High up in the mountains of Colorado, nestled among the classic western frontier-era Victorian homes in the heart of the Breckenridge historic district, a new property development has just wrapped-up construction - two new "Epic Homes" have recently been brought to market by The Mountain Life Companies that could forever change the landscape of new home buyers' evolving preferences and expectations when choosing to invest in real estate - and they are truly Epic.
Through careful study of our proprietary market analysis of today's new home buyers we have learned that consumers' "evolving preferences" are now inclined toward deeper and more long-term design and performance expectations than homeowners have ever had before.
Consumers’ evolving design and performance preferences have emerged at the same time that sustainability and technology have grown more intertwined with new home construction. Buyers now expect new construction homes to meet rigorous energy-efficiency standards, to be constructed with healthy indoor environments in mind and to offer 21st century amenities that make their lives easier.
These contemporary preferences are also based on prudent investment principles. A recent study by Earth Advantage found that new homes with a green certification sold for 9% more than traditional (lower performance) new homes. Consumers now understand the value in what is often their largest asset performing more efficiently, thereby saving significant operating costs which can be spent in much more meaningful ways.
This prevailing dynamic has relegated older, more traditional homes to the ‘fixer-upper’ category as home buyers seek out options for their next property investment, which emphasizes the divide among homes that are available in the marketplace and those that are currently outfitted with today’s consumers’ desired accoutrements. Just as we may eagerly anticipate the newest iPhone release or another exciting new technological advance, we are now seeking continuous incremental improvement by the companies from which we prefer to purchase our products, however the home building industry has seemingly failed to keep pace with the wishes of today’s home buyers and investors.
Equally in flux today are the choices that property developers must reconcile when determining how best to design and build homes that satisfy new home buyers' inclinations and evolving preferences in their search for the perfect dwelling. Now, it is more important than ever that developers carefully delineate the significant differences between today's "trends" in new home construction and the far more meaningful "evolving preferences" of modern consumers in the new home market. Developers who have sought out deep information on consumer preferences and have implemented the appropriate features and amenities are at a significant advantage in today’s marketplace.
Enter The Epic Home. An 'Epic Home' is not just a high-performance, resource-efficient and certifiably healthy home for its occupants, it is a home which actually communicates with its inhabitants on a deeper level, intuitively learning their preferences, sharing information, and connecting home processes in order to ensure not only the safety and comfort of its people while delivering significant operating cost savings, but also bestowing it’s homeowners with what they seek the most out of a real estate investment - peace of mind.
In Breckenridge, the Epic Home has recently come to life, forever changing the landscape of new home offerings. This groundbreaking new residential development in the heart of the downtown historic district, aptly entitled Epic On French is the focus of many green building and smart home experts' attention, as well as home buyers and investors, as it is truly unlike any other new construction residential project in today's marketplace.
The Epic Home was conceived in 2013 with the developer's goal to build new homes that challenge today’s status-quo by providing home buyers with options that reflect their modern notions of what the perfect home may be. These two new Epic Homes found their place with the acquisition of a locally famous piece of land at a historically significant location where the "Little Red School House" used to exist, originally dating back to the late 1800s, setting into motion the developer's forward-thinking property development approach which brought forth the design and construction of two new Epic Homes that now stand as beacons for what smart, high-performance development can achieve when seeing clearly into the hearts and minds of consumers and their evolving preferences.
The last decade has brought about truly transformative change in the home building industry, specifically in the realm of high-performance design and construction, however just as some of our greatest expectations eventually become taken-for-granted realities, new things comes along and changes everything again, as if for the first time. This is where Epic Homes stand as exemplars of change to guide this industry toward a new, higher consciousness of development, the new American home: intuitive, high-performance living environments.
In articulating "intuitive" more clearly, we refer to an ‘integrated smart home ecosystem’. Of course, anyone can add smart home features to any home - the difference here is that it's really all about analyzing potential homeowners' habits and preferences and implementing an intuitive ecosystem around the occupants which accomplishes their goals while creating more time for the more important matters in life.
Further clarifying, an intuitive home is a home that has an interconnected system of smart home features that communicate with each other. This whole-home smart ecosystem learns and acts upon the data it collects and information it has been provided and ensures that its occupants’ preferences are being tended to around the clock and that their safety, security and comfort are always managed to their precise predilections. For example, let's look specifically at how the Epic Homes in Breckenridge change the dynamics of occupant living and set an innovative new standard for the home building industry.
Epic Homes come with an interconnected smart home ecosystem of technologies that communicate with each other. To start, the system of multi-zoned Nest Learning Thermostats throughout the homes ascertain information about the homeowners' daily habits and preferences thereby controlling the environment of each distinct space in the home, for example increasing the heat in the living room and kitchen before your arrive home from a chilly day on the slopes.
At the same time, these Nests are also communicating with their Nest Protect partners throughout the residence that are keeping close watch over potential indoor environmental problems such as smoke and carbon monoxide. Now that the interior comfort and safety are being managed, Nest is also interconnected with Wemo smart-lighting throughout the homes, recognizing when its people arrive home and turning on appropriate lights at the right time for their safety and preferred ambiance.
Nest is also consistently in communication with its friend, the Rachio smart-irrigation system outside so if smoke is detected, Nest Protect tells Rachio to wet down the outdoors to help mitigate fire spread to your community - a feature I’m sure we all wish our neighbors had as well! At the same time, Nest is communicating with the MyQ smart-garage door system and with the IFTTT protocol (If This Then That) which enables pairing of other smart home devices that aren't specifically designed to work together so one can fortify their “home intelligence quotient” (HIQ) as one grows more savvy with their connected-home lifestyle.
