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Finding the fair market value of your home isn’t a fast cut-and-dry process. Although professional advice from real estate agents is certainly an informed opinion, you might choose to research your house’s probable worth independently, particularly in the event that you believe that a broker is undervaluing your property. There are many ways to view the fair market value of your home, but frequently no one formula will work for each and every sale.

Contact a realtor who works an office near your home. If possible, identify a broker who has sold homes that are similar to yours in your community. It is more probable that these agents will have firsthand knowledge of your house’s style as well as the local real estate marketplace.

Ask the real estate agent to provide information. It’s possible that you might need to pay a small fee if you’re not likely to sell your home via the agent. Realtors can offer comparative market analyses (CMAs) that show recent sales within the previous six weeks and current list prices for similar properties.

Find extra information that can supplement the CMA supplied by your realtor. Recent property sales can be found recorded in local newspapers and real estate publications as well as Internet home-listing sites. Also, you may want to drive around your neighborhood and talk to homeowners who have submitted”For Sale” signs.

Determine the purchase price per square foot for similar properties in your neighborhood by dividing the list price or sale price by the house’s square footage. Multiply that price per square foot by the square footage of your own property to come up with a rough price estimate. Homes that were remodeled extensively because their construction might be priced more accurately by determining their square footage worth.

Use property tax assessments locally if properties comparable with your own cannot be located in your community. Find the averages of the recent sales and tax assessments in your community. Divide the sales average by the tax assessment average to come up with a tax assessment multiplier. Assessing your property’s tax assessment by that multiplier figure to ascertain another rough figure for your house’s worth.

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Maine designer Riley Pratt estimates that the typical energy bill because of his home is significantly less than $20 each month. And that’s including the $10 a month he pays only to have support. To put that into perspective, the average homeowner in Maine spent2,949 on energy in 2009, according to the latest data offered in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey.

How does Pratt achieve this at a state where temperatures regularly dip below 20 degrees in winter? By harnessing heat obtained from sunshine.

Pratt’s home, built and designed with his own coworkers at design firm GO Logic, is predicated on Passive House standards, which were created in Germany for assessing the energy efficiency of buildings.

at a Glance
Who lives here: Riley Pratt and his wife and toddler
Location: Belfast, Maine
Size: 1,500 square feet; 1 1/2 bathrooms

GO LOGIC

The home sits at a 3-acre field on a cresting hill about a mile out of Belfast, Maine. It is oriented with all the sun’s winter path in your mind to obtain the maximum warmth from it throughout those months.

GO LOGIC

A main principle of Passive House standards is a compact construction form. The goal in a cold climate is to decrease heat loss through the building’s shell, something that’s excellent for places like Maine.

It’s simple: Sun shines through the chimney, strikes a surface and warms it up. The home then traps that warmth inside with a virtually airtight design obtained through walls, a roof and even a floor that are superinsulated.

Here structural insulated panels (SIPs), made of thick foam sandwiched between 2 layers of OSB, cover a framework made of 2-by-4s. The roof is loose-fill cellulose (essentially chopped-up newspaper) to a depth of 2 feet, covered in a standing-seam roof to durability.

The exterior is fiber cement clapboard meant to reflect a conventional regional aesthetic, at a deep crimson that speaks to some common New England color palette.

The panels onto the roof in the middle are all for the solar hot-water system. A copper element within a vacuum tube absorbs heat from sunlight on cold days. The heat is exchanged and carried into the home to heat a 120-gallon hot-water tank.

Solar hot-water systems such as these cost approximately $10,000. Different tax incentives and rebates offered in numerous countries sometimes significantly offset the upfront cost to install them. Pratt says that the investment pays off in five to seven decades, based on usage.

GO LOGIC

Solar photovoltaic panels also help counter power prices. The home isn’t net zero, but it’s close. A frequent misconception is that solar photovoltaic panels directly power the home as well as the electronics inside. The sun shines and the computer works. A more prevalent setup works more like a credit system. The energy generated goes to cancel your bill as a power credit. With grid-tied systems like this, you don’t earn money generating energy rollover credits go into your account and accumulate on an yearly basis.

(Off-the-grid, standalone solar electrical systems require large batteries to store the sun’s energy once the sun is not shining. Batteries need to be replaced, they’re big, and they have a restricted number of life cycles of charge and discharge.)

Pratt points out that it’s possible for him to make the house internet zero, even though it’s not a lifestyle he would like to develop. “People play the sport,” he states. “Like hypermilers in their hybrid automobiles who never go more than 50 mph in order that they could get 100 miles a gallon at a Prius. If you don’t turn on supplemental heat rather than cook, then you can reach net zero easily. This approach isn’t for everyone. In GO Logic houses, you’re still able to live life as you would, without taking on an extreme way of life, and eat very little energy to maintain a comfortable internal environment.”

GO LOGIC

The home shell (which cost about $170 per square foot) essentially sits on a raft of polyurethane insulation beneath. A concrete slab was then put within the home envelope to help regulate the internal temperature. The slab may absorb a lot of heat before heating up, then loses it gradually, helping to regulate the internal temperature. “It states cool in the summer and stores heat in the winter,” Pratt says.

