Green Real Estate

To kick off the summer driving season, we promoted a rideshare day at the Realogy headquarters on Friday, June 20. For weeks we revved up the internal communications machine to drive participation through stump speeches, email newsletters, plasma screen promos, executive emails, flyers, sign up tables and water cooler talk. We even held out the carrot of two $50 gas cards. It was a full court press. The result? Out of a building population of about 900, we had 88 register with Nuride.com (not bad), and on the big day itself, about 25 people took the leap and carpooled into work.

It’s a modest start, I admit, but it’s a start all the same. Our sister company, Cartus, started their program three years ago and now have over 400 employees registered in the Nuride.com system. Over 180 participated in their Earth Day rideshare event this year. Someday, I hope to get to that level.

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Posted by Kevin Doell

Trite but true, “all real estate is local.” Yet, the parts make up the whole, and when you put all those parts together, you arrive at the “big picture.” Analogous to this is that all environment is local, too. In countless villages, towns and cities, individual activity affects the local environment in ways that result in a significant collective impact on a global scale.

As ambassadors for the homeowner, real estate professionals have the perfect platform to deliver value by educating the consumer on ways they can green up the home to save money while improving the home’s environmental footprint.

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Posted by Kevin Doell

Last week I immersed myself in green by checking out an EcoBroker training event in Kingston, NY. The event lasted three days: one day on health issues, one day on energy conservation issues and a third on marketing. In all, it was a lot of ground to cover. During breaks I would take the temperatures of the attending brokers and agents who all seemed to be enjoying the course and getting something from it.

As expected, there were all types in the crowd with backgrounds that ran the eco-gamut – from “super die hard,” to “looking for a new angle,” to “professionally intrigued.” And though the famed Woodstock, N.Y. was just a stone’s throw away from our digs at the Quality Inn, not a Birkenstock was to be seen amidst the group. It seems that some of the old badges and trademark apparel of green has fallen by the wayside. There needn’t be a visual cue present for a green spirit to lie within.

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