Home of the Future Arrives Today at KB Home

Imagine a home that can save nearly 50,000 gallons of water a year, has an electric bill that could be next to nothing and can be monitored and controlled from your iPhone. No need to just imagine this home of the future, you can now purchase one of your very own in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. KB Home (NYSE: KBH), one of the nation’s premier homebuilders, has just announced the opening of its first ZeroHouse 2.0 at its Middletown Woods community in Waldorf, Maryland, as well as its plans to offer the net-zero energy home option at all of its Washington, D.C.-area communities.

KB Home’s new ZeroHouse 2.0 model home opens to the public for tours this Saturday, June 23. In addition to being designed as a net-zero energy home, the home is ENERGY STAR qualified and WaterSense labeled. By combining an efficient building envelope, energy-conserving lighting, appliances and fixtures with a renewable energy source in the form of solar power system, the home is designed to produce as much energy as it consumes, allowing for a homeowner’s electric bill to be nearly zero. As such, it is estimated to save homeowners’ nearly $6,000 in energy costs annually, when compared to a typical resale home.

“Homebuyers now expect a new home to be energy efficient, and we believe that they will increasingly demand a net-zero energy home over the next 10 or 20 years. KB Home is making this heightened level of energy efficiency an option for our buyers who are ready for this kind of future, today,” said Vince DePorre, regional president for KB Home. “Energy efficiency features make good sense for our homebuyers as well as the environment and we’re proud to lead the way in our industry by introducing more options for our buyers to increase the efficiency of their new Built to Order homes.”

KB Home is also sharing its forward-thinking approach and methods with area students who intend to join the construction workforce. On Wednesday, June 20, a group of students from North American Trade Schools will visit Middletown Woods for a special advance look at the ZeroHouse 2.0. They will receive a tour of the home as well as a brief presentation from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy officials. Students will also have the chance to don hardhats and participate in a pre-drywall orientation walk of a new KB home under construction.

Wednesday’s event will mark the first time that many of the students have set foot on an active construction jobsite. They are all part of the trade school’s 39-week Building Construction Technique program that prepares students for work in the residential construction and remodeling field by combining classroom and lab work with hands-on training opportunities and exposure to real-world applications like the KB Home ZeroHouse 2.0 and construction site tour.

“I’m thrilled these students are getting the chance to see a great example of advanced building and construction techniques applied to a production home at KB Home’s ZeroHouse 2.0. It is encouraging to see a new generation being exposed to and embracing energy efficiency, something for which I have been an advocate much of my career,” said Sam Rashkin, Chief Architect for U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Program.

For more information about KB Home and its communities in the Washington, D.C. area, visit kbhome.com or call 888-KB-HOMES.

About KB Home

KB Home is one of the largest and most recognized homebuilding companies in the United States. Since its founding in 1957, the company has built more than half a million quality homes. KB Home’s signature Built to Order™ approach lets each buyer customize their new home from lot location to floor plan and design features. In addition to meeting strict ENERGY STAR^® guidelines, all KB homes are highly energy efficient to help lower monthly utility costs for homeowners, which the company demonstrates with its proprietary KB Home Energy Performance Guide™ (EPG). A leader in utilizing state-of-the-art sustainable building practices, KB Home was named the #1 Green Homebuilder in a 2010 study by Calvert Investments and the #1 Homebuilder on FORTUNE magazine’s 2011 World’s Most Admired Companies list. Los Angeles-based KB Home was the first homebuilder listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and trades under the ticker symbol “KBH.” For more information about KB Home’s new home communities, call 888-KB-HOMES or visit www.kbhome.com.