When I listed Hermosa Pointe Homes, the beach cities' 1st certified Green townhomes, I admit I was aware of the buzz about Green building and my interest was peaked, but I never expected to take away from this project a new committment to being green personally.
I have literally learned so much about green living and green building these past weeks. I often ask myself why we never adopted these practices decades ago. It would have been so easy. Regardless, I am really taken with what the builder has accomplished at Hermosa Pointe. They have really incorporated traditional design elements with hundreds of green building items. These are the 1st I have seen that have such a warm, welcoming feel to them. Admittedly, when I thought "green" before, a picture would form in my mind of a concrete, glass and steel structure with giant rain barrels in the yard. What Urban Pointe has brought to the table is a product that has the look and feel of a more mainstream, custom home, yet everything you touch or see has some kind of green element to it. It's amazing.
We get so many comments from visitors to our open houses when they walk in about how shocked they are that Hermosa Pointe doesn't "look" green. When we take them through the homes and start deconstructing every green element, room to room, they are truly amazed. We hear that they love the light and air in the homes, the natural flooring, and the fact that the homes don't "smell" new.
Click link below for a peek at Hermosa Pointe
http://www.zingding.com/listing/view/37967534/
Top it all off with the jaw-dropping ocean views from every home, the low density site plan, the bonues parking on site and the great North Hermosa, West of PCH location, and these homes are sure winners starting at $1,099,000.
Ok, so after being inside these homes, feeling them, talking about them, selling them--I found myself feeling a little guilty for not examining my personal "green" practices more closely and seeing what I coudl do to improve them.
My office is green. I rent in a building that has been recognized as a "Green" corporate building. I have adopted their practices and suggestions for operating inside my own office space. I decided to really get aggressive with it all.
We have installed motion sensors on all of our office lights; we recycle not only at our desks, but also in our kitchen. We use plates, napkins & paper towels made of recycled materials. We all started bringing in our own coffee mugs and silverware to wash and reuse, rather than use disposable ones. Our printer/copier & computers are set to "sleep" when not in use. We don't use the A/C on weekends (which can really get warm sometimes!) We recycle our toner cartridges & shipping materials. We have implemented a new e-fax system so that we can "wean" off of our traditional, paper fax machine. We use recycled paper for our printer & re-use our file folders regularly. And recently, we converted to the new, Department of Real Estate endorsed, "RELAY" system, which is set up to eventually take our entire transaction process paperless.
To continue our efforts and to take it one step further, we are converting our entire flyer system over to a new "waste not" flyer format. We found that every year, our office was using over 260,000 pieces of paper to print flyers for outside flyer boxes. Most curious passersby will take a flyer, get the basic information they want from it, then toss it in the back seat of their car, which eventually makes its way to the trash.
Our "Waste not" flyers not only help us reduce consumption of paper, energy, toxic inks & fuel used in the printing, production & stocking of flyers; they also make our sales team that much more effective in securing interested parties and converting them to buyers for your property! Plus, our flyers never run out!
Our new format, a "permanent" flyer affixed to the sign post, will feature multiple photos, and appropriate bullet points of information about the home. People will be instructed to call our 800# which offers 24 hr, pre-recorded information about the property, and allows them to leave a request for a flyer to be emailed to them if desired. What is great about call capture is that my entire team is simultaneously & instantly notified that an inquiry just came in, and the sales staff to call back within moments of a buyer being in front of a property to have a LIVE conversation with them and go for the appointment/conversion; much more effective than tossing a flyer in the back seat! The "waste not" flyer also gives directions on where to go online to view a virtual tour and additional photos of our properties.
We are the first in the area to take this monumentental step away from the tradtional & very wasteful method of marketing with flyers. We are very excited to br bringing this change to our local marketplace.
I learn something new everyday in this business. Marketing a "green" project has personally touched me and I hope to move forward as an example to my Real Estate community with ideas and innovations to continue to reduce waste in our industry.
