Maronda Homes Takes Steps To Become Even More Sustainable
April 2024: Homebuyers, feeling thwarted by limited inventory, are turning to new home construction for expanded housing choices. Homebuilders have increased construction efforts in the past year, addressing buyers’ affordability worries through various sales incentives, such as reducing mortgage rates or offering assistance with closing costs.
According to the National Association of Realtors, “New-home sales traditionally account for about 10% to 12% of the market for single-family homes but recently have comprised more than 30%. A shortage of existing homes has plagued many markets as homeowners remain reluctant to sell. The shortage of existing homes for sale has opened up the possibility of new-home construction to more buyers who may not have once considered it.”
First and foremost is our commitment to providing energy-efficient homes through our tailor-made BEE Smart Program. According to the Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Index, homes built by Maronda are 40% more efficient than typical new homes built to code and 25% more efficient than ENERGY STAR® homes. This means every home we build exceeds the strict guidelines the ENERGY STAR® program sets forth.
This is better for the environment and delivers our homebuyers better quality, comfort, and durability. It also reduces utility costs for all our homebuyers. Over the years, you can expect to save thousands of dollars alone just in energy costs.
Learn more about our energy efficiency program here.
Check out the full Maronda Homes BEE Smart Certification Quality Checklist below:
Limiting Construction Waste
With careful strategic planning, we pinpoint the exact amount of materials needed to produce a home. This means fewer materials upfront and less product wasted. This is less expensive and also not as harsh on the environment.
To put things into perspective, wood alone accounts for 40%-50% of residential construction waste. To become more sustainable, we have been implementing steel studs into our homes. Other popular waste reduction strategies among builders include recycling wood for mulch and composting operations such as animal bedding, landfill cover, and other building products.
Paperless Productivity
To extend Maronda’s carbon footprint, our company and model centers are transitioning to be paperless. We have implemented color visualizers, 360 tours, and interactive floor plans to our digital presence. We also utilize Docusign, a software to sign documents electronically, to eliminate the need to print contracts and use scanners. Not only does this allow homebuyers to design and participate in part of the transaction online, but it also cuts back on paper and warehousing shipping. We’re also able to update all documents in real time with any changes necessary when they’re digital. In all, going paperless reduces costs, increases efficiency, and provides easier, quicker access for our homebuyers – all while cutting energy use and decreasing the amount of waste dumped into landfills.
You can find digital-PDF downloads for all of our floor plans, included features, brochures, and more on our website.
Brand New Home, Brand New Landscape
On top of our BEE Smart Energy Homes and company-wide paperless initiative, we offer various landscape packages to our home buyers. We enhance the landscape of our communities by planting grass, trees, bushes, plants, and more to make up for all the wildlife torn down during the development stage. In all communities, we highly encourage planting trees and starting your garden; in some communities, planting trees and creating a garden is a part of the contract.
We also offer various resources on our blog to help you become more sustainable. For example, here are five simple ways to reduce energy use and costs in your home.
At Maronda, we recognize that any building construction can impact the environment. That’s why we’re actively taking steps to make our homes and construction process more energy-efficient and striving to provide our homeowners with resources to become more sustainable.