How Green is Your Santa Barbara Home…and Realtor?
categories: Green Living, Santa Barbara Architecture
As the Santa Barbara real estate market has slowed in the last 18 months, it makes sense that some Realtors are trying to stand out with niche marketing efforts. One of these niches seems to be Realtors marketing themselves as eco-friendly and green. While I am 100% supportive for anyone with an eye on environmentally conscious action (real estate or otherwise), make sure your Realtor is not using ”basic green talk” as cursory knowledge of green building simply as a marketing ploy in a tougher market.
Again, I loudly applaud any Realtor that is going out of their way to learn about solar, energy-efficient appliances, geo-thermal pumps, earth friendly design and products, improving indoor air quality, tax credits for energy saving improvements from a homeowner etc. I think intuitively that people who share strong values of being environmentally and socially responsible will often align themselves with others that share the same beliefs. If these beliefs are then shared amongst parties involved in a real estate transaction, all the better.
For myself as a Realtor, I try to promote all that I can about green building and am always trying to learn more and understand what truly constitutes green with respect to real estate. Our industry needs to follow suit with a lot of other industries that are now making strides with sustaining our environment. Example: If a client buys a home that has older wood floors that can be easily sanded and refinished, doing this is in my eyes is potentially more green than buying new Bamboo flooring. At first thought, many people respond that Bamboo is a rapidly renewable material and therefore promotes green development. Yes, but if this is shipped all the way across the world from China, the “greener decision” would probably be to just sand the old wood floors.
As a start for everyone, some of the most basic green actions you can take as a homeowner are using non-toxic paint, trying to used locally sourced materials if you are remodeling (hopefully recycled), adding insulation, installing quality good windows, and using energy efficient appliances and light bulbs.
Further Reading: Green Living, Are $5 Gas Prices Effecting Santa Barbara CA Realtors and/or Their Clients?, Santa Barbara Leads the Way in Greenhouse Gas Emission Studies, Here is a Method that is Helping Make Santa Barbara More Eco-Friendly, 5 Easy Tips to Free Up Your Time and Vanish Your Junk Mail, Santa Barbara Races Ahead on Energy Efficient Real Estate Construction Guidelines
For information on Real Estate here in Santa Barbara, Montecito and/or our surrounding areas, as well as any other aspects of life in our area, please don’t hesitate to contact Kevin Schmidtchen at Sotheby’s Int’l Realty.
Thank you for reading. I hope you find Santa Barbara Real Estate Voice informative. Please feel free to contact me or comment below with any thoughts.
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Another way to tell is to visit www.openeco.org as they have a lot of calculators and tools to figure out and benchmark your carbon emissions thus, resulting in efforts to be ‘greener’ and more sustainable. I’ve found it to be a very useful site.
Brody,
Thanks for the input and the link. I will for sure take a look at this.
kevin