Location, Location, Location
If you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or queer and looking for real estate in the Carolinas, a home, or just looking for a good rental. OIA’s Location, Location, Location in Coas, use a real estate professional who's on your team whether you’re buying a home, selling Come Out and Play will help you find gay and gay friendly real estate agents, realtors, and mortgage brokers to help you have a great home buying or selling experience.
These real estate professionals will help you find the perfect new home in Asheville, Charlotte, Boone, Blowing Rock, or anywhere in the Carolinas. They will guide you through the ins and outs of the real estate markets from Asheville to Charlotte, Boone to Blowing Rock, Gastonia to Greenville/Spartanburg and beyond. They will help you find a good gayborhood or just gay friendly neighbors. And that includes renters, too!
Watch each week as this section grows to include hints and tips and news of the housing, real estate, and mortgage markets from Charlotte in the Piedmont to Asheville, Boone, and Blowing Rock in the mountains of western North Carolina and south to Greenville/Spartanburg in the Upstate of South Carolina. We will also try to keep you up to date on the changing trends within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queer neighborhoods and communities.
So, if you want to know where all the LGBTQ folks live, work, and play in the Carolinas, keep reading Come Out and Play.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Benefits of Owning a Built Green Home
Incorporating green building techniques, materials, and even green appliances (and I’m not talking about 1970s avocado green) into a new home or even when upgrading your existing home can result in a wide range and variety of benefits. Green building and living can save money and resources, lead to a more durable home with lower maintenance requirements, and provide healthier and comfortable indoor environments. The range of benefits listed here are among the items that Built Green builders choose from in order to comply with the Built Green program; they may not be included/available in all Built Green homes.
Save Money and Resources
Green appliances, from a furnace to a dishwasher, are now available. With natural gas and water prices on the rise, properly sized and highly efficient furnaces, air-conditioners, and water heaters save money every month. They also require less maintenance than standard units. Additionally, Energy Star® units use much less electricity and water than average appliances, and make a smaller dent in your family’s utility budget.
Furnaces and water heaters, situated centrally to where they’ll be most often needed, with their lines and ducts well insulated further minimizes energy losses. Less waiting for hot water and more consistent levels of conditioned air are the result.
Advanced lighting packages, including compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs), offer excellent light quality, extremely long life, and require only a fraction of the electricity of a normal bulb. “Can lights” can have the unintended consequence of poking dozens of holes in a home’s insulated envelope. Air-tight versions of these lights solve the problem of air leakage and associated thermal losses.
There are many ways to cut back on water use and waste in any home. “Low-flow” faucets, showerheads, and toilets perform at least as well as their water-wasting counterparts, and markedly cut back on the household’s increasingly expensive “water budget”. Advanced irrigation practices take the guesswork out of watering the lawn and complying with water restrictions. Landscaping receives the optimal amount of water, and becomes less of a burden on homeowners’ time and wallets. “Xeriscape” yard treatments combine drought-resistance with natural beauty, and marry creativity to the goal of conserving water with the inclusion of hearty native plant selection.
Optimally insulated walls and roofs are an integral part of an energy-efficient and comfortable building “shell.” Green builders use both blown-in products and expertly installed batts to ensure that no energy is wasted in heating and cooling the home. Draft-free, well-insulated low-emissivity (Low-e) windows also make a significant contribution to the overall performance of the “building envelope.” And since they resist the transfer of cold air, they expand the area of useable, comfortable space in a room. Well-insulated doors are as stylish as any other, but offer the added benefit of correcting this thermal Achilles-heel of many building envelopes.
Durability and Low-maintenance
“Engineered lumber” can be used throughout the home’s frame, and can provide a straighter, stronger, more consistent structure that protects forests by using only fast-growing, rapidly renewable tree species. While, expertly air-sealed building envelopes fitted with meticulously detailed moisture planes combine to create a wall system that resists the degrading effects of air and water transmission that can plague lower-performing walls. All that combined with a tough, long-lasting exterior finish like brick, stucco, and fiber cement help to ensure that a home endures for generations, and that it requires less upkeep over those years as well.
