Technology that seamlessly fixes air quality will become widespread in homes by 2030, real-estate developers say. Will homebuyers care once the pandemic subsides?
6 min
When buyers of real-estate developer John Roe’s seven condos walk into their new Manhattan homes sometime after May next year, Mr Roe wants them to breathe deep and feel good about it. That’s because he has spared no expense on air quality.
The boutique building, called Charlotte of the Upper West Side, is being constructed with an airtight external shell. Fresh air, tempered, filtered and then treated with ultraviolet light, will be constantly pumped into each room, while the same amount of used air is extracted. If a resident is worried—say they muttered “God bless you” to a sniffly dinner guest a worrisome number of times last night—they can boost the air exchange in their unit by 120%. Buyers of Mr Roe’s properties will be well aware of how special their air is: Marketing materials, which typically might describe the amenities and luxe touches, include elaborate diagrams and animations describing how the air system works.
The cost of all this magnificent air? The cheapest unit will list at $11 million (A$14.5 million), while penthouses will hit $18 million (A$23.8 million), Mr Roe says. Those price tags are largely due to the location, size and luxury finishes of the units, but the air system wasn’t cheap, either, Mr Roe says. Still, like everything else in real estate that was once the preserve of the elite—think roof decks, gyms, stainless steel—these technologies were already on a path of increased adoption and lower cost. Covid-19 has poured accelerant on the trend.
Executives at some of the country’s largest developers say they believe that by 2030 such systems will be commonplace in all residential development. Buildings with a high degree of mechanical ventilation and energy efficiency will be routine. Indoor sensors will identify when air quality has dropped and automatically increase ventilation. Systems will aim to mitigate outdoor air problems, such as general pollution or smoke from bushfires, as well as indoor threats, such as a sick resident, a burned pot roast or overenthusiastic spraying of lemon polish. Homes will feature dynamic air systems with a “crisis mode” that can upgrade filtration and run a disinfection protocol. Once the threat has been neutralised, systems will return to status quo to save energy.
At the same time, questions remain about what technology is most effective and worth the cost in both dollars and energy use. Will home buyers care about air quality when Covid-19 is no longer affecting daily life?
Scott Walsh, a vice president and project director for Lendlease, a global real estate and investment firm, says he believes that, armed with a new understanding about air quality, consumers will demand homes that improve it.
Already, developers are drawing up blueprints with a focus on fresh air flow, filtration and purification.
“Air quality is now front of mind for our buyers,” says Elisa Orlanski Ours, chief planning and design officer at Corcoran Sunshine, the new development wing of the Corcoran Group real-estate brokerage. Her developer clients are currently exploring how to filter and disinfect the air in both public and private spaces, she says.
The most cutting edge technology today, which will gradually become less expensive and more widespread, is an “energy recovery ventilator,” says Andrea Mancino, executive vice president of New York for Bright Power, an energy management consultant. These are ventilation systems that recapture energy from hot air leaving the building to heat or cool the filtered fresh air going back in.
Air quality experts believe that the wide adoption of MERV 13 or 14 air filters—which the ASHRAE trade group, formerly known as the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers, recommended in April—will be sufficient to manage major particle-related problems. MERV, or “minimum efficiency reporting value,” describes the efficiency of a filter at trapping particles of different sizes.
The pandemic has brought a jolt of interest to systems that go beyond filtering undesirable particles out of the air. Instead, they act upon particles to destroy them, through ultraviolet light, UV photo oxidation, ionization and other tactics. Scientific studies are expected to shed light on which methods and systems are most effective in a home.
“All these products work somewhat differently, and for a lot of these new products, we don’t have good studies to know how well they actually work,” says Max Sherman, the residential team leader of ASHRAE’s epidemic task force.
Gandolfo Schiavone, president of Sav Mor Mechanical, an HVAC company, says that since July his company has installed over 300 air purifiers on buildings’ existing ventilation systems around the New York area. Blueair, a Swedish maker of portable air purifiers that Unilever bought in 2016, has seen triple-digit growth this year, says chief product officer Jonas Holst.
Mr Holst believes that the U.S. will eventually buy air purifiers at the same rate as Asia. “In the U.S., the penetration rate for purifiers is about 15%. In Japan and Korea, about 40% of homes have an air purifier,” he says.
Sensor technology that analyzes indoor air quality is already in use in a handful of new luxury homes. Delos, which founder Paul Scialla describes as a “wellness real estate and technology company,” sells a system that monitors and mitigates air, water and light quality. Through an app, homeowners can see when their air quality drops below optimal standards; the built-in system then triggers ventilation.
