Updated June 27, 2014 8:47 a.m. ET
Alongside infinity pools and gourmet
kitchens, more high-end developers and luxury-home builders are pitching
a new amenity: freshly circulated, highly scrubbed air.
Developers of 155 East 79th Street, a
condominium under construction on Manhattan's Upper East Side, boast
that its ventilation technology first cleanses air via a hospital
operating-room-grade purification system and then brings the fresh
filtered result into each unit. In San Francisco, luxury developer Troon
Pacific says it has built several speculative homes in the $5
million-plus range that fully exchange their indoor air at least three
times a day.
In New York's Hamptons,
developer
Peter Sabbeth
installed a $5,000 air-ventilation system with a heat-exchange
feature into his speculatively built home that not only exchanges air—it
also uses heat from the outgoing stale air to warm fresh air coming in
and maintains a comfortable level of humidity as well. The home also
includes low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) paints that emit fewer
chemicals—he estimates they probably cost a couple thousand dollars
more—and other chemical-free building materials. The 5,500-square-foot,
six-bedroom, five-bathroom home is listed for $5.95 million.
Fed by such concerns as the
occurrence of indoor mold and the growing prevalence of asthma, demand
for such systems has grown.
Barry Stephens,
business development and technology director for Zehnder, a
Switzerland-based company that sells energy-efficient ventilation
systems, says sales have nearly doubled every year for the past several
years.
"There's a real big conversation
in the building industry and building-science community about these
things," he says. "Things are changing rapidly." Prices range from about
$4,500 for a typical apartment-size system and ductwork to about
$10,000 for a very large home. A similar system for a large condominium
or apartment building can cost more than $1 million, though Mr. Stephens
says once such a system is installed, bathroom vents are no longer
needed and a smaller HVAC system can be used, offsetting much of the
cost.
In large Asian cities like
Beijing, where outdoor air pollution is a major health concern, wealthy
expat buyers and renters commonly purchase their own filters, spending a
couple thousand dollars to do so. According to
James Macdonald,
head of research for
Savills
SVS.LN -0.08%
China, more new high-end developments are installing building-wide air-purification systems.
Developers and home builders say the
growing prominence of green building is also bolstering demand, as
energy-efficient buildings are built so tightly they sometimes offer
very little natural ventilation when windows are closed. Though
draft-free homes use less energy to heat and cool, they can lack the
natural coming and going of air and in certain conditions (like use of
exhaust fans) can result in a depressurization if a proper ventilation
system hasn't been installed. Mr. Stephens says this can sometimes
result in compromised indoor-air quality.
In
the U.S., a number of the new developments are in densely populated
Manhattan. Though the New York metro area's air quality has improved in
the past 10 to 20 years, according to the American Lung Association, it
still gets an "F" grade when it comes to high-ozone days and particle
pollution.
Giselle Martin-Kniep,
an education consultant who lives in New York, purchased a
1,750-square-foot, three-bedroom condominium at the Visionaire in
Battery Park City in 2009. It was one of the city's first residential
buildings to circulate fresh, filtered air to each apartment. That,
along with the building's environmentally sustainable design, were key
selling points for Ms. Martin-Kniep, who declined to say how much she
spent on the condo. (Listings in the building today range from $825,000
for a 600-square-foot studio to $4.25 million for a corner three-bedroom
unit on a high floor.)
Ms. Martin-Kniep
says she feels better and notices that she really only feels she needs
to open the windows on the nicest days when conditions are perfect
outside. She says she has also noticed that friends with cat allergies
no longer react to her cat when they come over. "I actually think we
take for granted that air quality is good until we somehow don't have
it," she says.
In suburban areas, a
handful of high-end developers of single-family homes are promoting
their project's indoor-air quality. In tony Westport, Conn., a
5,800-square-foot Colonial-style house that will soon list for $2.8
million was built using "passive house" building methods that minimize
energy usage with a mathematically precise, airtight building technique,
and the strategic placement of high-performance windows to take
advantage of daylight and shade. Inside, the air will be filtered
through a two air-exchangers, says
Douglas Mcdonald,
the founder of the Pure House, the company that built the home.
