Is $339,000 For This Green Solar-Roof Home In Chicago Affordable?
by April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden on 07.31.08
Solar Verde is a planned 20-home community near Chicago's South Chicago Heights subdivision which is intended to have all zero energy homes as defined by the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America program. The first two zero energy houses at Solar Verde, now completed, are supposed to be reminiscent of mail-order, Sears catalog-style homes of the early 20th century, except their solar roof panels, on-demand water heating, heat pump and high-efficiency building materials mean the homes should pay you back with significant energy bill savings.
Net zero electric bills?
The $339,000 price tag for the home is higher than Chicago's recent median of $262,000, and at 1,595 square feet it's also less roomy (U.S. median = 2,400 sq. ft.) than some would like, though with three bedrooms, 2.5 baths and a full basement. The sales pitch for the homes is that the photovoltaic systems can reduce electric bills to zero and avoid release of nearly 11,500 pounds of carbon dioxide annually, as well as around 40 pounds of SO2 and 30 pounds of NOx that would be emitted if coal-generated energy was used in a newly-built home.
Integrated 4 kilowatt solar roof panels
The homes' solar roof panels are a standard feature designed to provide most or all the energy and power a typical family would require, with a net metering system to feed excess to the grid when the sun shines as well as allow for owners to get all the electricity they need in winter and other low-sun periods. According to Solar Verde's builders, the solar rooftop tiles alone would run around $10,000 per kilowatt, or $40,000 for the 4 kW system. But the homes have a host of other features to make them energy efficient.
Extruded polystyrene walls, bamboo floors, PET carpet
To keep energy use (and energy bills) low at Solar Verde, the houses use prefabricated recycled plastic and steel wall systems from Techbuilt and R-50 efficiency value attic insulation. There are skylights to provide some natural lighting and compact fluourescent bulbs in other lighting fixtures. Bamboo floors or PET carpet from Beaulieu are used throughout the homes, as well as no-VOC paints, low flush toilets and wheatboard cabinets.
According to Schmidt, all these standard green and efficiency features will make the Solar Verde homes hold or increase their value as well. A white paper from the Solar Appraisal Institute says that each $1,000 in reduced energy costs for a home adds around $20,000 to its resale value. Via ::Solar Verde
More on zero energy homes:
In California:
Zero Energy Communities Being Built
Near London:
Beddington Zero Energy Development
And in Montreal:
Zero-Energy Condo Wins Equilibrium Competition
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- World's Greenest Homes Episode: Chicago House
- Home Renovation: Solar Realization (Video)
- Pink is the New Green
- Homeowners, Unite to Buy Cheaper Solar Power!
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regardless of their 'green-ness' they are still developments. whatever environmental damage will be avoided through their zero energy applications, the amount of damage caused by building these new homes (stripped land, unecessary use of new material, etc) completely negates the intention. we should re-use, and fix up the millions of empty old homes instead of tearing down more forests to build overly priced housing for those who pretend to care about the world they so falsely try to preserve. enough developments already.
I think that's a fair price compared to what I've seen for a similarly sized prefab home.
*cough*
Sorry, I'm trying to remove my foot from my mouth for not having read the whole article prior to my last comment. :)
I should say that I think that is a fair price compared to other prefab homes of a similar size.
Solar ? huh ? I thought Chicago is called the "windy city"...
As a former resident of metro Chicago, I'd say these are decent looking and fairly typical.
More interesting to me is the neighborhood - specifically the lack of one. Looks like a brown-field surrounding. Who'd want to live in that situation?
kind of expensive I would say considering what you can get in Hawaii right now on one whole acre.We have a really good rebate and tax rebate here now too.
Mahalo.
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Are you saying, Sunny, that you have a really good rebate on putting solar roof panels and roof tiles up? Also, you aren't saying a one acre parcel with house with solar roof tiles is available in a city are you?
That price is no way near fair at all.
I've got countless links to pre-fab homes and NONE go over $150k. And even that is still a bit much for our poor and working classes.
An affordable home is from $25k-$90k.
The size though, is good. Especially for three bedrooms. Sadly many of us Americans have been taught that bigger homes are better, when they really are not.
A larger home takes up more land space and material, plus they cost more.
So it is nice to see that someone is at least trying to downsize homes to European level. the sight of a McMansion is sickening.
But I'd like it even more if someone made single or couples only, pre-fabbed home. I'm single and have no need for lots of space. A home of 300-500 sqf would be wonderful.
I don't know if that's affordable to Chicagoers, but here in Vancouver, that's positively a steal! I doubt I could sell my 900 sq ft townhouse for that low.
People like Shawn (first comment) will never be satisfied.
Always great to see new green conscious developments. I hate when developers try to use the term "green building" as a marketing gimmick but only really have like 5-10% green elements in their construction.
As for the price, I live in Manhattan, so I'm unfit to judge. $300k will get you a tiny one bedroom apartment.
And here in Austin that price is ridiculously high. It's always amazing to me the perceived value of something based on where you are at the time.
