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Thursday, March 29, 2007

Home, Sweet Green Home

The NAHB annual green home conference in St. Louis, with about 300 in attendance, showed me that green homes are ready to hit the mainstream home building and home buying market. Consulting with a small custom home builder, we discussed how to market green homes to the consumer. Lots of good product activity, including solar panels, structural insulated panels and all types of energy conservation systems. Harvey Bernstein of McGraw-Hill presented the results of a recently concluded survey of green homebuyers. Bottom line: green home buyers are better educated, wealthier, 25-44 and tend to cluster in the South and West. Satisfaction with their homes is very high. More on this survey later.

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Monday, March 19, 2007

Green Buildings Hotter than Chili Sauce in New Mexico!

Green building marketers, consultants and designers, pay attention. New Mexico Senate Bill 463, just passed and expected to be signed by Governor Bill Richardson, provides up to $10 million annually for commerical and residential green building tax credits, using LEED certification as the main tool: $5 million for commercial buildings and $5 million for residential. If greater than $25,000, the credit must be taken equally over four years. Here are two examples: a 50,000 sq.ft. LEED Gold building would get a credit of $127,500, or about $2.50 per sq.ft.; a 3,000 sq.ft. residence would get a credit of $11,000. These are credits: they directly reduce state taxes, dollar for dollar. Taking our example, at the LEED Gold level, there could be almost 2 million sq.ft. of such commercial buildings (or 39 total buildings at 50,000 sq.ft.) before the credits run out each year. At the residential level, the credit could pay for 400 such homes. Because of the “first come, first served” nature of the credits each year, the message to New Mexico builders, homeowners and developers is clear: get going! And for green building consultants, the message is also clear: find out about the law and open an Albuquerque or Santa Fe office immediately! For green building marketing, the tax credit should be the leading line in your marketing message. For a complete text of the green building tax credit law, email (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

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Thursday, March 08, 2007

My Green Crystal Ball: $30 billion in ‘07

My 2007 predictions include 1700 new LEED registered projects and 15,000 new green home certifications (not counting Energy Star homes, which may top 175,000 this year - 2006’s totals). Total construction value is about $30 billion. Add in the Energy Star homes and you’re above $50 billion. Total of all products in green buildings and green homes is then between $10 and $20 billion. Check out the full text of my predictions.

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Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Beach Blanket Babylon

Babylon’s town ordinance requires all new commercial, industrial and multi-unit residential construction over 4,000 sq.ft. to receive at least the basic LEED certification by December 2007, as a requirement to getting a certificate of occupancy. While laudable in intent, the ordinance raises all kinds of questions, not the least of which is timing. How does an owner receive assurance that USGBC will act on a LEED certification in a timely manner, so s/he can rent or lease the premises upon project completion. What if the design/construction team doesn’t do its job and get the certification at all? Will LEED-CS become the preferred way in which developers meet this ordinance, because it will also give them help with marketing green buildings. Will the LEED-CS pre-certification be enough to meet the intent of the ordinance? By the way, New York Local Law 86, which became effective January 1st of this year, already requires most public projects, to receive LEED Silver certification. Green building consultants in New York must be licking their chops, thinking of all the new work headed their way!