Currently, misconceptions are present in the home buying industry, which delude buyers into thinking that more expensive homes are better. Although better is a subjective term, the problem remains: People are overextending their budgets on homes that they cannot afford and on homes that they cannot afford to maintain. The inability to properly finance homes stems from the fatigued economy and job market, and foreclosures become prevalent when home buyers can no longer afford payments. Although many may argue that the key to solving the problem of foreclosures stems from the economic means of financing the home, I argue that foreclosures can be solved at the root of the problem, architecturally in the way we design and produce our homes. Sustainable architecture can greatly reduce the amount of money people pay on utility bills and other types of home expenses, making sustainable architecture more economically beneficial to those with modest budgets. Through looking at the precedent of the ecoMOD project, led by John Quale of the University of Virginia Architecture School faculty, and more specifically at the systems used in the ecoMOD OUTin House, the solution to solving foreclosures will extend from the claim that houses can be made to be both affordable and sustainable. Affordable houses that are also sustainable will solve the problem of foreclosures because the buyers will be able to afford the initial price of the home, while also being able afford the costs of utilities and other maintenance associated with home buying. When buying a home, every homebuyer wants the best house for the amount they are willing to pay. Some homes are innovative and deemed better, but are not well-designed for the budget of the people ... ... middle of paper ... ...o solve itself. The lessons of the ecoMOD housing projects can be applied on a national scale in the way architects and builders think about the designs of the homes they are building. The key to solving foreclosures is to make the home affordable in the cost of the building and in the cost of its maintenance. People can stop overextending themselves financially once options for better and more affordable housing are more readily available. Sustainable architecture provides this linkage. Once the trends in housing produce sustainable homes that reduce the cost of utilities and maintenance, then people will be able to afford better homes without overextending their budgets, because they are already saving money in utility costs. The problem of foreclosures can be eliminated if the root of the problem, the home, is effectively evaluated and improved upon.
With that in mind, it is important to understand a couple of concepts before analyzing and determining the effectiveness of that document. Although people do not always realize it, the purchase of a home is one of the b...
{Most people have some style and neighborhood preferences which can influence their decision when purchasing a new home.|If you are looking for a new home, chances are you have an idea of what type of neighborhood you want to live in and your preferred style of home before you even begin your search.|More things to consider when you're looking for a new home are the type of neighborhood, schools and home style preferences that you have.} {You can find out about most of this information through online searches, ads in newspapers or by contacting real estate offices.|You can find out a wealth of information by contacting real estate ...
As the lease of my apartment is coming to an end it had me thinking of achieving my own American Dream of home ownership but as I do my research I find the dream is far from coming true. I am sure that the issue of housing prices and rent rates are what most of us Bay Area residents talk about and debate. It is an issue that needs to be addressed by the officials of the area, city mayors, affordable housing committees, social justice activists,lawmakers, and even employers. Skyrocketing prices, low inventory, and investors’ bidding wars are not only pushing the middle and lower classes out of San Francisco and the Bay Area out but will completely eliminate them.
... A home is a material object that exists within a concrete reality. It exists with its own qualities, a house built of materials that change and degrade over time. The costs of homeownership are harder to dismiss when one becomes disillusioned with the effects of a lack of attention to those costs. As someone with a passion for writing, my final project will be an extended expository essay about the history of homebuilding from ancient to modern times.
middle of paper ... ... The important idea to remember is that you have to keep these costs in mind, or else you’ll be facing issues that you cannot overcome. Your budget should not be limited to buying a house alone, it should include a large margin for such additional costs.
Efforts to confront this issue were initiated by affects of World War II. Before the war, the Great Depression devastated the United States of America causing production of homes to stop. World War II soon followed and the country switched into productions for war, which also caused a halt i...
Green building has come forth over the past decade as a positive movement to produce high-performance, energy-efficient structures that improve comfort and health for resident, meanwhile, minimizing environmental impacts. Nevertheless, a common sense that green features is expensive and not suitable for affordable housing. Recent studies are showed that green buildings have a modest initial cost premium, but the long-term benefits far exceed the additional capital costs. For this report, I will introduce a financial analysis -Net Present Value (NPV), and discuss the impacts of NPV analysis for green affordable housing.
