We’re Having a 10th Anniversary Party This Friday & You’re Invited!

Golden Real Estate was incorporated in July 2007, which means that this is our 10th Anniversary. Join us this Friday, July 14th, 5-8 pm, when we’ll be throwing a party in our South Golden parking lot with live music and free food.

Broker associate Jim Swanson and his “Lakeside Doublewide“ band will entertain us, with three sets of your rock n roll favorites.

Over the past decade, Golden Real Estate has earned a well-deserved reputation for our commitment to energy efficiency, solar power, electric cars and sustainability in general. In 2010, the City of Golden honored us with their “Sustainability for Business Award.”  When you come on Friday, bring your white block Styrofoam for recycling! 

 

Because of this reputation, our 10th Anniversary party will also be a mini-expo.  We’ve invited three of our favorite vendors to promote their services in front of our 20-kilowatt solar array.

Don Parker, the owner of Golden Solar, which installed our solar array, will be there to answer your questions about solar power and offer a free estimate on installing solar PV for you!

 

Bill Lucas-Brown, the owner of GB3 Energy, which did the super-insulation of our office, will explain that process and offer a free estimate on doing the same for your home or office. 

 

Andrew Sams, the owner of Alpine Building Performance, LLC, is a home inspector with special training on energy efficiency. He also performs energy audits which we give to our buyers as a closing gift. He will be there to explain why you might want to have an energy audit of your home.

Lastly, John Avenson will be manning an informational table for the Metro Denver Green Homes Tour taking place on Oct. 7, 2017. It will be your chance to visit over a dozen “green” homes!

In addition to those information tables, we’ll have a Car Show! On display will be four leading electric cars — 2017 models of the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, Chevy Volt, and Tesla Model X, all open for you to touch, sit in and inspect!  Steve Stevens’ Model X will even put on a music-and-light show that you won’t believe!

Come hungry, because Tequila’s Mexican Family Restaurant, will cater the event. And we’ll have carrot cake for dessert, with 10 candles on it!

Our thanks to another neighbor, First Presbyterian Church, located just north of our office, for providing the tables and chairs for this event and for opening their own parking lot for you to park in.

As members of Golden Rotary, we’ll be taking orders for peaches at $37 per 20-lb. box, to be picked up at the Jeffco Fairgrounds on Aug. 19th. If you can’t come to our party, order them at www.GoldenRotaryPeaches.org/ This is a major annual fundraiser for Golden Rotary, netting funds for many charitable activities.

The Golden Chamber of Commerce will honor us with a 10th anniversary ribbon cutting at 5:30.  All in all, it should be a fun time, and we hope you’ll want to join us for it!

Our Favorite Sustainability Practices & Improvements

By JIM SMITH, Realtor®

   Golden Real Estate is known for its sustainable practices. Indeed, we were recognized as early as 2010 with the City of Golden’s Sustainability Award for Business.

   Here are some of the practices and improvements which earned us this award, plus some measures we’ve taken since 2010 to deepen our commitment to sustainability.

   Recycling of Styrofoam: We have a “Styrofoam Corral” behind our office where anyone can drop of their block white polystyrene (aka Styrofoam, which is a brand name) 24/7.  At least once a month, we take a truckload of this material to a reprocessing center in Denver, keeping over 200 cubic yards of it out of landfills annually.

  Solar Power: Our office (and my own home) have enough solar panels to power not only our office, but our electric cars. In addition, we have two ChargePoint charging stations for EV’s that are free to the public.

  Reusing trash bags: I can’t remember the last time I purchased trash bags. We dump our trash and recycling materials loose into the trash carts, then reuse the plastic bags over and over again.

  Super insulation of home and office: Insulation is the smartest way to save on energy — and has the biggest return on investment (ROI). By hiring GB3 Energy to do an energy audit and install basement, crawl space and attic insulation as well as caulking windows, we have significantly reduced our heating and cooling costs.

