housing

All real estate news isn't bad, however. With challenge comes great opportunity, and more and more builders, designers, real estate agents and homeowners are discovering that going green can help them get a leg up in tough times, as well as substantially decrease our environmental footprints, from carbon emissions to water and land use.

I know, I know, its an old watered down topic but I gotta talk about it because there is some interesting and unusual ideas presented in this article. Smartly titled as Inconvenient Truths, the article presents Wired’s take on the climate crisis.

A new trend is beginning ... the concept of a living green roof. While its mostly used in commercial properties at the moment, it does show promise, and hopefully will migrate to residential properties as well. Very interesting!

A farm that has transformed into a sustainable community. Residents must help out on the farm and have strict guidelines on how to build their homes. All homes are run by solar panel's and battery backup.

I ran across something interesting this morning regarding a declining housing market, mortgage turmoil, and building "green". It appears that Countrywide Home Loans is trying to do their part to help correct this downturn in the housing market, as well as do something for the environment. Countrywide Home Loans is offering a .125% decrease in the interest rate on the purchase of a "green home".

The Boston Globe has a great article on how ecology and economy are driving Cohousing to grow as a movement.

It's clear that going green is becoming increasingly attractive to home buyers and sellers. But without having degrees in architecture, design and sustainability, how do consumers know the difference between inflated claims, over hyped language and the real deal in terms of energy efficiency, healthy indoor air quality and truly green materials? That's where new green labels come in.

Would you live in a house made of empty beer cans, old tires and discarded soda bottles? Garbage like this is what renegade architect Michael Reynolds transforms into "earthships" -- eco-friendly homes with surprisingly pleasing aesthetics and tiny (or nonexistent) power bills.

Student leader Tylor Middlestadt recounts how Empower Poly (San Luis Obispo, CA) is bringing students to the table--with staff,faculty, and local communities -- to shape a greener future. Students successfully pushed for environmentally-friendly designfor the nation's largest student housing project. Inspired by the UC Go Solar campaign, students formed Renew CSU to advocaterenewable energy projects on campuses statewide.

Rotterdam designer Reinier de Jong takes the standard suburban typology, the two storey house with a garden, and stacks them on top of each other, "so we will diminish the suburban sprawl that is swallowing up our precious land."

Call it the 'Al Gore Factor' or the 'George Bush Effect', but there are several reasons behind the renewed interest in the energy-efficient, low-impact buildings -- ranging from dramatic footage of melting icecaps to rising oil and gas prices, to the United States' dependency on energy sources from unstable regions of the world. There is now little disagreement that the U.S. needs to curb its appetite for fossil fuels in the years to come.

Going green is for the rich

"Do you have Brazilian teakwood floors in your luxury home? How about Brazilian cherry cabinets? Any Brazilian mahogany items? Well, I certainly hope you are enjoying them. They might have come to you at a huge cost… well beyond what you paid for them."

Energy experts tout Solara as being the largest energy efficient -- and affordable -- housing project in southern California, if not the United States. The apartment complex represents the merger of two building trends: the desire to design eco-friendly homes, and states creating financial incentives for energy conservation.

Video presentation of a talk by activist Majora Carter at the 2005 TED conference, on the role of sustainable development and green business in the revitalization of New York City's South Bronx. Carter, who was awarded a 2005 MacArthur "genius" grant, now serves as executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, where she pushes both for eco-friendly practices (such as green and cool roofs) and, equally important, job training and green-related economic development for her vibrant neighborhood on the rise.