paulaloe/flickr
What’s the most important sales feature of a nearly 5,000 square foot waterfront home on Long Island? Not the bay views, as you might think, but the “wind-resistant sliding French doors… foam insulation board…[and] insulated roof designed to last 40 years.” Those are the salient points that the owner–now the seller–wants to push in marketing his remodeled home, according to the New York Times.
Although the owner added these features to save money, more than to be at harmony with nature, he now realizes that green features are one of the things that could tip the scales for even the most hesitant buyers. As they say, “Greenness seems to have reached an apogee of public relations significance in home selling.”
We, too, realize the importance of green features, but not as a marketing ploy. We consider life cycle costs–the amount that the building costs to keep up year after year, not just upon purchasing–and ecological function to be way up there with location, location, location as the primary factors in choosing real estate.
By the way, the Empire State Building is undergoing a green retrofit of its own, proving that there’s no building too big, or to small, to go green.
