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The real estate industry vs climate change?

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Brian Brady

Mortgage Broker and Climate Change Guru?

Following on from an article published on Warm Home Cool Planet a couple of weeks ago on mandatory Energy Audits in Austin, TX, we have noticed a growing movement amongst the real estate industry targeting the ‘Cap and Trade’ bill and any local ordinances that might obligate homeowners into performing an energy audit on their home or making energy improvements in their home before they sell.

Here’s one from Brian Brady ‘America’s No. 1 mortgage broker’:  “Sadly, the theory of carbon dioxide emissions’ effect on climate change is accepted as fact by our politicians without rigorous examination of its merits. It’s easy to turn a blind eye on faulty legislation when it attacks “big business”.  Cap and Trade, however, is much more restrictive than its supporters would have you believe.  Your neighbor’s penchant for bay windows and your desire for key-lime green bathroom walls might just be at stake. ”

As in all cases where people attempt to sow doubt on the accepted fact of climate change, it’s important to consider the source of these opinions.  It’s also worth mentioning that the scientific community, not politicians, are responsible for deciding what is scientific fact.

Mortgage brokers make their money from arranging mortgages for people who aren’t considered good risks by banks. (Which describes at least 50% of Americans at the moment.) The mortgage broker assumes the risk of the loan for a premium on the prevailing interest rates (usually in the form of ‘points’). Mortgage companies then package up these loans and sell them to banks so they can be traded as financial instruments like CDO’s (Collateralized Dept Obligations) which in large part were responsible for the near collapse of our financial system last fall.

Mr. Brady’s business suffers if anything gets in the way of him writing another mortgage and stuffing more dodgy paper into our already teetering financial system. To prevent that from happening,  Mr. Brady has hauled the “man’s home is his castle’ trope out of the cupboard and dusted it off. According to Mr. Brady soon ‘the socialists will be invading your home and telling you how many light switches you can have’.

As a recent home seller (and potential home buyer) I can assure readers that the marketplace is already factoring energy efficiency into the price of homes. Anyone seriously considering buying our Central Square home asked our broker for recent energy bills so they could figure out what their total house expenses would be each month. A gas boiler tune-up performed the previous winter, and an Energy Star-rated air conditioning system resulted in our home energy bills comparing favorably to other homes with a similar square footage. As a result our home was sold.

Given his connection to the real-estate industry, Mr. Brady should know that potential home buyers are already performing something close to an energy ‘audit’ on every home they are considering for purchase. Local municipalities are simply reacting to current market trends and ensuring that everyone gets the information needed before they make a home buying decision.

First in Music. First in Energy Audits.

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Green 10 gallon hat

Austin, Texas–which we have always considered to be a little slice of Massachusetts right in the middle of the Lone Star state–has become the first town to pass and ratify a law that makes an energy audit mandatory when you sell a home within the city limits.

Almost 400 audits have been performed under the new ordinance which was passed in November 2008 and went into effect June 1 this year. After a furious lobbying effort by the Austin Board of Realtors, homeowners are not required to make all improvements, but the results will likely be used as a bargaining chip in most purchases.

One homeowner found that over 80% of his air-conditioning was leaking through his uninsulated attic and decided to make the repair to improve the prospects of selling his house. In this depressed market, most sellers will be looking for any advantage they can get.

Of course, Austinites have to find an energy auditor and pay for the audit. Luckily, if you live in Cambridge, requesting an audit is as simple as filling out a simple form and in many cases it’s free.

Your heating oil now contains biofuel. It’s the law

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It’s a little known fact that this winter will be the first in which Massachusetts requires home heating oil to include at least 2% biofuels, rising 1 percentage point each year until it reaches 5% in 2012. In 2009, that creates a 24 million gallon demand, and Baystate Biofuels is here to fill it.

The company has taken over the disused tanks at an old Western Telecom building in North Andover and it plans to utilize solar power Osgood Landing had previously installed on the site, and Baystate Biofuels will tap into excess steam from a nearby waste-to-energy incinerator to heat the tanks to lower the viscosity of the pure biodiesel.

Warm Home Cool Planet is checking on whether Baystate will be delivering to Cambridge this winter. In the meantime, check out the video above. More on this soon.

Electronics Recycling Event

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Title: Electronics Recycling Event
Location: ~Alewife Brook Parkway & Woods Ave., Somerville
Link out: Click here
Description: Recently upgraded your computer or television to a newer, more energy efficient model? Do you have other old or broken electronics collecting dust in the basement? Residents from Somerville, Cambridge, Arlington & Belmont can recycle these items for free.
Start Time: 9:00
Date: 2009-05-30
End Time: 13:00

Recycling Soda Cans into Solar Panels

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Soda can

From Canada comes the rather amazing story of Cansolair, a company that reuses soda cans to make solar panels. Once installed, this soda/solar unit can provide up to 30% of the heating for your house. All this in the cloudy, foggy Labrador region. All without adding another CO2 particle to the environment. Maybe Coke knew it was onto something when they introduced this new flavor last year.

Check out this video to see how it’s done.

