Afterthoughts on the Green Home Community in Contra Costa County

Originally, a part of my thesis for this project was to investigate why the initial sales of the green home community in Contra Costa were failing, and what this could indicate for future developments for other Home Development Companies like CXP. Upon visiting the new community of homes, I saw that they were doing extremely well and had sold almost half of their units. Granted, the company had thrown in substantial incentives for buyers, like a hybrid car that’s MSRP starts at $22,000 and has a several month waiting list, but nevertheless, their homes were selling.

It is important also to note that these homes were several million dollars, well out of the majority of the population’s price range. The questions I ultimately were left with after my visit were the following:

• What is the statement that is made by building a $2 million dollar “Green Home”?
• Does this mean that at this point you need a lot of money to build and buy Green, or is it just that the developers have discovered a wealthy set of investors for their product and want to benefit from them?

Additionally, there were only two floor-plans for all 10 houses that I saw, and none of the houses differed very much except one had carpeting in some bedrooms, while another had bamboo composite. One side of the street seemed to completely be the two-story model, while the other side of the street was all the one-story. How do buyers feel about not having choices and variety for their homes?

I hope to answer these questions by looking at another larger Green Home community by this same developer, and by visiting Village Homes in Davis, CA (the original Green Development from the late 1970s). I will be visiting Village Homes around the third week of October, so stay posted for my findings after my visit.