  Driving electric cars:  I have driven nearly 200,000 miles on electricity in my Chevy Volt and Tesla cars. The lifetime MPG for the Volt (which has a range-extending gas engine) is over 200 mpg. Back in 2015 I drove my Tesla round-trip to Connecticut, and the only cost was the wear on my tires thanks to the free Supercharging. New Teslas don’t have unlimited free Supercharging — unless you’re referred by a current owner. Use my referral code to get a $1,000 discount and that free charging: http://ts.la/james6985.

  Solatubes: The generic name for these alternatives to skylights is “sun tunnels.” (Solatube is a brand name; my favorite brand is Velux.)  By installing Velux sun tunnels in our office and at home, we use less electricity for lighting — saving us more electricity to power our automobiles!

Published June 29, 2017, in the Denver Post's YourHub section.

 

Think Twice, Please, Before Buying a New Car

There are some great end-of-year deals to be had on new cars, but I urge you to consider the following before falling for one of those great deals.

Gas-powered cars and light trucks are obsolete. That isn’t just my opinion as the owner of a Chevy Volt and a Tesla. Every manufacturer in the world sees the writing on the wall and is rushing to introduce electric cars. Volkswagen, for one, has announced that it will introduce 30 different electric models by 2025. 

The German government passed a resolution in October urging the EU to make it illegal to sell cars with internal combustion engines (ICE’s) starting in 2030. Given the size of Germany’s (and the EU’s) car market, this action will only stimulate manufacturers to ramp up their introduction of EV’s.

 

Any gas-powered vehicle you buy now will be hard to sell within a few years.  No one will want to buy a used ICE vehicle versus a used electric vehicle. When you buy a used ICE car, you never know which component will fail next. Will it be the transmission, timing belt, fuel pump, water pump, catalytic converter, radiator, or the engine itself? All of these components cost a lot to fix — and none of them exist in an EV. My Tesla has less than 50 moving parts (the motor has only one), and the motor and battery are warrantied for 8 years, unlimited miles.

 

Federal and state incentives make EV’s even more affordable than they already are — but the incentives won’t last much longer. Colorado has the most generous incentive of any state — up to $6,000, depending on price and battery size. Combined with the $7,500 federal tax credit, you get a total of $13,500 back on the purchase of, say, a $30,680 Nissan Leaf or a $33,220 Chevy Volt (my personal favorite), or the newly released $36,620 Chevy Bolt with 238 miles electric range. 

Note: Colorado’s $6,000 tax credit on EV’s becomes a $5,000 instant rebate on January 1st.

You can get up to $6,000 Colorado tax credit on a used EV, but only until Dec. 31st.  The car must not have been registered in Colorado. I know several people who have purchased an off-lease Leaf from a California dealer for about $10,000 and then got about $2,400 tax credit from Colorado. (The tax credit is pro-rated based on price & battery size. You can expect to get the full $6,000 tax credit on a used Tesla which was never registered in Colorado.) You have just over a week to get this incentive, because it will not apply to used EV’s purchased after 2016. There’s a dealer in Boulder called Green Eyed Motors (888-564-3686) which specializes in selling used EV’s that qualify for the state tax credit, but I suggest comparison shopping at California dealers, factoring in the added transportation cost. 

 

Electricity costs only 3 to 4 cents per mile; gas costs 10 to 30 cents per mile.  Xcel Energy will be introducing time-of-day rates soon, reducing the cost of nighttime electricity to just 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. Then it will only cost a penny per mile to fuel an EV, while gas costs will only go up.

 

Leasing an EV is a good option if you don’t have a big tax liability. The $7,500 federal tax credit may not work for you if you don’t have a big income tax liability. (Colorado will send you a check.) If that’s your situation, consider leasing an EV, because the leasing company gets the tax credits and the leasing cost is reduced accordingly. For example, you can lease a Leaf or Volt for just $199 per month, or a Tesla starting at $780 per month. 

Learn more about EV’s from my PowerPoint presentation. The Colorado Renewable Energy Society shot a video of that presentation and posted it at www.GasCarsAreObsolete.info.

Published Dec. 22, 2016, in the YourHub section of the Denver Post and in four Jefferson County weekly newspapers.