Gayle's Blog

The word pedestrian pertains to walking. But another somewhat derogatory meaning is: monotonous, dreary, commonplace, dull--which is what some diehard city dwellers often think of suburban living.  Well, tell that to the homeowners with a 70-100% walk score on www.walkscore.com even though they ...

Last week I was in New Orleans for the 2010 Keller Williams Family Reunion, our version of a company convention. In 2009, our founder, Gary Keller said in his visionary Quantum Leap speech, that the future of real estate would be a green or sustainable market.  He also said that Realtors would l...

Climate Change As you can see from the title of this blog, there's a lot to talk about in this last week of 2009.  I must admit that I am both surprised and disappointed by some of the research statistics that have been have been touted in the last few months of 2009 regarding the environment.  F...

Cleaning on the CheapSave Money Save the PlanetIf you want to trim your budget, stop buying expensive and potentially toxic cleaning supplies. Growing up in the fifties before Ad Men took over, cleaning supplies in the grocery store probably took up about one tenth of a grocery store isle. This ...

Tuesday, August 12, 2008 There is a saying in the world of environmental sustainability: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle-in that order. What does that mean when it comes to replacing your countertops when you remodel your kitchen. Of course Formica countertops are oh, so passé. Corian has also gone out of...

No it's not the cat litter box or a garbage can that needs emptying.  That smell may be more than just a nasty odor, it might very well be downright hazardous.  In fact the EPA has determined that indoor air quality is typically "between two and five times more contaminated than outside air and i...

Earth Week is over but given the state of the planet I think Earth Year is the order of the day. It is my hope to continue informing home sellers, home buyers, and homeowners about ways to green their living. Mostly I will talk about greening the physical home but occasionally I will encourage a ...

I stopped by a new Stanley Martin townhouse development today and was unpleasantly surprised.  The all brick models had all the visual bells and whistles.  You know, stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, hardwood floors, yada, yada, yada.  And the prices are great.   I looked at all th...

You may not have even heard of an energy audit. But surely you've heard that the price of a barrel of oil has reached $111 dollars give or take a dollar or two. And of course you know that the polar ice caps are melting, and that the US alone accounts for 25% of all of the worlds energy use. So w...

It's very chic to be "green" these days.  But what this actually means has many interpretations.  So the first thing I would like to posit is that being "green" doesn't have to be expensive, isn't necessarily sexy and you don't have to buy a lot of new stuff to call yourself environmentally consc...