We just released a new version of the site last night that corrects an issue some building owners / managers were having when receiving a GreenRenter email from their building profiles. In those instances, the email subject and body were empty. Our apologies for the issue and rest assured it's taken care of now! We also applied a number of security and bug fixes to keep the site running smooth.

Thanks and let us know if you encounter any issues or have any questions.

I recently spoke with someone in Alameda County and they shared a few great case studies. I think that one that we must keep in mind is that going green is simply the 'right thing to do' - but there are real financial benefits to doing so!

An example of installing lighting and occupancy sensors. With incentives, the payback is less than one month! Even without incentives the payback is under 8 months. (http://sfenergywatch.org/pubs/JordanHousingCaseStudy.pdf)

An example of changing out metal halide lights with CFLs. With incentives, again under one month! If your area doesn't provide incentives at this time, the payback will be fully recognized in under 3 months. (http://sfenergywatch.org/pubs/TheWatermark.pdf)

These types of easy improvements are wins all the way around, renters are happier, operating costs are reduced, and more eco-friendly.

We recently dug up survey results from Rent.com from a year ago and excited how the data supports exactly what Green Renter is doing. Simply, renters prefer eco-friendly living. Included in their results are the following key points:
"...Nearly 9 in 10 Americans (86%) would prefer to live in an eco-friendly spare; and more than half (55%) of these are willing to pay more in rent to do so. Renters were almost three times as likely as non-renters (11% vs. 4%) to say living in an environmentally-friendly home is absolutely necessary for them. According to the survey, 42% of respondents were willing to pay up to $100 extra to live in a green apartment, and 13% would pay even more than that. Even though respondents are willing to pay more in rent to live in an eco-friendly apartment, 2/3rds said that money was the biggest barrier to making eco-friendly choices...."

At Green Renter, we continue to work on our GreenRenter Score so that renters can better compare between rental options. It is exciting to see data that supports what are customers having been communicating to us for over 3 years.

As I talked to owners and property managers around the US, there continue to be very positive feedback about GreenRenter. Many start out as general support for such a tool that connects green minded renters with apartments and houses that best align with their needs. However, it does see that each story starts to evolve into how beneficial
it has been to connect directly with green renters.

"GreenRenter is great and focuses on the right things. We don't actually actively rent our property because of such high demand. In fact, the last two units we filled were on our waiting list and broke their other lease to move into our building when it became open. Oh, I guess both of these leads came to us from GreenRenter!"

I started thinking that it would be good to reach out and see if other buildings can share their stories with us as well. 

So, if you have an experience that you would like to share with us - please email it to info@greenrenter.com. 

Thanks,

-Nick

I attended this conference last year. It was very well organized and did an amazing job of harnessing the expertise of both professionals and job seekers. In sum, I witnessed valuable networking and real jobs being offered!  Here's the description

The Green Professionals Conference (GPC) is an event for students and professionals; providing learning, networking, and employment opportunities within the sustainability industry.

 http://www.green-professional.com 

I've been greenwashed!

Now that green is good business there's lots of talk about "greenwashing" and the danger posed by spurious claims to sustainability. If consumers feel duped after spending more money on a product they thought was eco-friendly but is actually the same old thing in a new (100% post consumer material) package, they won't buy green again - or so the argument goes. 

But what if everything we've come to think about green is wrong? O.K., not wrong but, excuse my French, half-assed?

That's how I felt after learning about passive house. Like I wanted to rewind our pretty-damned-significant investment in new double-paned Low-E windows, weather stripping, duct sealing, air sealing, a high-efficiency furnace and about a million feet of insulation. Like these utility-sanctioned energy efficiency upgrades were just another bottle of Clorax Green Works dish detergent!

Passive house is the real deal

Passive house is a German energy efficiency building standard. And it makes LEED look like a bad case of greenwashing. A passive house is first and foremost a well-insulated, leak-proof building. It's so tight that you barely need to heat or cool it. There are lots of technical ways this is achieved, the vast majority using building techniques that are NOT cutting edge. No points for fancy new systems in this standard - it's all about performance.

Things got busy around GreenRenter at the end of the year and there were a back log of properties to be evaluated. Well, we have been hard at work reviewing each listing.

 As of today, we are caught up and have given out GreenRenter Scores for 25 properties so far in 2011!

 Continue to spread the word about the best place to introduce green renters with green properties.

Looking ahead to 2011, GreenRenter.com is planning to expand the listings in your area. Over the last 3 years there have been hundreds of properties listed and over a 1000 contacts made. This is only a start and we are now hard at work making improvements to the site and spreading our message.

GreenRenter.com is now listed in the Rate It Green directory:

http://www.rateitgreen.com/company/greenrentercom/service/greenrentercom

Thanks for your continued support.

We've been working overtime here at GreenRenter to launch a couple major changes to the site.

First, introducing the new GreenRenter Score! When we launched GreenRenter almost a year ago we shied away from rating buildings according to their shade of green. We reasoned that there were plenty of other people out there doing that, namely the US Green Building Council and their LEED rating system.

But, much of the early feedback we received from bloggers like Paul Smith at GreenSmith Consulting and sites like KillerStartups (thanks everyone!) suggested that renters needed an easy way to compare the properties they're interested in. While we still think trying to compare two buldings is an apples and oranges problem, we think we've found a simple and relatively painless scoring system that has benefits for everyone.

Every residential building on GreenRenter (commercial building scores are coming soon!) now has a 1 to 5 score, the higher the score the greener the building. The score is based on the building's green features, with weight given to innovativeness and breadth. You can also filter by score, using the filters on the right side of the list pages.

We go into more detail about the GreenRenter Score in our FAQ, and feel free to contact us with any questions or comments!