Three easy care house plant that take out toxins

One of the things you can do to improve your indoor air quality is to improve it through house plants.

Spider plants make great house plants and it has long been known to clean the air.  They are easy to start and share too.  They make new plants like strawberries do.  They send a shoot with a baby plant attached.  They  filter Formaldehyde ammonia, xylene and Tolune for the air.

The Peace lily is a very tolerant plant and it is beautiful when it blooms.  This plant takes out the following toxins: benzene, formadahyde, xylene and ammonia.

The snake plant does not need much but it gives a lot by passively absorbing toxins such as nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde.

 

 

Who is leading the charge builders or homeowners?

Solar panels and Geothermal

There has been a push to green our housing stock and there are some big ticket items that can be incorporated into our buildings.  I got curious with my last post here because I noticed that a lot of the new green certs were not using a full solar system or using geothermal.  In fact this year stats so far for new construction is that .00064 percent of sold new homes had either geothermal or a full PV system.

Home owners are leading this charge on getting solar or geothermal into their homes.  Home owners that have sold this year that have either a full PV system or geothermal systems make up .0058% of the sold homes.  Neither number is great But home owners are doing better than builders.

To be fair there was a small percentage of PV ready homes that were not included in this look into where we are in greening our housing stock.

Green certifications and affordability ~ First timers and million dollar homes

Apparently the very wealthy and the first time home buyers are the ones that like to pay the most for a green certified home. 

Homes selling over a million in the territory that RMLS covers in Oregon and Washington buyers are willing to pony up an extra $54 dollars a square foot.  More interesting is that these homes are not hitting the open market.  Does that mean they might get more???  Who knows because over the last three months these homes are not listed on the MLS until they are sold.

What intrigues me more is the people that have the least money are also willing to pay more for the homes that have green certifications, like energy star and earth advantage.  They paid $32 dollars a square foot more.  The ones that had Earth Advantage sold for 2 dollar more per foot than did the Energy star homes.

Homes that sold from $300,000 to one million saw a smaller increase in price for the certification.  Those folks paid from $14 to $16 dollars a square foot more for their homes.  I think this set of folks is the wisest set.

This is a study by Kria Lacher of the entire RMLS territory of green certs vs not  about single family

Selling homes in the virtual age~ a green option

People sell vacant houses all the time.  Most Realtors know that having it staged is a good idea since it helps people visualize or think about how they might live there.  I have started a new service called virtual staging.  It eliminates the need to haul heavy furniture, curtains, rugs and pictures from one place to another.  It saves gas and time!

Virtual staging also gets people in the door.  Here is an example.  This room just has curtains and a rug in it.  It allows a potential buyer to see what could be done there.

http://tinyurl.com/mcdxcgv  that is the full listing.

Don't forget to look at my website  yourportlandlifestyle.com

Value of green certified homes close in Portland

 

 

 

Close in Portland has seen a number of new construction projects since the market has been recovering.   Thirty one percent of the new construction are green certified homes.   There are a growing number of residential LEED construction homes on the market, thirty two percent!  LEED homes command twenty percent more than standard Portland homes.

One trend that I have noticed is that less of the LEED homes are architect designed projects.  Design in my opinion should be an a factor in LEED.  That has been a key historical value add of the LEED certification.

Of note:  There were no Passiv Haus built close in over the last year ....



Friends of trees is having their annual fruit tree give away

Trees are a wonderful thing to plant in your yard. Especially when you consider they shade your yard and you need less water and less AC in the house. At friends of trees you can get up to 3 fruit trees. A frind of mine made a great fence with them! It is his apple fence!!

green MLS in Arkansas

I am helping another Realtor green an MLS in Arkansas. She is really excited about helping her clients find and sell their greened or green property. We'll do the low hanging fruit first. The energy piece of it is the low hanging fruit. Department of Energy already performance tests and labels the "plug-ins". Looking forward to seeing how it turns out