The two sessions were about Smart Home Program, a project from Duke University and the Nats stadium being the first green ballpark in the U.S. that happens to be in our backyard. The Smart Home Program is a live-in lab at Duke, where students participate in an opportunity for bring innovative technology for residential industry. It took a couple of years to build the smart home, which is a 6,000 square feet research lab. Jim Gaston, who is the leader for this project, says that they had groundbreaking in 2005, but then realized that they had no money to financed the project. So, the students spent a year in 2006 to do fundraising. Construction then begins in 2007 and completed in the same year. The SH project earns a LEED Platinum. 

  

image: via SHP (more pics, here)

Some of the features you can find in the smart home. Via Smart Home Program.

• There are 5 double bedrooms in the home (4 on the top and 1 on the bottom).
• They are designated by their compass location. For example, the room on the north face on the east side is called Northeast Bedroom.
• Each bedroom is approximately 250 square feet and comes furnished with a 2 of the following: 3/4 loft,desk and chari, bookshelf, dresser, and wardrobe.
• A 2-person lab counter is provided in each room with a window view as extra working space for projects.

They have some pretty fascinating products/ projects in the works. Currently, the SH Program have few students working on a few projects. For example, there is a student working on the future of home wireless technology, where one day you can put your gadgets like laptop, cell phone, etc. on the table and re-charge your gadgets. You can read more about the program, here. 

Building the stadium for the Nats, created different challenges. Anika Landrenau, Architect with HOK, talks about the challenges they faced and things they learn in the process. Though the Nats is the first green stadium, LEED Silver, in the U.S., because they deal with different parties with different interests - the stadium owner and DC government - HOK didn't tell contractors that they're building towards LEED certification. The idea was to create a sustainable site where it's a Transit Oriented Development, involved in a voluntary cleanup project in a brownfield site with an intricate 30 acres separate sewer and storm. It provides alternative transportation where there are no public parking. People would take metro the the site. Now, they have to pay people to park. 

Some of the things discussed were the challenges faced in storm water management, water efficiency strategies to reach annual water savings of 30% over EPACT, where the baseline of water use according to EPACT requirement is 9.6 million gallon per year. Materials use for the projects include 20% building from recycle content, 35% building materials from around the region.

Oh one more thing, DC government is pretty strict about storm water management..

We got in to Singapore around 1:35am after some 21 hours of total flying time, starting from Washington DC to Narita, Tokyo to Singapore. It's been a long flight. There's going to be another hour before we finally land in Jakarta. The long journey home is worth it. To see my family.

Okay, Singapore airport is open 24 hours. And unlike most airports in the US, where you have to pay to surf the Internet, at this airport not only you can use their computers but also they give you free wireless access. All you have to do is to stop at the information counter, show your passport and they will give you your user ID to log in.

I will be posting off and on from there. Like leftover from Ecobuild. In the meantime, I invited few bloggers to post here. So, readers will have some variety.

Another thing that I'd like to tell you is this: I'm officially in transition to pursue my passion. I am still in real estate but in a different capacity. Still going to write for this blog. Instead of working with buyers, sellers directly, I will be working more with agents directly. I will be working with agents in a referral capacity. (this is where agents pay for my services).

My passion is to one day, to break all walls to education and make it affordable, accessible not only to the US but also expand it to the world. That's the project that I would love to spend my time on, whenever I am not blogging. Because this project will need funding, etc., which I don't have (yet) right now - I only have the dream and the guts to do whatever it takes to make it come true. This is where my shameless promo comes in. If you know anyone who needs help in community building, outreach, let me know. I am available.

Okay, 'nuff said. Hope you have a great holidays. Happy new year 2010!

Speaking of good deals, the one major city that held the record for higher percentage price reductions for two months in a row, is Minneapolis. 40% of listings have seen price reduction in any way and fashion. Arlington, Virginia, have 28% of increase in price reduction.

Looking for deals? Here are the areas, in our neighborhoods, with price reductions (as of today):

• Washington DC: 1,070 properties
• Arlington: 200 properties
• Fairfax: 131 properties
• Alexandria: 388 properties
• Falls Church: 124 properties
• Manassas: 76 properties
• Springfield: 69 properties

The luxury homes market, homes over $2 million, still have not bounced back yet. Sellers continue to offer their listings at an average of 14% price cut vs. 10% for homes under $2M. And the number represents 26% of all listings that have seen price cut.

More stats, here.

According to Census Bureau population estimates, between 1987 and 2007 the population of the Washington DC metropolitan area grew from 3.92 million to 5.31 million people, an increase of about 35.5 percent. The population growth rates over this period varied considerably within the metropolitan area. The Center City experienced a 7.6 percent population decline between 1987 and 2007 while all of the other subregions in the metropolitan area grew. The fastest growing subregion was the Outer Suburbs, where the population grew by 109.6 percent over the 20-year period, followed by the Far Flung Suburbs (80.0%), Inner Suburbs (27.4%) and Inner Core (23.7%).

[via New Geography]

Yes, not all burbs are created equal. I think people migrate for a couple of reasons, for example lower housing prices. The far flung burbs or exurbs may have gained more people because the housing prices were much, much lower then than say, outer burbs like Prince William county. The data, the writer use was as current as 2007, before foreclosure buying frenzy. So, I'd be interested to see how the tide have changed since then.

Full story here..

...I'm calling on Congress to consider a new program to provide incentives for consumers who retrofit their homes to become more energy-efficient, which we know creates jobs, saves money for families, and reduces the pollution that threatens our environment.  And I'm proposing that we expand select Recovery Act initiatives to promote energy efficiency and clean energy jobs which have been proven to be particularly popular and effective.

The additional values of energy retrofit (besides all the good stuff mentioned above) is the potential for higher homes valuation. Improvements should be documented, sort like comparing the before and after, for potential buyers to see the 'values' in it.

For full transcript here, press releases here.