In my last article I defined High Performance Homes; "A High Performance Homes is one that uses sustainable materials, is energy efficient, and uses value added green building practices that causes it to be friendlier to the environment." In the next few articles we will look at some of the materials and practices used to produce the High Performance Home.
Clearly identify the value and Return on Investment (ROI) for the green improvements you've made. Make sure a five year old can understand why they should pay more for this home. For example, show that the house may have 200-300 dollars in energy savings when it comes to a typical outdated mammoth down the street. This could add up to 2,000 in savings per year. Make sure your Realtor has the skills to present this data and sell the value. Make a video explaining all the benefits of owning this home and offer resources like links or magazines for the buyers to get more education about the features that your homes has to offer.
Many of the others in our band of Fairbanks long-hairs also had tiny Sustainable Homes. Denny's brother built a multi-level tree house. John Hartle built a small geodesic dome on our 10 acres. I believe he paid us rent at some point. Michael lived just down from him in a three-story plywood-sided box. It was very unfinished. He eventually bought the lower 5 acres.
Charlotte Home Prices The average price per square foot fell 12.1% for the region, considerably higher than the Case-Shiller number cited above. There was quite a spread, the lowest price fall came in the 75K-$200K range at 6.27%. Not surprisingly, the higher price ranges, the $500k-$1M, and the over$1M category fell 9.8 and 9.3%. I say not surprisingly because of the high inventory levels- maybe I should be surprised that house values didn't fall further in these upper price ranges, and indeed they still may have a ways to go. Continuing high inventories suggest prices here will fall further, a 56 month inventory is not sustainable.
We are in a buyer's market. This means that buyers will most likely get their way. They can negotiate for a better value. The sellers would be willing to listen to your request and would even add freebies and gifts to encourage you to purchase.
The next eight weeks were an exhilarating, sometimes mind boggling adventure. A builder had been contracted for the foundation and was kept for two weeks to do the heavy lifting. We found we could only build the metal grid so high before it started leaning in with our weight. The builder was convinced we needed to build a complex and expensive wooden scaffolding system around the interior but we chose to rent a three tier scaffold. We experimented with tying 60' of rebar together, using the scaffold to hoist it up with rope, and started securing hoops. Once we had eight hoops up we used the bender bars to create circles of bar that we tied to our hoops and like a marvelous bowl shaped web we created a self supporting structure.
Landscaping within the property is all green. If you look at the property, you can be relieved of your stresses. Most of the plants and trees around the home are planted with a special reason. Not only it is there to de-stress your life but it is also there to improve air quality and to lessen the cost of ecoomical energy consumed.