A properly drained and insulated foundation is a key factor is avoided unwanted moisture below grade. These elements are critical to maintaining a dry and comfortable basement. Ventilated, well-sealed crawlspaces, above or below grade, are necessary to ensure the proper management of moisture throughout the home. And even simple items like downspout extensions on gutters provide an effective means of keeping water away from foundations and basement walls.
Outdoor decking and landscaping products made from low-impact polymers and composite recycled products not only look better than many types of lumber, but they also wear several times longer and require much less maintenance over time. Selecting higher quality materials can be a way to save resources over the life of your home. For example, landfills are heaped with lower-quality roofing products, but that won’t happen when your builder selects either long-rated shingles or durable materials like slate, cement, or metal.
Healthy and Comfortable Indoor Environments
Since tight home enclosures make outside air much less likely to randomly leak into the living space, mechanical ventilation is a great means of providing the right amount of fresh air for your family around the clock. Sealed-combustion furnaces and power-vented water heaters mean protection for your family from combustion gasses that might otherwise be introduced to indoor air space.
Ducts transport conditioned air from the furnace or air conditioner throughout every room in the house. Or at least they’re supposed to. Too often, installed ducts are leaky enough to create negative pressures in a home that draw combustion gasses from the furnace and water heater into the living space. Tight ducts prevent this potentially dangerous situation, and make sure that the correct amount of warm or cool air is reaching every room.
Best-practice air filtrations methods, whether high-efficiency particulate air filters (HEPA) or others, offer added assurance for families with sensitive children or heightened concern for indoor air quality. When special sealing practices are undertaken to isolate the garage from the house, homeowners can rest assured that what comes out of their car won’t go into their lungs. Central vacuum systems are not only incredibly effective and convenient; they also isolate the collection of household floor pollutants to a location safely outside the living space.
Carpets made from recycled materials or from less toxic materials look great, wear like iron, and improve the quality of the air you breathe every day. Cabinets made with low volatile organic compound (VOC) materials are a stylish assurance that the air in your home is as free from these chemical baddies as possible. There is a wide range of paints and finishes available to builders, from run-of-the-mill to top-of-the-line. The latter category includes products that perform better than average while emitting none of the chemical by-products of their counterparts, in the process making for a more beautiful and healthy home.
Careful attention to the location and particular performance qualities of windows throughout the home contribute to not only increased energy efficiency, but also to protection from overheating, glare, and damage to furnishings from excessive solar radiation.
Much of the information in this article is courtesy of the National Association of Realtors. If you have a specific question or want Troy to touch on a specific subject, please feel free to contact Troy via email at Troy.Winterrowd@RealLiving.com
 |
Mark Lavin Mark Lavin is the Owner and Managing Real Estate Broker for Advocate Realty and Blowing Rock Area Sales and Rentals… the only organization that deals exclusively with the North Carolina mountains. His career began in Boone, NC after graduation from Appalachian State University with his degree in Business Administration. To date, he has achieved numerous awards in his career and has also been involved with various service and civic organizations over the years including Kiwanis Club, High Country Host, and Blowing Rock Chamber of Commerce. In addition to real estate transactions, both residential and commercial, he has also been involved with full service property management and new home construction. Mark has invaluable knowledge of mountain areas. He knows the NC mountains like no one else---with guaranteed results. Mark is dedicated to Excellence in providing comprehensive Real Estate Services to his clients while maintaining the highest professional and ethical standards. Mark Lavin is a North Carolina Licensed General Contractor in addition to being a member in good standing of the NC Association of Realtors, the Avery Watauga Board of Realtors, and the Asheville Board of Realtors. |
 |
The Real Estate Weekly is Western North Carolina's only full color weekly, REALTOR owned publication. We have more listings and help sell more houses than any other publication in this area. Our advertisers also include banks, mortgage companies, builders and developers. We are a perfect fit for anyone with a home-related business such as contractors, landscapers, or furniture stores. Copies of the Real Estate Weekly™ may be obtained if you are in the area, you may pick them up FREE at more than 300 locations.
|