Many of today’s buyers in the market for a Virginia Beach home are looking for one that is eco-friendly. They want a house that is energy-efficient and combats detriments to the environment. Listed below are some relative easy to do and cost-efficient ways you can appeal to potential eco-conscious buyers.

1. Insulate. Insulate. Insulate. Use pipe insulators to keep hot water hot for a longer time and a hot water heater blanket ($10.00 to $20.00) to both prevent temperature loss and reduce the amount of electricity/gas needed to maintain the water temperature. Be aware that the further heat or air conditioning has to travel, the greater the temperature loss. Insulating your heating and cooling ducts can prevent up to 60% of this loss. Remember that even a small area of inadequate or damaged insulation can greatly reduce efficiency.

2. Reduce heating/cooling expenses. Replace or clean all filters on a regular basis to reduce inefficiency. Eliminate all sources of drafts by checking windows, doors, electrical outlets, fireplaces, and attic floors for leaks (even small cracks lead to energy loss) and by using caulking or weather stripping to seal them. In addition, for a cost of $200 to $400, you can run a blower door test to discover the main, and many times hidden, sources of energy leaks in your home.

It is also important to schedule a HVAC cleaning/checkup every two years and to investigate the need for a programmable thermostat to save energy while you sleep or are away from home. If your windows, aging appliances, furnace, or hot water heater needs to be replaced, you should certainly consider purchasing ENERGY STAR products to save 10% to 30% of the usual operating costs.

Read the rest of this entry »

You have probably seen ads for Virginia Beach real estate that read, ˜Value is in the land¦a structure sits on the land but is beyond repair, giving the structure no value. No more! In todays ˜green conscious society, not only is there a moral obligation not to destroy and discard, but to recycle and reuse.

The eco-friendly ˜unbuild has now become an option to the traditional ˜tear-down of Virginia Beach real estate, according to a Wall Street Journal article. A house can be carefully disassembled, piece by piece, and the parts used for a new house and/or donated for reuse elsewhere. Whatever is donated can be deducted from income tax.

˜Unbuilding a Virginia Beach home may be the right thing to do for many reasons, but saving time and money is not top of the list. It will take longer to ˜unbuild, but at least a couple of weeks and may end up being more expensive in the long run, even after any tax deductions. But, other benefits are the reuse of materials such as beautiful aged brick from fireplaces, stone foundations, custom woodwork, decorative tile or antique fixtures and working appliances.

For the past few years, theres been an explosion across the U.S. of rebuilding centers – non-profit companies that take donations of house parts and resell them at a huge discount to the public. According to the Pittsburgh-based Building Materials Reuse Association, the number of stores that sell reused building materials in the U.S. numbered about 1,200 as of 2006, with average annual revenues of $340,000 ‘ up 45% ‘ from three years earlier. A survey by Pennsylvania State University shows that more than half of these stores have operated for less than five years.

Interested in investing in Virginia Beach real estate? Search Virginia Beach homes for sale or get a list of new Virginia Beach homes for sale as hit the market. Or give us a call at 866-222-0158 #550.