Housing affordability for first home buyers (FHB) in Australia has been broadly declining since the early 1980s. The latest data point to a fragmented outlook for the residential building industry. Two contrasting sub-groups of homeowners exist in Australia: outright buyers and mortgaged home owners with the FHB dominating the latter. Housing prices have however, remained tight, suggesting a lack of pricing freedom by suppliers with only the subbies on the negotiating table. Building disputes in the construction industry vary from small misunderstandings to full-blown fallouts. Both of which are damaging and a downright waste of time and money. The FHB has better things to do with their time.
Buying and owning your home is part of the American dream. Although the dream itself has since changed, the home still remains the main focal point. Today owning a home doesn’t necessarily mean a house. People now buy duplexes, cooperative apartments, and condominiums. For some families it could take up to a couple of generations before it’s able to have the capabilities of buying a home. To many people it means a certain achievement that only comes after years of hard work. It is a life altering decision and one of the most important someone can make in their lifetime. The reasons behind the actual purchase could vary. Before anything is done, people must understand that it’s an extraneous process and it is a long term project.
Habitable housing and the ‘Quality of life’ that it provides, brings the concept of “QUALITY” in the fore. This quest for quality of life includes in its ambit many areas of family’s life along with interpersonal relationship, interaction within community, and relationship to the environment and to immediate surroundings. It is generally observed that government intervention and market based responses to meet the housing need in urban areas of developing countries has been under tremendous pressure. This failure has forced the government to direct its available resources towards bridging the mismatch between demand and supply of housing. Thus, there has been relatively little research pertaining to the extent to which new housing meets people’s need, aspiration and preference.
Sustainable design seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment, the health and comfort of building occupants, thereby improving building performance. The basic objects of sustainability are to reduce consumption of non-renewable resources, minimal waste, and create healthy, productive environments (“Sustainable Design”). Focusing primarily on the sustainable design principles, there are five, including: low-impact materials, energy efficiency, quality and durability, design for reuse and recycling, and renewability. As sustainability appears to become the necessary trend in architecture, the question concerning the cost versus outcome of “going green” really an investment or a waste of time and money comes to mind. With our research provided below, we believe the expenses may truly be with the investment in the end.
When do we begin to make a decision on our dream House? After, living in a large house we need to make a decision on the right time to down size. We knew we needed less space. So we made a decision to begin our search. With great excitement we have begun looking thru differ books with house plans in them. We were in shocked there were so many plans out there to look at and so many styles. There’s so many decisions on what we think would be a dream house. How many floors? How many rooms? How much space do we need? What do we want the design of our house to look like? Where do we want to live? Do we want a brick house, wood house or vinyl siding house? There were days that we realized we could not wait to begin our new journey. We could not wait to get into our dream house.
... architectures would led to a more organic organization beneficial to the people that choose to make their lives in this city. Although this model of a sustainable city is not a perfectly closed loop, it lays the foundation for one that is. Over time, with constantly evolving and improving technology and new methods of design from the scale of products to buildings, the gaps in the loop could be closed, and a “true” sustainable city could be fully realized.
A green building (also referred to as sustainable building or green construction) is a structure that employs an approach that is responsible for the environment besides being efficient in regard to resources all through its life cycle: This is from selecting the site to designing it, constructing, operating, maintaining, renovating and demolishing it. To achieve this, the client, the engineers, the architects and the entire design team closely cooperate at all stages of a project (Yan and Paliniotis, 2006). Practicing Green Building complements and expands the conventional building design areas of comfort, durability, utility and economy.
Green architecture is an approach to building which has become more popular in the last 25 to 30 years. Also known as sustainable design, green architecture is a method of design that minimizes the impact of building on the environment. Once thought of as unconventional and nonstandard, both regulatory agencies and the public alike are quickly accepting green architecture as a socially responsible and logical means of construction.