It’s essentially an airtight structure, with a ventilation system that’s constantly running. A “magic box,” as Pratt calls it, in the loft pulls fresh air in while exchanging heat that stays indoors. “Stale air goes out; new air comes from. The heat energy of the exhaust air is exchanged with that of the incoming air. The quantity of air in the home is refreshed about every two to three hours,” Pratt says.

The dining area, living area, kitchen, mudroom and powder room are on the ground floor. The kitchen is an Ikea foundation with custom ash details.

GO LOGIC

There are 3 bedrooms on the top floor. Locally sourced wood pine posts produce a hybrid- and stick-frame structure. The floor is just one layer of tongue and groove spruce.

GO LOGIC

To obtain Passive House certificate, the home had to pass a set of tests that determined how much energy it absorbs. (Just 4.750 BTUs per square foot for space heating are allowed per year.)

The certification procedure is a benchmark for energy intake, developed in Germany about 20 decades ago. It will be the standard in Europe for many building forms in the near future. In the U.S. just 13 houses have been certified to Passive House standards.

GO LOGIC

In a lot of ways the certificate is more strict than LEED certification, which is an accumulation of points made for things such as the selection of substances, the operation of the home, water conservation fixtures, the efficiency of the building shell, low-VOC paint, and careful preparation of the strategic structure and much more. (Pratt’s home is also LEED Platinum certified, the maximum rating.)

More: Architect’s Toolbox: Solar-Powered Design

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Although the toilet is the most private room in a house, it’s lacking if it doesn’t have a window. Ideally a toilet window has a view and offers solitude, which may seem impossible but that can be achieved through different means (size and location of windows, coverings, orientation of this window and wall, articulation of exterior elements). This ideabook presents some baths with big windows which look upon enclosed courtyards or pocket gardens. These little exterior spaces, such as the internal courtyards I’ve championed before, create connections between outside and inside which are controlled enough to maintain ample solitude.

Renzo J Nakata Architects

This is the toilet that sparked me to find different examples and compose this ideabook. There’s a cohesion to the interior and outside spaces which is undeniable: the method by which in which the window fits above the bathtub and how the concrete-block-lined courtyard is all about precisely the same size as the bathtub. There’s solitude in the concrete wall, but somebody soaking in the bathtub still sees green above it and facing it.

Notice the track from the ceiling for a curtain in the shower, a way of preserving privacy in that alcove.

A pocket garden adjoining to the toilet also permits direct access, as this semiroofed space illustrates. The wood lining the walls shows how significant these surfaces are. Some folks might like the grey concrete of the prior case, for how plants pop from it, but others might prefer the colour and texture of wood.

Dirk Denison Architects

1 project with a profusion of little courtyards, a few of them serving baths, is that this dwelling in Marin County, California, designed by Chicago’s Dirk Denison Architects. The single-story, barrier-free plan has about 10 outdoor spaces of varying dimensions. Here we are taking a look at the master bathroom and its own pocket garden, which isn’t an inner courtyard, thus the wood fencing. (A shower and toilet on the other side of this mirror are also a part of the master bath.)

Although this house is a new construction, a toilet with a large view can be a part of a renovation. With the right fencing and plant (bamboo in this case), a wall can be opened and a private oasis generated just outdoors.

Dirk Denison Architects

An inner courtyard elsewhere in the house serves another toilet.

Dirk Denison Architects

Along with an enclosed, glass-walled shower in a different part of the house gives the feeling of showering outdoors but with the extreme privacy.

DeForest Architects

With bodily connections between baths and outside spaces via doors, like this glass slider, it is logical to continue architectural features between the spaces. The wood slats in this case are a really nice touch, tying the spaces together and providing an armature for shelves for soap and other things.

Eduarda Correa Arquitetura & Interiores

Based upon the climate, the connection between inside and outside can be even blurrier, such like this particular shower and bathtub sharing an outside space in Brazil. A courtyard such as this could also be enclosed in the elements (a glass or plastic roof above the structure) to allow it to be usable in different climates.

Cornerstone Architects

As mentioned already, a pocket garden can function a toilet as part of a renovation. 1 natural material choice is bamboo, a grass that grows like crazy and screens quite nicely.

Neumann Mendro Andrulaitis Architects LLP

This bathroom is comparable to previous ones with the outside space from the shower, but in addition, it features a skylight, another way of making a view (of the sky) and bringing in light.

Swatt | Miers Architects

Sometimes a skylight might be the only means to open up a toilet. In these cases location and size are significant. This one sits beneath the shower, projecting light down the wall and enabling glances upward when one soaks in the bathtub.

Architects Magnus

But if shaping an outdoor space or inner courtyard isn’t feasible, there is the option of using special surfaces to maintain privacy and give the look of character. This bathroom has resin glazing using a bud pattern for the exterior; around the other hand is planted bamboo, therefore real nature and its own picture coincide.

Dorman Architects

Last is a bathroom in Ireland where the window perfectly serves the adjoining tub. In this case solitude results from careful framing and sizing of the window.

Dorman Architects

And this is the opinion from this window, a beautiful scene to soak in while soaking.

Share your key view: Do you have a mini garden opinion off your tub? We’d love to see a photo.

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