Archive by Author
Deconstruction of Residential Real Estate
Posted on 06. Dec, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
If deconstruction is a new trend in the world of real estate development, you can expect re-use centers to be brimming with stock and plenty of opportunities for you to find just what you need at a very green price. I imagine that tracking and searching inventory will eventually become more sophisticated and easier to navigate as the demand for deconstruction increases.
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A Conversation with Minnesota’s First Eco-Broker
Posted on 22. Nov, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
The earth benefits of eco-brokering are self-evident. But I wanted to know how certification helped an agent’s business, so I sat down with Gina Vermilyea to discuss eco-brokering and what led her to get certified.
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5 Tips for Going Paper-Free
Posted on 09. Nov, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
Let’s look at some of the advantages of a paperless office. There’s the obvious cost savings because a paperless office uses less paper, toner and extra equipment like separate fax machines. Paper eats up a lot of admin time in filing, copying, faxing and general management of each scrap — a paperless office, therefore, increases productivity.
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Eco-Brokers, A New Way to Stand Out from the Crowd
Posted on 19. Oct, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
A few months ago, I met – quite by chance – an eco-broker. According to her business card, this was no ordinary eco-broker. She was Minnesota’s first eco-broker. And she happened to be representing a friend of mine who found himself in a pickle. A property he’d had on the market for a few years was finally getting serious interest from potential buyers.
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Cheap Tweaks to Attract Green Tenants
Posted on 13. Oct, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
Green-minded folks tend to have a mindful, tread-lightly approach to living in the world that doesn’t stop at the welcome mat. But don’t worry, you don’t have to add solar panels to your rooftop or a goat in the backyard to attract the right folks. Here are a few simple, inexpensive changes to consider when adding to your green arsenal.
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Green Strategy Number One: Head in the Clouds
Posted on 05. Oct, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
Who would’ve thought that having your head in the clouds would be considered a smart green business strategy? Well, it is—if you’re talking about cloud computing. More organizations are turning to web-based tools to save time and money while reducing their overall footprint.
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“Going Green Helps You Target the Tenants You Want”
Posted on 19. Aug, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
I recently had an uncomfortable, albeit necessary conversation with a landlord who owns a property on my block. This face-to-face meeting followed a rocky year with one of her tenants—the kind of neighbor no one wants to live near: Yelling in the street at all hours of the night, an unkempt yard complete with garbage bags that languished in the front yard for weeks on end, and serving as headquarters for increasingly badly behaved teenagers with hobbies that included drug dealing. Needless to say, neighbors were not happy.
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Taking Stock of Impact: Is It Good for Business?
Posted on 13. Jul, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
If there’s anything good to come out of the devastating BP oil spill, it’s a renewed awareness and interest in the corporate decisions that directly impact our shared environment. Certainly more than a few BP execs are kicking themselves right now for grossly underestimating how an environmental catastrophe of this magnitude would impact their bottom line.
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“Reel” Conversations For Property Managers That Strike a Balance
Posted on 09. Jul, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
Steven, a teenager on my block, has only ever had two choices in my yard: The garage-sale score or the German-engineered model. Both are reel mowers and both are used every week in my yard—sometimes concurrently.
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Water Heater Under Wraps
Posted on 23. Jun, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
A few weeks before my husband and I closed on our property, the home inspector we’d hired noted a strange noise coming from inside the hot water heater. We passed this information along to the then-owners, who insisted it was all a bunch of hullabaloo. A few days later, the heater gave out and they had to replace it.
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Reduce, Reuse & Recycle: How Reusing Will Reduce Your Recycling
Posted on 21. May, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
What’s greener: Reusing something that already exists or creating something new? It’s not a trick question. And the right answer depends entirely on the item in question. Let’s say your rental property sports kitchen cabinets from the harvest-gold heyday, and which you suspect might be scaring off potential tenants.
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Creating a Green User’s Guide for Residents
Posted on 18. May, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
Getting residents to buy in on efforts to green your property is actually pretty darn important to your overall strategy. Look at it this way: You can invest in an energy-efficient furnace, but if residents crank the thermostat to 77° F when they aren’t even home, you’re just burning up your savings. Literally.
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5 Ways To Attract more Residents with Green Marketing
Posted on 18. Mar, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
Environmentally conscious folks tend to bring certain values to all areas of their lives—particularly their living spaces. Greenies aren’t perfect, but they are generally more mindful of their impact on resources regardless of whether they pay for access and use (gas for heating, for example) or own the mechanism to create heat (i.e., a furnace).
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7 Easy Tips for Greening Tenants (& Your Bottom Line)
Posted on 09. Mar, 2010 by Jennifer Marcus Newton.
Greening initiatives tend to produce more than just the obvious goal of reducing our impact on the planet. Often, in fact, opting for green actually saves the other kind of green—money. Greening is a learning process for you and your tenants, and there’s certainly no one-size-fits-all approach. These 7 tips are easy to adopt and shouldn’t cause any pain:
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