Tag Archives: energy efficient home

San Diego – Green Home Tours Nov 12

Posted on November 6, 2016 | Leave a comment

The one-day tour, sponsored by the San Diego Green Building Council, aims to celebrate best practices in green residential design and building. Tour goers have the opportunity to see a variety of “green” features in real-life settings and meet industry professionals.

This year’s tour includes 10 residential projects around the county, including a LEED Platinum-certified home in Ramona, homes in Jamul and Campo that feature straw bale construction, a Chula Vista lofts project that incorporated sustainability at all stages of development, and a “green” home remodel in Pacific Beach.

Hours for the self-guided tour are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tickets are $15, or $10 for SDGBC members; tickets for students are $5 (with ID) and children under 16 are admitted free. To learn more or purchase tickets, visit http://www.usgbc-sd.org.

more info at: http://usgbc-sd.org/event-2296833

Owners of Energy Efficient Homes Less Likely to Default on Loan

Posted on April 6, 2013 | 1 comment

WASHINGTON — If you buy or own an energy-efficient house, does this make you less likely to default on your mortgage? Is there a connection between the monthly savings on utility costs and the probability that you’ll pay your loan on time?

A new study by the University of North Carolina suggests that the answer to both questions is a resounding yes.

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Using a sample of 71,000 home loans from across the country that were originated between 2002 and 2012, researchers found that mortgages on homes with Energy Star certifications were on average 32% less likely to default compared with loans on homes with no energy-efficiency improvements. Energy Star homes, which can be renovated dwellings or newly built, provide documentable savings of 15% or higher on utility bills compared with houses containing minimal energy improvements.

Researchers took pains to statistically separate out factors other than energy-efficiency savings that might account for the strikingly different performances by borrowers on their mortgages. They controlled for house size; age of the house; neighborhood income levels; house values relative to the area median; local unemployment rates; borrowers’ credit scores; loan-to-value ratios; electricity costs; and even local weather conditions.

Disclaimer: for information and entertainment purposes only

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Posted in energy retrofitting

Tagged energy efficient home, home mortgage, loan default, solar

House of Future Takes Green to Extreme

Posted on June 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

Sometime in the early 2000s, when I was a Los Angeles-based national correspondent at the Chicago Tribune, I was assigned to cover the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. What was most interesting to me was the product designers’ vision of the house of the future.

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The big idea then was accessing music, movies, sports, photos and the Internet from the TV. They were pushing the concept of having multiple screens throughout the house — including one embedded into the door of the refrigerator — so you wouldn’t have to miss a moment of that important game if you didn’t want to wait for the commercial to grab a snack.

That idea, of course, is long outdated, conceived before the widespread use of smart phones, which now allow you to do all that without spending thousands of dollars to rewire your house. Today’s house of the future focuses not on entertainment, but conservation.

For this week’s cover story, I got an exclusive look at a model home in Waldorf built by KB Home that is aimed at saving owners big bucks in electricity and water costs. The solar-powered, “net-zero” house is designed to produce more energy than it uses and save up to 50,000 gallons of water a year.