Posted by Kerry on Apr 25, 2009
Recycling, reusing the fallen trees
How green is my Vineyard? The full picture is elusive, but I know that we have to start somewhere. As we proceed with the development of the first LEED certified residential home in Oak Bluffs, the enthusiasm and well wishes are heart warming. And the reality of building a green house in the middle of a neighborhood of established older family homes is complex. I’m sure we will talk more about this issue as we progress.
The Vineyard has always prided itself on being a community of earth loving humanitarians. We are exposed to diverse and environmentally sensitive habitats and wildlife, and we have commissions that are manned by very passionate volunteers. But like everywhere else, we still wear blinders to the impact of our existence on the environment. Global warming, our carbon footprints, the oil crisis and the age of consumerism leading up to the present economic crisis are all puzzle pieces. There is also ignorance as to how to begin on something that seems so overwhelming. A feeling that one person can’t make a difference.
First thing I just want to take this opportunity to remind you all of whom won the election in January this year, if you have any sense that one man cannot make a difference, then that man has most certainly proven you wrong. Next, when my husband and I bought the land on Green Ave. (that’s right, Green on Green!), we had not planned on going in this direction, owning it for as long as we have, and worrying about the real estate market’s effect on us and our future. We now see this as an opportunity to learn and educate. We have met and are working with some of the most well informed green building consultants available in New England. When we decided to build a LEED certified house, we knew it was the right thing to do for our company, the environment and our daughter.
The team at Squash Meadow Construction has been nothing short of enthusiastic and open minded, despite this being a new avenue for them to grow into. I’ve been away all week and was excited to get back to the island to be a part of this project and share in the enthusiasm. I went to the site to document the beginning of the excavation process. When I arrived a neighbor had stopped over and was loading his car up with some trees that had been cleared. He was going to use them in his fireplace for heat next winter. Reduce, reuse, recycle and recover… the 4 R’s of sustainability. A great place to start.
Posted by Kerry on Apr 06, 2009
Building Green for a Better World
In this age of recession, bordering on depression, what is foremost on peoples minds is conservation. Conservation of property,conservation of monies, and conservation of time. We are consumed with the fear of running out of money, and many of us have already done just that. It is not pretty out there and the idea of paying premium for what we don’t have seems superfluous. Does going green cost more money?
Going green has a reputation of being cost prohibitive. In my town, Oak Bluffs, we pay to recycle. At the town dump, you buy a sticker for your car that allows you to bring your recyclables to the dump. How does that make sense? We live on an island, and conserving our resources should be part of the package, but nobody has figured out that recycling should be rolled into our taxes? We pay land bank fees when we buy property, paying to recycle should not be that much of a stretch. People will continue to throw away their bottles and cans as long as it costs money to get rid of them. That is not taking into consideration the inconvenience of having to get the recyclables to the dump.
In the building business, waste is part of the package. In order to move along efficiently on a job, huge gray containers are set up and filled with debris. The vast amounts of leftover wood, shingles, and other construction filler is enormous. There are whole buildings being demolished and hauled to the dump. The urgency for new and newer is evident in the rising costs of construction and home ownership. What can be done, and more importantly, why do it?
Here’s the point. Not only is the land on Martha’s Vineyard finite, but the earth is finite. This is it. This is what we have to offer our children, this is what we will be leaving behind beyond any monetary wealth. Are we proud of what we have to offer? We could be, we should be. So far we have been wasteful. Today we have access to better techniques for caring for the environment and the dwellings that we put on the earth’s surface. We can build homes, schools, churches and offices in a way that energy is conserved, not wasted. We can actually enhance buildings to create electricity. We have the technology today to conserve and create a world where we offer the safest air quality available for our children and their children.
Why not do it? Now is the time to invest in your future, and the future of your children. If you are going to build, build green. It is the only way to bring around the changes that we all need to survive and thrive both economically and physically. Green building is about optimal health as well as the future of the environment. The irony here, is that though green products and green building may be slightly more costly on the front end, they save money down the road. And, if we all made an effort to buy energy efficient products, they would come down in price. Conservation is, ultimately, priceless.
Posted by Kerry on Jan 27, 2009
Last spring an opportunity presented itself that I must say appeared to be too good to be true (!). I was going to get to do something fun, make some money, and help out some clients! I work selling real estate in an area of Martha’s Vineyard known as East Chop. It is fairly exclusive and many of the homes and properties have been passed down generation to generation. Though it can be a difficult market to work, I have been relatively successful because I was literally brought up there. Playing in the houses and running down the dirt roads in the summertime. My parents would drive down from Canada and always rented on the chop, so I am familiar with many of the old homes. When something comes on the market on East Chop I usually have some first hand knowledge of the property.
Anyway, back to this opportunity… So I had these clients, multiple families, who had been looking for houses on East Chop. Of course, They all wanted the same house. Four bedrooms, three baths, walk to the beach, walk to tennis, walk to town…and all these clients were on me to find them this one exact house. Well the house never materialized because as I said earlier, most of these properties are passed down generation to generation and when one does come up, it is quickly and quietly scooped. Hopefully when that does happen I am part of the mix, so that would explain the client roster. What did come up, was a vacant lot. It was a perfect lot, but it was a hugely expensive lot. And low and behold, it sold. Immediately. Scooped, just like that.
Within a few months another lot came up. Also hugely expensive, but the seller was limited to a short time frame and so a window of opportunity presented itself. That is when my husband the builder, and I the real estate broker decided we would figure out a way to get this lot and build that one highly coveted house. We pooled our resources. We offered, the seller counter offered, we counter offered, and he accepted. We were ecstatic. In the late winter of 2008 we had bought ourselves one prime piece of dirt on East Chop and immediately got to work designing the house that all of these clients had been clamoring for! How great we thought! We are going to build THAT house. The one that everybody wants. We were beside ourselves with excitement.
East Chop Lot
Despite all the signs pointing to a deep and serious recession, we forged ahead and became real estate developers in an uncertain world.
Well last summer was a reality check, not just for this project but for my real estate business in general. People became extremely cautious and the sense or urgency of years past has completely disappeared. We delayed building during the summer so as not to disturb the summer residents that are deep in the neighborhood during July and August, and by September we found ourselves lucky enough to be entertaining an offer on the land itself. Despite having shown the project to all of my prospective house hunters, and many others, the offer that I had was on the bare land, and it did not come from one of my clients. As a matter of fact, none of my clients had expressed more than passing interest, and we were very relieved that we did not find ourselves sitting on some very expensive real estate.
In the late fall, when the leaves fell, our land deal also fell apart. For a couple of months we toyed with the idea of selling the land and cutting our losses, paying back our loan. But let me ask you this, where would be the the fun in that? Where is the hope or the dream or the excitement? I don’t want this to be just about making a living, I want to enjoy myself and hopefully get a little creative and maybe even set an example. So off we go, we are going to build and it will have six bedrooms! And I know that if we build it they will come!
