Garreth Wilcock: Central East Austin Real Estate

More Central Austin home buyers are looking for energy efficient and green homes. If you're selling your existing home, how do you compete with the green builders over at Mueller? In parts II and III of this series, I looked at some of the green building programs used by new builders. In this last article in the series, I look at some simple steps you can take to make your existing home appeal to green buyers.

There are two ways to make your existing home greener: The first is to focus on updating key items, and the second is to remodel your home in order to meet one of the rating programs.

Here is a 1947 home in Shoalmont which has been remodeled by the owner and rated by the Austin Energy Green Building Program. Listing courtesy of Tim Sweeney at YourIgloo.

Rather than getting your entire home certified, you may just want to improve parts of your home.

Austin Energy has rebate programs to give up to $1575 in rebates for improvements to HVAC, weatherstripping, attic insulation, solar screens and caulking. They also offer rebates for installing solar water heaters, and solar power systems.

Austin Utilities have a $40 energy audit for their customers - an energy auditor will come to your home and evaluate the high priority fixes that will save energy in the home. Addressing these items and putting this information in the seller's disclosure will be a great marketing move when it comes to sell your home.

Other simple items to address:

• Lighting: replace incandescant bulbs with compact fluorescents which can use 75% less energy.
• Appliances: it costs more to run an appliance over its lifetime than it does to buy it, so look for Energy Star rated appliances if you're planning on replacing them.
• Water heaters: on demand or tankless water heaters will appeal to the green buyer due to reduced energy bills.
• Windows: consider replacing inefficient older windows with low-E double pane windows to reduce energy bills.
• Flooring: if you need to replace flooring to sell your home, consider durable and natural choices - exposed concrete, bamboo, tile or cork.
• Landscaping: replace thirsty plants with native ones which require less water and artificial fertilizers. The City of Austin has a plant rating guide to evaluate your landscaping.

If you want to dig deeper into using sustainable green building, check out the Renewable Energy Roundup in Fredericksburg, Texas on September 26-28th 2008.With rebates and some basic upgrades, you can increase the green marketability when it comes to sell without having your home rated by the green building rating schemes.

Garreth Wilcock is a real estate consultant at Keller Williams. He specializes in Central and East Austin Real Estate. Call 512 694 8873 or contact him at his website if you want a free valuation of your Austin home. You can search the Austin MLS at his website.

Many homesellers in Central Austin are now advertising their homes as "green homes" with "three star green" ratings. In part II of this series I looked at some of the rating systems, and in this part, I look at how this is shown in the Austin MLS.

The Multiple Listing Service (MLS) is a searchable database system of REALTOR® listed homes for sale. One of the recently added fields to search by is "Green Building Rating", which allows these values to be entered:

• Austin Energy's Green Building Program
• Energy Star Homes
• LEED-H
• Environments for Living
• National Association of Home Builders
• See Agent - Other

I discussed the first three rating systems in part II of this series. As you can see by the chart to the right which shows currently availalbe houses and condos in the Central Austin and East Austin areas, a low percentage of listings have been denoted with the green building rating programs.

It looks like green rating field usage still has some way to go. Looking at the 28 available homes at Mueller, only 17 have any rating set as of today, though in reality, the neighborhood design standards require a three star Austin Green Building Program rating (thanks Dusty!) for all residential development.

So while you can ask your agent to find you a green home, it looks like you can't rely on the data in the MLS alone to find it. This will certainly change as the field becomes more popular.

In part IV of this series, I'll look at what you can do to your existing home to make it appeal to the ever growing number of green home buyers.

Garreth Wilcock is a real estate consultant at Keller Williams. He specializes in Central and East Austin Real Estate. Call 512 694 8873 or contact him at his website if you want a free valuation of your Austin home. You can search the Austin MLS at his website.

Increasingly, Austin home listings contain "green" marketing as shown in the graph below. This article, part II of IV, looks at the certification programs and demystifies what it means when a builder claims a home is "four star green".

The graph on the right summarizes MLS data for Central and East Austin in the last few years. The word "green" is no longer just used to describe the color of the walls, but now is an overloaded word. With different organizations giving green brownie points, it's important to know which scheme is which.

The U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System is a national standard for creating sustainable buildings.

LEED NC (New Construction) has a rating system and tests five major design and build categories:Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy & Atmosphere, Materials and Resources and Indoor Environmental Quality. There are pre-requisites for some categories, for example collection and storage of recyclable materials is required in the building process as part of the Materials and Resources category. Points for different items in each category are added to give a rating: Certified, Silver, Gold or Platinum.

