WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Here's a chance to have a custom home built along the scenic Green River. 

 

Our Friday Front Porch is a weekly feature spotlighting attractive homes for sale in Berkshire County. This week, we are discussing a to-be built "eco-friendly luxury" home on Water Street.

 

We spoke with Danielle Giulian, a real estate professional with William Pitt Sotheby's International Realty and the agent for the property.

 

Giulian said this house will be one of five sustainable homes that will be called Green River Meadows and all five will be zero-energy ready. Sotheby's currently has one other Green River Meadows property on the market. These homes will be more energy efficient and sustainable using passive housing principles.

 

The home will be a three-bedroom, three-bath that once purchased has a five- to six-month turnaround to be built. It will feature a two-car garage, a deck customizable to the buyer, a washer and dryer, and a walk-in closet.

 

It is 2,015 square feet with 1.23 acres and close to Williamstown Elementary School, Mount Greylock Regional School, and Williams College. Its location along the Green River will showcase mountain and river views.

 

The asking price is $880,000.

 

This says it will be made with 'passive housing principles.' Can you tell me more about what that means?

 

Giulian: It's made with all modern construction, modern materials, and it's going for sort of that net zero, which is all about being green, being energy efficient, and the homes will be solar panel ready. So if someone wanted to truly go zero energy, they could add solar panels to the house. These are going to be energy efficient. They're going to be combustion free (not involving burning fuel), and all of the building materials that are going to be used are all going to be super insulated, high-performance energy utilities, things like that so people can live that sort of energy conscious lifestyle, you know, helping to minimize our carbon footprint.

 

What do you think makes this property stand out in the current market?

 

Giulian: Well, there certainly isn't anything else like it right now. If you look around the Berkshires, you don't really see a whole lot of development happening. You don't see a lot of new construction. We definitely need it here, but most of the new construction that you see are the people who are building their second, third, fourth homes, you know, these multimillion dollar properties, and they are more and more leaning toward making them in this sort of passive style with all those materials. And this is going to be a more modest option in a development, and most of the inventory, especially in the Williamstown area, are older homes that were built over 100 years ago and are unable to offer these same energy incentives.

 

What kind of lifestyle do you think this home would naturally lend itself to?

 

Giulian: We've definitely kind of explored a lot of who our buyer is. You know, being in Williamstown, we do have a lot of Williams College alumni, a lot of people who are tied into the college and a lot of people who are very educated and understand what's going on in the world and where things are going in terms of climate change and things like that. And we see our buyer as someone who definitely cares about all of those things and is looking for that sort of green lifestyle, but also modern, it's going to have very modern feels to it. And someone who's looking to just sort of to be in that Williamstown environment.

 

How would you describe the feel or atmosphere of this home?

 

Giulian: It's going to have a very minimalist feel, very neutral, neutral design, but like luxury finishes. So a lot of your typical developments, you see very sort of cookie-cutter, like Home Depot-quality finishes, where this property is actually going to be equipped with luxury finishes, and the buyers will have some say in what those finishes are. So there will be opportunities for the buyers to sit down and have meetings with the designers and the developers and sort of customize these properties to their liking to a certain extent.

 

What kind of buyer would this home be ideal for?

 

Giulian: The ideal buyer for this home is someone who's looking for zero-energy living who's sort of almost looking to go off the grid without being completely off the grid. You know, it will still be connected to town utilities like water and sewer and things like that. But there will not be any gas or oil or any fuel products like that. Everything will be electric. There'll be hookups for electric vehicles and things like that. So someone who's really energy conscious and looking for that type of lifestyle.

 

What would you say to a buyer trying to imagine their life here?

 

Giulian: Pretty much the same thing. I mean, definitely low operating and maintenance costs are definitely a big bonus of having a property like this. You know, long-term durability, resilience of the home. You know, a lot of the older properties around here because of their age, and the wear and tear that comes with that, and some of the materials that were used back then do require a lot more upkeep, and a home like this is going to be something that they could just move into and not have to worry about anything for years and years.

You can find out more about this house on the listing.

*Front Porch Feature brings you an exclusive to some of the houses listed on our real estate page every week. Here we take a bit of a deeper dive into a certain house for sale and ask questions so you don't have to.