"we should re-use, and fix up the millions of empty old homes instead of tearing down more forests..."
Shawn,
Millions of empty old homes? Please site your source. The only empty homes I see are for sale - not currently occupied, but by no means abandoned.
Meanwhile, the US population is increasing by almost three million people per year. If we stop building altogether, where will all of those people live?
Im guessing the price is so high because of land, that would be expensive in Chicago. I would never pay that kind of money for such a bad design though, Ive seen habitat for humanity houses that look better than these. Less money towards design means more money for developers I guess.
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why do you think the design is so bad, justin?
Let's look at the numbers.
Assuming the buyer is able to come up with 10% down (perhaps through a combination of savings, sweat equity and grants), a 30 year fixed mortgage based on today's rates (6.25%) would result in a monthly mortgage payment of $1,847.15. That's before property taxes and insurance, so let's add another 20% to that. That makes it $2216 a month. That's approximately the monthly take home pay of someone making 35,000 a year. If home and utility payments should be roughly 1/3rd of one's income, then in order to afford this home the family would need to earn $105,000 a year after taxes.
To me affordable means a family who earns twice the poverty rate for the region should be able to afford it. Therefore, this home is not affordable. The only way it would be affordable is if the solar panels generated enough energy to give the homeowner more than $1200 in energy income a month... I don't see that happening with today's technology.
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John, I just wondered if you meant $1,200 payback above and beyond low or no energy bills?
On Long Island, a home that size even without the greenness would be much, much more expensive.
And shawn, as long as populations grow, new housing will be built whether you like it or not. Since it costs less to improve efficiency and greenness at the time of construction than to put it in afterwards, we should try to make all new housing developments as green as we can. To some extent, this can be accomplished by encouraging denser housing, like in cities. But individual houses are not going away.
Plus, once houses are already built, making improvements is up to the individual owners. We should encourage them to do so, but it is much easier to make sweeping changes by altering patterns of new construction than to have a big impact by convincing individuals to improve house efficiency and greenness.
This isn't Chicago, exactly - it's South Chicago Heights which is a suburb 25 miles south of the city center. So I'm guessing it's on the higher end of new construction in that area.
i agree with justin. these houses are ugly. i think i like mcmansions better design wise (thats not saying much). the masonry already has efflorescence.
The article states that these home are in South Chicago Heights, which is about 25 miles SOUTH of Chicago. These homes are not being built in the city proper, and are not even being built in all that great of an area, for that I find them rather expensive.
Going zero-net-energy and green and all that is so very contrary the way developments have gone in recent memory. Which is a great step forward. But the designs provoke some commentary.
They are sort of fun, like a little America that you'd find in a east-coast ghost town theme park. But if I lived in one, I would slowly get the feeling the the house was ridiculing me with it's tacky facade.
More green, less kitsch!
Yup they sure do look ugly with those panels mounted on top. I think what they didnt know is that now Solar Panels are available with about 26 Trim colors to match the roof. You think that would have helped the Architecture a little. If interested check them out at
www.powerpartnerssolar.com. Also on the cost factor, I dont know if the project owner knew anything about the tax credits, rebates and incentives available to all by local utlity companies, federal and state government. There is a lot of info on www.dsireusa.org, about these incentives.
I'm a Solar energy enthusiast and I think anyone having similiar taste, or wanting to install a solar water heating system should visit the above mentioned websites. Its a great place to start.
Let the YELLOW in, and Become GREEN
South Chicago is not a suburb of Chicago. It is Chicago! It's also only a few blocks away from Lake Michigan.
for people to be able to go green all the way,
and to be able to completely eat organic etc,
one has too have money.. i would think these
down to earth, back to the basics would be cheaper
not more costly in the long run.
1. These homes are definitely in Chicago
2. For those people outside of the city you should not comment on a lack of neighborhood...standing on the front porch provides you with more than enough homes to look at on 96th Street and on Marquette. Having spoken to the developers today for their ribbon cutting (WGN news was there maybe it will show on the news tonight) they plan on building a total of 20 homes for this development.
3. I would like to know where the user Solar actually saw the panels because they are not in the picture above and you can only see the panels from the left side of the house and they absolutely match the roof, it had to be pointed out to us where the panels were during our tour; I would call that unobtrusive and certainly no where close to being ugly.
Me, the wife, and the kid just came from the ribbon cutting and the houses were great, if we could qualify to purchase we would. The bamboo floors looked great, looking at a wall made of styrofoam was very interesting, the model with the finished basement blew us away. The master bedroom did have a weird non-square style of layout that had us pondering how we could/would layout our bedroom in the same fashion we have now. That was the only "negative" we came away with.
To answer the question, "...is it overpriced?", no, I do not believe it is overpriced. Can my family afford it, no, not at this time.
One other thing, even though the solarverde site says it is a 4kW system, the developer said 3.5kW, oh, it was crazy seeing the solar water heater, the thing is smaller than my iMac and watching the power meter go backwards, earning credits from ComEd was wild. If we had the credit and 3% down payment we would be buying.