The Austin Energy Green Building Program (GBP) is a locally-based program that assists the design and construction sectors in creating sustainable buildings. The program has some mandatory requirements such as no vapor barriers, at least two ceiling fans, low VOC paints on interior walls, and the home must meet the following codes: Meet the following building codes: International Residential Code 2000, International Energy Conservation Code 2000. Voluntary measures that are met are awarded points which add up to give One Star up to Five Star ratings.

If that doesn't satiate your thirst for ratings, there's also the ENERGY STAR® program, which applies not only to appliances, but to new homes too. The ENERGY STAR® label on a new home means that it is independently verified to be at least 15% more efficient than homes built to the 2003 International Energy Conservation Code. Over and above the energy efficiency standard, there's also an ENERGY STAR® Indoor Air Package which includes measures to protect air quality in a home.

So as an example, single family homes in Mueller, Austin are all subject to a minimum LEED NC Certified status, and single family homes have to achieve a minimum three Star rating from the Austin Energy GBP. As another example a Muskin Home in the Garden Court at Mueller says that it is "4 Star Energy Rated" in the MLS Listing, which translates as Four Stars from the Austin Energy Green Building Program.

Garreth Wilcock is a real estate consultant at Keller Williams. He specializes in Central and East Austin Real Estate. Call 512 694 8873 or contact him at his website if you want a free valuation of your Austin home. You can search the Austin MLS at his website.

Austin has one of the top rated green building programs in the United States, and more and more homes and developments are marketed as green.

The certifications and hype can be confusing to the consumer as more and more listings contain some reference to "green".

This four part series of articles talks about the background of green building, what to look for when buying a green home, how to make your existing home more green, and some examples of green homes in Central and East Austin.

What are the aims of green building?

Ultimately, the aims are for sustainable living. In a nutshell, that means that homes should be built with materials that take into account limited natural resources, with a process which has a lesser impact on the environment, and the resulting home is energy efficient, and sustainable.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green building rating system scores homes in six areas:

• Sustainable sites
• Water efficiency
• Energy and atmosphere
• Materials and resources
• Indoor environmental quality
• Innovation and design process

To achieve a high rating in some of these areas, common examples of green building techniques are emerging:

• Using recycled or organic materials for insulating the home like recycled denim or hemp fiber. Good insulation at the build stage helps to save on evergy bills later, and in Austin homes, the largest energy bills are for air-conditioning.
• Using renewable flooring materials - rather than using hardwoods which take longer to regrow, builders can use bamboo - a crop which is easily replenished, marmoleum - made from flax and jute, or stained concrete.
• Landscaping - maintaining a bright green lawn in Austin uses more water than a xeriscaped yard. Using native plants or those adapted to the climate can shade your home, and not consume limited water supplies.
• Planning a walkable neighborhood or building an in-fill project in an existing urban neighborhood can reduce automobile dependency.
• Energy efficient appliances - not only low flow washers and Energy Star dryers, but more efficient tankless water heaters and low flush toilets.

There are several programs which rate and measure homes for their "green-ness" and I'll discuss those in part two of this series.

Garreth Wilcock is a real estate consultant at Keller Williams. He specializes in Central and East Austin Real Estate. Call 512 694 8873 or contact him at his website if you want a free valuation of your Austin home. You can search the Austin MLS at his website.

Homes in Mueller Austin: people planning a relocation to the Robert Mueller Airport Redevelopment in Austin Texas are often curious as to the feel of the neighborhood.

One thing that I always mention is the walkable nature of the development, and the greenspace that you see as you take those walks. The Mueller redevelopment plan calls for "a network of greenways and parks". The Mueller community framework diagrams show green areas throughout, and these plans are becoming a reality:

• 73 acres of perimeter greenways and uninterrupted hike and bike trails
• 30 acre community park
• 32 acres of neighborhood and pocket parks

In the photos below, you can get an idea of the housing density, but you can also see the wide sidewalks. While walking our dog last night on the hiking trail to the Southwest Greenway, I was passed by cyclists, dog-walkers, runners and walkers.

One neighbor I stopped to chat to last night has moved to Mueller as his youngest child is now in college. Another neighbor I bumped into has a two year old and comments on how many young children there are, and how she visits Ella Wooten Park every day. A client wrote a contract yesterday and said that she never thought she would be able to afford to buy a home in Austin, let alone so close to UT.

Mueller Austin has a diverse set of residents and a diverse selection of housing, and it all shares a walkable neighborhood of greenspaces. I'm proud to call it home.

Garreth Wilcock is a real estate agent in Austin. He specializes in Central and East Austin Real Estate and lives and works in Mueller. Find out about his Mueller Move Up program, or cost saving representation for Mueller buyers