It ain't easy being green housing.
Two highly publicized Orange County homes built with recycled or Earth-friendly materials and packed with energy-efficient appliances and many more green features are languishing on the market.
A couple weeks ago, a home in Costa Mesa with the nation's highest rating under the LEED green
building program withstood a drastic price cut. Now comes word that the first green home in Huntington Beach–and among the first in Orange County–is headed for a foreclosure auction.
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The Orange County Register's Marilyn Kalfus blogs about the 3-bedroom, 5-bath house at 319 21st St. in Surf City's downtown that is set to be
offered as a trustee sale on Oct. 27 at 3 p.m. in front of the Orange
Civic Center, 300 E. Chapman Ave., Orange.
The 2,817-square-foot pad–which fits snugly onto a 2,938-square-foot lot–hit the market at $1,695,000 in January, later dropped
to $1,295,000, then $1,095,000 and, most recently, $999,000, reports Kalfus, who adds the mortgage holder owes $1,374,217.11 on the original loan taken out in 2006 with the now-defunct IndyMac bank.
With the local media there to lap up every word, public officials lauded the tri-level home as Orange County's future during its debut in November 2009.
It was built with recycled and non-toxic building materials, included high-end, energy-efficient appliances and excellent indoor air quality when compared with typical OC homes.
Given the price cuts, the abode's latest listing dubs it “a lucrative opportunity.” One Realtor tells Kalfus it's “a great house for a
steal.”
Passing the 7-bedroom, modern Craftsman-style house at 1811 Gisler Ave., Costa Mesa, on my bike this past weekend, I noticed the for sale signs are still out front. Kalfus reported the home's price was slashed nearly $500,000 last month, taking the price down to $2,499,999 from its January listing price of $2,999,000.
The back of the 4,900-square-foot home on 0.32 of an acre faces the 11th green of the private Mesa Verde Golf Course.
Having earned the platinum rating from LEED–“Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design”–the home includes solar power, natural lighting, Energy Star appliances, LED lighting throughout, low-flow toilets and faucets, an internal gray water system that recycles sink and shower water for toilet flushes and outdoor irrigation and landscaping with plants native to Orange County–among many, many more green features.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.