Finally, Nest is also in communication with Amazon's Alexa, the personal virtual-assistant enabling voice command of your entire smart home system without having to ever touch a device. Even the Epic Homes' door locks and doorbells are connected to the Weave technology that Google and Nest developed and have integrated into their smart home products. The Epic Homes' smart ecosystem are completely interconnected and always in communication, both with each other and with the homeowner.
An intuitive Epic Home is a much safer, much more comfortable and more easily managed home that is always tending to its occupants’ preferences not unlike the concierge of a 5-star hotel, anticipating their arrival, setting their comfort and preferences based on their history and saving them the time and stress of having to manage mundane tasks.
Epic Homes are not just intuitive homes though - they are among the greenest, most healthy and environmentally sustainable homes in the marketplace. These homes stand far above standard new construction homes as they are slated to earn the prestigious LEED Platinum Certification, the green building industry's highest award issued by the US Green Building Council, as well as the US Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star for Homes Certification, WaterSense Certification and Advanced Lighting Certification – all of which are today's gold standards of high-performance design and construction in their own realms of sustainability and conservation.
LEED for Homes Platinum Certification accounts for every detail of a home's planning, design and construction, from appropriate site development and material resource conservation, to energy conservation and indoor occupant health, all the way through the critical-path of development to completion and third-party verification of all features and documentation in order to assure the homeowners that indeed this home meets or exceeds the incredibly high standards of LEED certification criteria.
Responsible for assuring that the Epic Homes are built to meet these high standards is Verdigris Group, one of The Mountain Life Companies’ recently acquired subsidiary businesses that has been a leader in the high-performance construction consulting industry for over a decade and is recognized globally for their work in sustainability in the built environment. These Epic Homes’ have been carefully designed and constructed under the sustainability expertise and green building guidance of the professionals at Verdigris Group in order to earn the conservation and efficiency results that come with such industry accolades.
In order to confirm that these Epic Homes in fact do perform as designed, Colorado’s top independent, home-performance consulting firm, Deeper Green Consulting based in Dillon, Colorado has been engaged with the responsibility of 3rd-party verification of all of the green attributes of these Epic Homes thereby ensuring their ultra-high level of performance for the certifying bodies’ verification and documentation, as well as for the home buyers' peace of mind.
As mentioned, in addition to this gold standard of green home certification, the Epic Homes of Breckenridge are slated to achieve WaterSense certification in order to address one of today's most concerning global issues – water efficiency and conservation. The smart use of our water resources through water-saving technologies around the house are both a green feature and a smart feature. Using water efficiently helps ensure reliable water supplies today and for future generations. The Epic homes are equipped with only WaterSense certified fixtures, including the exterior irrigation system, ensuring that these homes are achieving the highest marks when it comes to the efficiency of one of our most critical resources.
To home buyers these designations and certifications simply represent peace of mind. Homeowners can rest easy knowing that extra care has been taken to ensure that their family and friends enjoy a seriously healthy living environment that is also easy on Mother Earth.
By looking through the lenses of Green (High Performance) and Smart (Intuitive) one can see that they work together naturally since both lenses serve as design perspectives and scientific construction practices that are now more entangled with each other than ever before.
For example, in order to develop a truly green home the developer would design and build with conservation as a focus - since we're just discussing the topic of water, let's look at conserving water through both lenses. Not only is installing WaterSense fixtures a good idea inside the home (saving homeowners an average of 500 gallons annually), but it is also an excellent plan for any exterior irrigation needs. By adding intuitive technology to your water conservation system, as is implemented in Epic Homes, the smart technology enables greater conservation and cost savings through its ability to constantly check weather forecasts and monitor on-site conditions in order to prevent watering lawns or gardens when rain is impending for example, or to prevent fires from spreading in the case of a catastrophe.
While presenting The Epic Home to a group at the US Green Building Council's annual Greenbuild Expo and Trade Conference in Los Angeles Mr. Hasenstab stated, "We've set extraordinarily high goals with this new development, and not only are we exceeding our sustainability and efficiency goals through our implementation expertise in ultra-green design and construction, we also set out to achieve the goal of seamlessly incorporating state-of-the-art smart home ecosystems that dramatically and positively impact owners' lives through higher levels of safety, comfort, resource conservation and cost savings than have ever previously been achieved in our industry."
He continued, "The intended result of these concerted efforts has always been to provide people with peace of mind. Peace of mind knowing that their home is the smartest, greenest and most socially conscious home in the marketplace today. The peace of mind knowing that they are saving money for their family and resources for their community - both of which create the foundation for a more sustainable future. Peace of mind knowing that their home is looking after them and they can communicate with their home on a deeper level, which as we have learned, can be very comforting indeed."
Epic Homes are like another loyal and caring family member in and of themselves. From the beginning of the relationship these homes are intrinsically designed and built to protect and conserve. As they learn all about their inhabitants and grow more knowledgeable, they are always keeping a watchful eye on domestic safety and security, energy efficiency and resource conservation, comfort and health so their people can get on with the serious business of living their lives to the fullest. Epic Homes are the future of the home building industry and are now available for tours and for purchase in Breckenridge.
For information about tours or purchasing an Epic Home please contact Mountain Life Real Estate at 800.805.2830 or locally at 970.368.2008 or visit the new development’s website at: EpicOnFrench.com
For more information on green building design and construction consulting please contact Verdigris Group at their Mountain Region offices at 303.952.5051 or visit VerdigrisGroup.com
For more information about high performance home consulting and verification
contact Deeper Green Consulting at 970-389-2448 or visit visit
DeeperGreenConsulting.com
Mountain Life Real Estate / Mountain Life Brokers
Toll-free: 800 805 2830
Denver: 303 952 5051
Summit: 970 368 2008
Vail: 970 360 7206
info@MountainLifeCompanies.com
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