Pollen-free fresh air will circulate into living and sleeping spaces;
other air will be removed from kitchens and bathrooms, where odors tend
to accumulate the most.
"The air quality
is amazing," says Mr. Mcdonald. Paint, flooring and cabinetry will be
made from chemical-free materials to eliminate what Mr. Mcdonald
describes as harmful off-gassing. He estimates that the speculatively
built home, slated to be completed in September, is priced about 10%
higher than a traditionally built house.
Troon
Pacific, the San Francisco-based developer, has an eco-minded home on
the market for $13 million that is built with a focus on air quality,
among other things. In the garage, an exhaust fan minimizes the home's
exposure to carbon monoxide, says
Gregory Malin,
the company's chief executive officer. To mitigate potential
toxins in the ground underneath the home, an impermeable membrane is
installed with PVC piping to bring air from underneath the home out from
above the roof. There are even vented shoe cabinets near the entrance,
which Mr. Malin says helps prevent further contaminants from entering
the house.
Selling something as
immaterial as air can be can be tricky. "It's not really a sexy topic,"
says
Stephen Glascock,
president of Anbau, the Manhattan-based developer that is
building 155 East 79th Street. Prices in the seven-unit building range
from $9 million for a three-bedroom duplex to $17 million for a
penthouse. Mr. Glascock says he has spent about $2.3 million on the
building's filtered fresh-air HVAC system, compared with about $1.55
million for an average condo building without fresh-air ventilation.
Brett Singer,
a scientist in the Indoor Environment Group of Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, says his research has found that indoor-air
pollutants often exceed the standards set by the Environmental
Protection Agency for acceptable outdoor-air quality, and that indoor
air is often worse in densely populated multifamily buildings in
low-income urban areas. While air-purification systems and the like can
be helpful, he says, fairly basic, energy-efficient ones are typically
sufficient. "Most people don't need to live in a particle-free
environment." Mr. Singer says that research also shows many people
forget to change the filters regularly enough for some systems to be
very effective.
Installing such systems
can require considering a building's design from the earliest stages.
Rick Cook,
a New York architect who specializes in "biophilic" design, which
is focused on designing buildings with a strong connection to nature,
says for his latest residential project, 301 East 50th Street, he
oriented the building to take advantage of natural air quality and
daylight. "Most design has been kind of obsessed with the
two-dimensional pictures and glossy magazines," he says. "But we
experience our indoor environment and spaces with all our senses." The
29-story limestone building has a fresh-air filtration system that
removes 95% of the particulate matter and costs about $500,000,
according to the building's developer,
Scott Shnay.
Units are priced between $1.7 million and $10.5 million.
In
some buildings and homes, air quality is just a small part of the
wellness pitch.
Paul Scialla,
founder and CEO of Delos, a wellness-focused building company,
says his firm's latest residential project in New York has more than 50
different wellness-centered features, including vitamin C-infused shower
heads and ultraviolet lights that "aid in sterilizing harmful airborne
microbes and irritants." Prices range from $15 million to $50 million.
Jan Flanzer,
a former psychotherapist in the New York area, says mold and
air-quality issues forced her out of her 1920s-era Tudor home several
years ago. About three years ago she founded a company called Healthy
Home Builders that focuses on building nontoxic, eco-minded homes with
better air quality.
She and her
contractor,
Pete Donovan,
with whom she co-founded the business, recently listed a
six-bedroom Colonial-style home in Scarsdale, N.Y., for $3.45 million
that uses recycled denim as insulation, which they say contains fewer
toxic chemicals. Formaldehyde- and chemical-free materials were used
throughout the home, as were reclaimed oak floors with a UV-cured finish
they had tested for indoor air quality by an environmental consulting
company. An energy-recovery ventilator brings in fresh air from the
outside, filtering it with carbon on the way in.
Mr.
Donovan says the 6,950-square-foot home's air supply can be changed
over in less than an hour. He says the home, which was also built with
energy efficiency and water conservation in mind, probably cost about
10% more to build than a regular house.
"Although
we would like to emphasize and lead off with the clean-air stuff," he
says, "you gotta still lead with the fact that it's got a beautiful
gourmet kitchen."