Thanks for the replies and compliments guys. Been a busy day and I'm happy to report that we have exceeded the efficiency requirements for EnergyStar! We don't have the final numbers back from our auditor but he estimated a near 50% improvement from the original house! Very exciting stuff and we've learned a lot and are looking forward to putting this knowledge towards the next project.
Now to answer your questions:
Roy N. : We definitely put in a lot of effort when sealing this house but as you may know, with each one of these that you do you learn a few things that can improve the scores on your future projects. I think everyone underestimates the elusiveness of air on their first project.
Adam Demchik : The way we find homes is no different from any other redeveloper. Our company mainly focuses on building relationships with realtors and agents in our area and that has given us access to pocket listings and escrow fallouts. We still shop the MLS but that is definitely drying up with the bulk of new investors jumping on that lead stream.
As for what customers are willing to pay, we will find out. We entered this project, however, with the goal of listing right at market and maybe even slightly less than the competition. Our previous strategy prior to going green was to have the best house on the block priced at a drastic discount from the competition (8 - 10% less) - we often received clean offers above asking and were under contract in under 2 weeks. Our green strategy is to list at only 2.5 - 5% less than the competition while maintaining our low sale time. BUT, with the ever changing market, we may relook this strategy as well done homes are naturally selling fast right now.
Kristopher K. : YES, definitely. We've learned a lot on this project and hope to apply this info towards developing methods and systems to reducing our costs on future projects.
Bryan A. : The color is Marsh Wind by sherwin williams. In the future we might go with an even lighter grey but we are pretty happy with how it turned out.
As for extra costs going green, I can argue that the green improvements didn't add but 2-3% extra total costs if that. For example, the faucets and fixtures are actually cheaper than some non green options. Also, we've been using EnergyStar appliances even before going green so there was no change in those prices. As for the paint the difference was marginal and from our supplier I think we ended up paying only an extra $5 on a 5 gallon can of paint.
Now the trick is when you tear down the drywall for foam sealing. Doing this opens you up to a lot of code enforcements and you are at the mercy of your inspector when it comes to what you must do. With this house, we knew from the start we had to do a lot of framing so the cost difference was marginal. We did run into a few unexpected floor joists and that set us back a few thousand.
Thanks for the tip regarding the square posts. We'll keep that in mind for the future. As for the numbers, it was pretty easy, just stained some pine boards, cut them to size, mounted the numbers, then screwed them onto the exterior.
