The Gardner Group Blog

FROM THE DESK OF STEVE GARDNER

I want you to be informed about a new city-mandated "point of sale" requirement that will financially affect you when you sell or buy a house.  The city is planning to pass an ordinance that will make it mandatory for your house to be energy retrofitted before you can close the sale.  We are all in agreement that we need to keep Austin beautiful and affordable at the same time.  The mayor is proposing this program to conserve energy for our city. The concept is a good one.   We now have a non-mandatory program where the city will come out and do an energy audit, but neither the audit nor the recommended changes are required. You can read a lot of details by going to www.keepaustinaffordable.org, which is published by the Austin Board of Realtors. 

In a nutshell, my take is that we are going too fast with this ordinance and the city is too concerned with getting it passed quickly before considering all the alternatives and the ramifications for the consumer.  I asked the mayor on live radio if he would support removing the June 10, 2008 mandated date for the committee he appointed to have a recommendation for City Council to consider passing, and he said he doubted it would happen that quickly. However, he never said he would NOT SUPPORT the ordinance if the Council wanted to move forward.  This project is widely known to be his special project, and he has been orchestrating it from the beginning.  He has considerable influence over the project's time frame.

There needs to be more input from city residents before a few people decide something of this magnitude for everyone.   There are approximately 26,000 sales in Austin per year that would have to be inspected before closing by a city inspector, and that could easily be 35,000 to 40,000 if you take into account that every house will not pass inspection the first time.  The city currently has about 17 inspectors who do new-home and other types of inspection.  WE ARE MOVING TOO FAST WITHOUT A TRUE PROGRAM IN PLACE.  We need more details and input on this subject.  Call your City Council members after reading the Keep Austin Affordable Web site and checking the city's Web site for details.