Modern housing is on the rise in Austin, making it easier for the modernist to move into a brand new home, instead of waiting for a mid century A.D. Stenger to come on the market. Six miles east on Martin Luther King Blvd, the Agave residential development is finishing up its first round of homes. Touted as “Austin’s premier contemporary residential development,” all of Agave’s 160 homes will be built with a modern flair.

Agave is actually the third phase of Sendero Hills, with the first two set up for low to middle income homeowners, with Agave geared towards the middle class. In so doing, Agave has qualified for the city’s S.M.A.R.T. (Safe, Mixed-income, Accessible, Reasonably-priced, Transit-oriented) housing policy, which includes meeting the city’s Green Building standards, and energy efficiency for their customers, with amenities such as low E windows and tankless hot water heaters.

Possibly the biggest draw for homeowners to the Agave Development is the chance to own a home designed and built by some of the city’s top Architects, without having to pay top dollar for the exact same house in the heart of the city. The list of architects includes Emily Little who has recently won the Austin Chronicle’s Readers’ Poll for “Best Architect”, and has been designing and preserving some of Austin’s best structures for the last twenty years. Also, KRDB has a set of homes going up after quickly becoming one of the hottest design/build firms in the city, with their Cedar Avenue houses gracing the cover of Dwell Magazine. The Casa Bella Architects have been in business since 1989, and also have their hat in the ring, after many environmentally friendly, and beautifully modern buildings, such as the award-winning Ullrich WaterTreatment Plant, and Austin’s soon-to-come recycling center.

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Are you buying a home in Austin, Texas? Did you know that the seller is required to provide you an energy audit? This is a requirement of the Energy Conservation Audit and Disclosure (ECAD) ordinance, whose purpose is to make all Austin homes more energy efficient. The goal is to save enough energy that Austin does not have to build more power plants. The program is administered by the city owned utility, Austin Energy.

An ECAD audit is performed by an Austin ECAD auditor who is registered with Austin Energy. The auditor analyzes energy use of the home using official forms provided by the City. The Austin ECAD auditor looks at a number of different areas of the home that effect energy use. He or she will analyze which windows should have solar screens on them as solar heat gain is major contributor to energy use in the summer. The ECAD auditor will measure the attic insulation and estimate its effective R value. The Austin Energy auditor will analyze and describe the duct system and the HVAC system as well as run a Duct Blaster test on each HVAC system. The Duct Blaster is a calibrated fan and manometer that will measure how much the ducts leak air, typically into the attic.

With this and other information collected on the official ECAD form, home buyers have a snapshot of energy use of the home they are purchasing. However, ECAD audits are a subset of more comprehensive energy audits that all registered energy auditors are trained to perform. To qualify to perform ECAD audits, all energy auditors must either be certified through BPI or RESNET, the two energy auditor certification organizations.

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Austin Real Estate has always been the most prominent option for all those who love to be in touch with nature. The aspect of environmentalism has gained much popularity in all walks of life. It has got so much importance in the modern world. In the earlier times, the people were not much concerned about the environment and its significance in the process of sustaining life in this planet.

Now, the situation has changed a lot. Even the residential and commercial construction designs are giving prominence to the being in close touch with the nature. Austin was the foremost city of the United State of America to establish and implement a green-building program. It was done by planning for long term environment friendly home building guidelines for the people interested in the construction of new homes.

The national association of home builders has selected the city of Austin as their target area to launch their campaign for a complete green building scenario, with the view of changing the outlook towards environment within the whole real estate industry. This was done in the year 2004. They have selected the city of Austin itself because, the Austin Real Estate is considered as the leader in this process in the whole of US. These guidelines are aimed at creating a unified nature friendly home building strategy, which features energy efficient and high quality indoor environmental homes. It is a surprising fact that the city of Austin was having such guidelines for a long time even before the association has started to implement it in a nationwide basis.

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