Buildings account for one-sixth of the world’s fresh water withdrawals, one-quarter of its wood harvest, and two-fifths of its material and energy flows. Building ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ is an opportunity to use resources efficiently while creating healthier buildings that improve human health, build a better environment, and provide cost savings. This paper examines the selling of factory-built or industrialized homes equipped with solar photovoltaic (PV) electric power generating systems in Japan. Since the early 1990s, Japan has diligently pursued the market uptake of residential grid-connected PV systems through aggressive subsidy schemes, particularly those introduced in 1998 by the New Energy Foundation. The Japanese housing manufacturing industry has been at the forefront of these dissemination activities. In fact, residential PV systems were installed to 168,628 houses in Japan, in which the cumulative installed power capacity reached 622.8 MW at the end of 2003. Moreover, PV solar homes provide additional benefits by reducing CO2 emissions. It is expected that this PV market niche in Japan will continue to grow. This is in part because Japanese housing manufacturers developed their own systematic communication (or marketing) approach that helps to educate their clients to appreciate the distinguishing features of their high ‘cost-performance’ factory-built home, in which a variety of amenities, including PV systems today, are installed as standards rather than options. The author surveyed some leading housing manufacturers in Japan and found three principle communication approaches that the manufacturers use mainly during the marketing stage: advertising, educating and assuring. This paper aims to identify how Japanese housing manufacturers communicate the value of industrialized housing equipped with PV systems to their clients, who then come to appreciate high ‘cost-performance’ sustainable houses rather than cheaper conventional homes with lower energy performance.