Comments on: Ashworth Cottages - what went wrong?

By: DJC Green Building Blog » Blog Archive » Ashworth Cottages: how much of a premium will people pay for green?

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:09:09 +0000

[...] May, I wrote a post about what went wrong at Ashworth here and it has been one of my most popular Image courtesy [...]

By: Jon

Jon — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:16:21 +0000

My wife and I are hunting for our first home and walked by this complex last night. Considering their size, lack of land, and proximity to each other, we both felt that they were on par with some of the nicer town homes in the area. We were both excited about the prospect of giving the Ashworth Cottage office a call until we looked them up on-line and learned that the asking price STARTS at $550K (recently dropped $100K). Homes priced at $650K are largely out of the realm of possibility for first-time home buyers, and my guess is that most people looking to upgrade their living situation are going to look for more land, more space, nicer materials, and more tangible investments to spend their net gains on. I appreciate the LEAD certification process, but I don’t think that residential buyers are ready to offer it a monetary value just yet. I certainly would rather spend my money on a bigger, nicer, sub-half-million town house down the road than have to save $50K extra dollars for the down payment on an Ashworth Cottage when it offers no immediate benefit to me. Does that make me a bad person? Can I reduce my ecological footprint in ways that won’t cost me $250,000 that I don’t have? I think those are the questions that are going to lead this development into foreclosure.

By: Dreaming of a Cottage

Dreaming of a Cottage — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:00:14 +0000

These are lovely residences, but there’s no greenery for the howm owner, and the decks are small, small, small. If they had a little garden and a bit bigger deck, and better garage access, I think they’d make a go. But, $700+ and not any privacy is just too much.

By: csob

csob — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:50:02 +0000

I toured the models today (6/7/9) and found them to be very unattractive. Nice fit and finish, decent appliances, but awkward spaces. One two story unit had a “detached” garage, meaning you had to walk out the front door, past the neighbor, walk to the back of the houses, down a flight of stairs and past your neighbor’s garage door to get to yours. Imagine that with two kids in two. Now imagine the reverse with two kids and multiple bags of groceries… in the rain.

The site is next to a Seattle Parks Department yard where it looks like a great deal of hard, dirty, noisy work gets done during the week. All this and more for $750K to $1M. Wow!

What were they thinking? I guess they thought we would put up with the awkward spaces and inconvenient layout in return for LEED Platinum logo and the privilege of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more than comparable houses. They were wrong!

By: Carol

Carol — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:34:54 +0000

I toured the cottages with a realtor about 4 months ago and fell in love with them but not the price tag. My husband and I want to downsize but with 2 kids in college who might return home someday we also want room for them. Now that the prices have come down we might think about buying. That is if we can get rid of our house on MI! And a note to the greenlake neighbor remember what empty property does to your own home’s value!!!!

By: Green Goddess

Green Goddess — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:17:50 +0000

This is everything that annoys me about LEED. It is too much and not enough. I appreciate the aspects of the concepts that USGBC endorses but when you add so many features that the price exceeds the practicality and affordabilyt there is no hope for it to become the norm in Residential build it will be associated with a luxury product.

Location in this case has NOTHING to do with the problems with these units they are simply too expensive, poorly designed and over developed. Had they half the units and made them bigger with yard they would have been snapped up.

Seattle touts green but more importantly they tout affordabilty. Really this is town with only FEW real people who could afford such outrageous prices. I have looked at them and with some minor tweaking they could still be very green but still very affordable. Its this projects among a few others that give green a luxury image that is just plain wrong.

By: greenlake nieghnor

greenlake nieghnor — Wed, 27 May 2009 23:38:44 +0000

You fail to mention, a large majority of the units are not free standing cottages, but town homes. The neighborhood fought this level of density tooth and nail, despite obvious collusion between Pryde&Johnson and the city. We were insulted and ridiculed by both the city and the developer for our concerns.

I realize I should not find joy in my enemies suffering, but I get a small moment of ecstasy every time I pass this empty development on my way home each night. I pray every night for those that I have resentments with; I pray Pryde&Johnson goes bankrupt.

By: mike

mike — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:21:13 +0000

LEED platinum is a joke. plus these are ugly.

jump on the passivhaus/minergie bandwagon before it’s too late!

By: Katie

Katie — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:57:08 +0000

Thank you all for your very thoughtful comments. Your viewpoints flesh out the issue and create a visual image of the different problems that might have helped cause Ashworth’s problems.

This post got a lot of attention, and sparked similar posts and viewer comments over at The Seattle PI and Hugeasscity (thanks, Aubrey and Dan!)

This is a topic I’m really interested in and will be following. Though most people I’ve talked to say the recession will actually be good for green building, we’ll just have to see whether that pans out….

By: Too Much Green For Green In Greenlake | hugeasscity

Too Much Green For Green In Greenlake | hugeasscity — Thu, 21 May 2009 07:54:51 +0000

[...] the heck happened (besides the obvious)? Over at the DJC’s Green Building Blog the general consensus seems to be that the LEED Platinum certified Ashworth Cottages are simply [...]