June 20th, 2008

Green Homes for All?

My family and I are nearing the end of the process of building a new home in New Paltz, NY, in the Hudson Valley area. This has been a great opportunity to live and have a home in a region we love that’s “us” and that, of course, incorporates a large number of green elements. We didn’t realize it was the type of home some, especially among the Hollywood set, now consider the “new trophy home” as the NY Times recently put it — small and ecological. It’s simply what we’ve wanted for a while now, for our health and environmental reasons, and have had the good fortune to pursue.

The process has been jaw-droppingly time-consuming, though – I’ve spent hundreds of hours on it over the last year and a half, and my wife dozens or hundreds more. We understand from other friends that have had homes built that the process is de facto a time-consuming one; but I know our desire for numerous green elements added to that significantly as well.

It didn’t help that the process started around the time the credit crisis accelerated — the large national lender we started with for the home construction loan (HCL) took dozens of hours of my time alone, approving our application but then deciding to close their HCL department. I had to start the whole HCL application process over with a new lender.

That’s why, when I saw this recently-posted video below, I had to share it. It shows a much simpler way to have a new green home. Hopefully new ideas and economies of scale will continue to make the process easier for both existing and new home owners — I’m not sure we’d go through the process again if given the choice, unless it was something like the modular home in the video. The Hollywood people probably have teams of architects and designers to help them with green homes constructed on site from scratch!