Bob Ransford
Sun
Are buyers willing to pay a premium for a new home if they know that they can live an eco-friendly lifestyle in a home that is energy-efficient and incorporates up-to-the-minute design thinking on sustainable development?
It seems strange to even suggest that someone would pay a premium price for a new home in a market that is setting records for housing prices.
But there is a growing awareness in the western world about the causes and consequences of rapid climate change. Recent fossil fuel price increases are also awakening those who hadn’t previously thought about energy consumption.
I know the one-dollar-per-litre threshold in the price of gas, combined with another increase in my monthly rental rate for a downtown parking spot was my breaking point, turning me into a part-time transit commuter.
SFU’s UniverCity development head Michael Geller jokingly reminded me recently how our attitudes have changed over the years.
He was explaining to me the details of their VanCity Community Transit Pass that allows Burnaby Mountain’s UniverCity residents to purchase an annual transit pass at a substantial discount, as part of UniverCity’s sustainability efforts. Geller, a long-time housing developer, recalled that not many years ago he rode a transit bus only when his car was in the repair shop.
On that odd occasion he would raise his voice when he boarded the bus to ask the driver the price of the fare just so that commuters in earshot wouldn’t mistake him for a regular transit user. Now we swap stories about our experiences riding the bus.
In a community where a home near good schools is more important than being ecologically responsible, home buyers were willing to pay a slight premium to live in a development that went about as far as you can go in incorporating green building technology. That is according to architect and project manager Clair Bennie, who was in town from England last week to present an honest overview of the BedZED project – Beddington Zero Energy Development–in the London suburb of Sutton.
BedZED can legitimately call itself unique.
While there are a number of one-off multi-family residential projects based on sound environmental principles in various corners of the world, BedZED is probably the first housing development of its scale to try to incorporate so many green building and sustainable development principles into its design. That design also deliberately influenced the way BedZED’s owners and rental tenants live in the 100-unit development to this day.
Bennie, speaking at a conference on innovative housing hosted by Smart Growth BC, explained that BedZED incorporates everything from green roofs to a co-op network of electric cars charged with the power from photovoltaic cells installed atop the apartment units. Homes are heated with a common boiler fueled by wood waste and brown water and roof runoff was supposed to be recycled for use as toilet flushing water and for site irrigation.
Many of the green features worked and others were a disaster both financially and the way they operated or failed to operate, according to Bennie. For example, the brown water recycling system failed when the quality of the water was declared unacceptable after it as realized the roof runoff filtered through chicken manure in the green roof’s substrate.
However green sells, according to Bennie. She estimates that BedZED homeowners paid a 2 percent premium for their homes and the popular “green” dwellings sold quickly, faster than normal new homes sell.
But Bennie also deflated the dreams of some of those who look at green living as though it were some philosophically based utopia when she confirmed that the green measures added between 15 and 17 per cent to the cost of building the BedZED homes.
That gap between the cost of building in a smarter and more ecologically responsible way and the premium home buyers are willing to pay is therefore around 13 to 15 per cent–one that may seem huge in absolute dollars but one that is also miniscule compared to the price increases we have seen in overall housing costs over the last decade.
This gap can also be closed by heeding Bennie’s advice which basically boiled down to avoiding the urge to incorporate every single green building and sustainable development principle into every development. She advised on taking incremental steps in designing buildings and communities more responsibly.
If we can move the ball part way down the field and at the same time close the gap between what people will pay to live more responsibly in their homes and what it costs to build more innovative and smarter housing then we will achieve something.
Bob Ransford is a public affairs consultant with COUNTERPOINT Communications Inc. He is a former real estate developer who specializes in urban land use issues. Email: [email protected]
© The Vancouver Sun 2006