Dow Corning gets boost from Economic Stimulus Package

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The Pink Panther saves the World?
The Pink Panther saves the World… and Newark.

Dow Corning, the largest maker of residential insulation in the US, can expect their economic recovery to start ahead of time due to the tax rebates and incentives for housing weatherization included within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed into law by President Obama last month.

“The weatherization program is the sort of activity that is likely to spur demand,” said Owens Corning spokesman Scott Deitz. “No doubt, people will install insulation because of this program. We just don’t know how many.”

This could also boost employment at Dow Cornings’ largest US insulation manufacturing plant in Newark, which has lost over 700 jobs in the last decade.

An estimated 80 million homes in the United States are currently under-insulated. Any home built before the mid-1980s and that has not been remodeled is unlikely to meet  insulation building codes in force today.

Compulsory Energy Audits on the Way?

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In the last week of February, the Ontario legislature presented the Green Energy Act. The Act includes renewable energy development plans that could generate as many as 50,000 jobs for the Canadian province. Amongst the other parts of the bill is a provision that makes it mandatory homes for sale in Ontario have an energy rating attached to it.

This rating will be generated by a home inspection using standardized evaluation criteria yet to be finalized. The controversy is around what a negative rating might do to home prices throughout Ontario.

The appliances we put in our house all have energy ratings and we certainly pay attention to these when we make consumer choices. Could a ratings for the whole house be far behind? An informal survey of local real estate agents revealed that home buyers often request energy bills from the seller before putting in an offer. So the question is: Will our state or federal government make home energy ratings compulsory as part of a larger energy  efficient initiative?

Warm Home Cool Planet would like to remind all Cambridge residents and businesses they can arrange a FREE energy audit for their home or business. Why not do it while you still have the choice?

To learn about the other major initiatives in Ontario’s Green Energy Act, read this interview with George Smitherman, Ontario’s minister of energy and infrastructure at Green Inc., the New York Times energy blog.

Saving $$$ with the New York Times

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green_bucks

The New York Times, whose affluent subscriber base is shrinking by the day, has realized that the affluence of their remaining readers is also taking a hit.

That must explain this article of surprisingly useful tips for making your IT and communications devices work a little longer and your budget stretch a little further. Most important, they keep our landfills a little less clogged.

Cambridge Energy Barnraising

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Last week, we showed you how a local Cambridge organization (HEET–Home Energy Efficiency Team) ‘weatherizes’ a house for fellow Cambridge residents.  Weatherizing a house involves making some basic non-structural changes to a house to reduce the energy needed for heating and cooling and save money on utilities. The homeowner supplies all the materials and HEET provides the knowledge and manpower needed to finish all energy efficiency improvements in a single day.

It’s a great community activity and a fantastic way to meet your fellow Cambridge residents while learning from skilled tradesmen how you can make your own home more energy efficient. And there is always a party to celebrate the completion of another successful Weatherization Barnraising.

The next HEET Weatherization Barnraising is scheduled for Sunday, March 1 between 12:30—5 pm at 120 Chestnut Street and 100 Henry Street, Cambridgeport.

The Work to be carried out on site includes:

  • Spraying the basement rimjoist using RetroFoam, led by Tom Lawler (the head of RetroFoam, a Massachusetts-based insulation company)
  • Using Plexiglas to insulate windows
  • Repairing drywall
  • Weatherizing doors
  • Possible building of an insulated cover for an attic hatch

The number of participants will be limited to assure that everyone has guidance and support from a skilled team leader.  You can sign up today by contacting Steve Morr-Wineman at swineman@gis.net or 617-876-4753.

The death of Books–Part LXVII

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Amazon has just released the new version of their book reading device, the Kindle 2. The new hard drive (2GB) holds 1500 books and features a new “Read to Me” feature which allows the…. user to hit a button and let the Kindle read for you. In other words it’s a book that comes with it’s own ‘Books on Tape’ mode. All improvements over the first Kindle, which was essentially a high resolution black & white screen with a hard drive attached.

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Many media pundits are using this launch to dust the cobwebs off their Books Will Soon Be Extinct storyline. Many of these people have also speculated that if Amazon can’t make the leap to digitally delivered products, their future looks awfully shaky. An ironic twist given  many of these experts are working for media companies who are practically on life support themselves. As an example, the New York Times live blogged the launch event.

Perhaps you’re asking yourself why Warm Home Cool Planet is getting all tangled up in the launch of yet another interactive media product. It’s the same reason we take an interest in all different types of technology. Will they lead to more effective and (energy) efficient ways of doing things?

There is no question human thoughts–and the words we use to express them–will always be an integral part of our society. Think of the book–or the Kindle–as a delivery system for those words and it makes things a little clearer. Do people have a stronger attachment to books than they do for newspapers? Is the long form of the book more conducive to an ‘analog’ reading experience?

We have no doubt someone with more time on their hands than Warm Home Cool Planet is calculating the carbon footprint of getting a book into a reader’s hands versus beaming it their Kindle. We’ll bring you those facts and figures when they become available.