was certainly a challenge — but equally challenging was assembling usable data across 92 million properties,” said Robin LeBaron, President and Co-Founder of Pearl. “Public records are fragmented and outdated. We’ve had to establish datasets where none existed and reconcile sources that were never designed to work together. That infrastructure is what makes Pearl SCORE possible.”
Pearl has modeled each home using hundreds of data points per property, creating what amounts to a digital twin for every single-family property in America. Initial validation studies have confirmed that Pearl’s data-driven assessments perform within the same range of accuracy as models based on site-observed data. Additional research has demonstrated that Pearl’s operating cost data can predict mortgage performance — indicating that home performance is not just about comfort and efficiency, but also improves transparency in financial transactions as well.
Pearl’s development has been supported by partnerships with leading industry organizations, including the U.S. Department of Energy, National Association of Realtors, Real Estate Standards Organization (RESO), Appraisal Institute, National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), RESNET, and ENERGY STAR.
What Pearl SCORE measures
Pearl SCORE uses a 1 to 1,000 scale, with most of America’s housing stock scoring in the 300s — what Pearl defines as the “typical” range — reflecting the age, construction standards, and efficiency characteristics of homes built over the past century.
Pearl has translated complex building science into five measurable pillars that are not only technically accurate but also easy to understand and remember. Together, they spell SCORE—a framework that captures the universal touchpoints of home life, the common ground between what experts measure and what people feel every day:
- Safety — Protection against health hazards, including mold, radon, carbon monoxide, and poor air quality.
- Comfort — Temperature consistency, humidity control, and dampening of outside noise and light.
- Operations — Operating costs, maintenance, and efficiency of appliances, water use, and heating & cooling systems.
- Resilience — Preparedness for extreme weather, climate stress, natural disasters, and operational disruptions.
- Energy — EV readiness, smart device integration, and the ability to generate, store, and manage energy effectively.
Real estate market implications
“Every home in America now has a performance profile that didn’t exist six months ago,” said Tim Stanislaus, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Pearl. “That changes the fundamental information architecture of residential real estate. Buyers and agents can now evaluate homes on how they actually perform — not just how they look.”
Pearl SCORE empowers informed decision-making by revealing a home’s true operating costs, safety risks, and comfort levels before purchase. Buyers can compare properties objectively, inquire based on performance data, and avoid costly surprises after closing. Sellers can better understand what buyers are looking for and then showcase their homes and prepare them for sale with more relevance.
“More buyers today want to understand what’s behind the walls — how the home actually works and what it costs to operate,” said N. Carol Kibbee, Realtor at Coldwell Banker Realty and director of the Well-Dwelling Experts Network in Cincinnati. “Pearl SCORE gives them a way to compare homes based on what really matters: comfort, safety, and cost of ownership.”
Homeowners who have invested in high-performance features—from solar panels to advanced insulation to smart home systems—can now capture the full value of those improvements.
“Public property records are often incomplete and outdated,” said Craig Foley of LAER Realty Partners in Boston, who serves on the National Association of REALTORS Executive Committee. “Pearl SCORE allows homeowners to correct the record, capture upgrades, and showcase their homes’ true worth.”
“Sellers need to be better prepared to address performance,” said Christopher Matos-Rogers, Matos-Rogers Group with Coldwell Banker Realty, Atlanta. “More buyers today are asking about home performance, yet most listing agents struggle to talk about it or demonstrate it. Pearl SCORE helps on both counts — it gives us a credible way to explain a home’s strengths and a simple visual to show them.”
Explore Pearl SCORE
Pearl has opened Pearl Home Performance Registry to the public in beta release while continuing to refine data sources and expand functionality. Anyone can now view the performance profile of any single-family home in America. Homeowners can see what public records indicate about their property — and correct or enhance that information through Pearl’s verification process.
Through this beta release, Pearl is letting people see what’s being created and contribute feedback in real time. The beta release marks the first step in Pearl’s mission to make home performance matter at every stage of ownership. In 2026, Pearl will introduce a suite of consumer tools to help people put Pearl SCORE to work when buying, selling, or upgrading a home — including verification features, improvement planning, and value-tracking resources.
To explore Pearl SCORE, simply enter the address of any U.S. single-family home at pearlscore.com.