In the near future, sensor-based technology that not only detects problems, such as cleaning chemicals in the air, but also responds by, say, automatically ventilating a space, will become widespread, as more manufacturers create better and cheaper systems, contractors learn about them and homeowners demand them, predicts Ryan Donovan, senior category manager for indoor air quality at Ferguson Enterprises, a seller of plumbing and HVAC products. Systems will also become more sensitive: “In 10 years, I do think it’s possible that the sensor will tell you there’s a flu virus,” Mr Donovan says.
Insiders compare the current state of the air quality industry to the early days of the organic food movement, before a U.S. Department of Agriculture standard was formalised. Today, there are a handful of voluntary certifications that speak to air quality, including Passive House and the WELL Building standard, founded by Mr Scialla’s Delos. Whether such labelling will eventually cohere into a government-backed standard, or lead to regulation, isn’t known.
At Lakehouse, a 196-unit condo building in Denver, developer Brian Levitt designed features he hopes will help him achieve the WELL certification “gold” level, he says. The apartments are for sale for US$499,000 to US$1.825 million. Mr Levitt says that residents will get their own ventilated air, furnishings were “off-gassed” in a warehouse for months, and he used low VOC paints and glues. “Buyers may not be willing to pay a premium for WELL yet, but we do think it increased our sales absorption,” and lowers resistance to multifamily living, says Mr Levitt, president of NAVA Real Estate Development.
Air quality is a concern across the price spectrum. Michael Bohn, senior principal at Studio One Eleven, an architecture and design firm based in Long Beach, Calif., redesigned an affordable-housing complex in Santa Ana, Calif., after the pandemic struck. It will now include MERV 14 filters and balconies for each unit.
Indoor air quality cannot widely improve until the building industry finds ways to ventilate, heat, cool, filter and purify air in an energy efficient way. Newly-constructed buildings have the best shot, says Dr Sherman: They can be designed to avoid leakage of air and can use the most efficient mechanical systems. Retrofitting existing buildings while meeting green building standards that will eventually become law is harder, says Derek Tynan, a project engineer with Efficient Energy Compliance, a consulting firm for commercial buildings in New York.
Developers and engineers believe one of the answers lies in dynamic systems that can boost air quality mitigations in times of crisis—thus using more energy—and then reset to a more energy-efficient setting when it is safe to do so.
It’s not clear whether pandemic shock will lead to lasting change. Dan Holohan, an author of 24 books about the steam heat industry, has studied engineering manuals during and after the 1918 flu pandemic. Back then, there was lots of discussion of “the fresh air movement,” but once it was all over, so was any mention of infectious disease, says Mr Holohan.
“Once we get vaccinated, people will forget this ever happened and get back to doing the cheapest thing,” he says.
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
The Australian leather house has opened an immersive four-day pop-up in Manhattan, unveiling its Bloom Collection and redefining what a product launch can look like.
Following the successful launch of its Palais Collection, MAISON de SABRÉ has unveiled a new modular handbag system offering more than 720 styling combinations.
Georgetown agent Jamie Peva blends history and real estate on Instagram, turning local stories into a powerful sales strategy.
5 min
On a recent morning in Georgetown—Washington, D.C.’s oldest neighborhood—real-estate agent Jamie Peva strode down leafy N Street, brimming with historical tidbits.
Jackie Kennedy once lived on the street, he said. So did Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Washington Post, along with a former Miss America and a powerful U.S. Senator. Bradlee’s widow, author Sally Quinn, and Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, own stately homes there.
“I’ve seen a picture of Lyndon Johnson coming out of this house,” said Peva, passing a Federal-style brick mansion. “Also, the Beatles went to a lawn party here.”
Peva, a 60-year-old agent with Washington Fine Properties, has sold Georgetown real estate for over three decades, often traversing the neighborhood by bicycle. Of the roughly 2,500 houses in the historic neighborhood, he has been involved in the sale of 460, he estimated. A self-styled historian of the neighborhood, he knows stories behind its houses and their owners going back generations.
With a knack for lively storytelling, he shares his knowledge with some 37,500 Instagram followers, who have made Peva—sporting the bow ties he has worn since boarding school—an unlikely social-media influencer. Many of his followers are locals, and most have no plans to buy or sell real estate—until they do. It is then, according to Peva, that his spirited reels bring him to mind.
“It’s the digital version of a refrigerator magnet,” he said.
After Peva’s first video in November 2023, his eponymous Instagram account sparked a 10% increase in sales volume in the first year, and another 20% the next, he estimated. “It’s been very good for business, there is no question about it,” he said.
But Peva’s posts have also made him a local celebrity. As he walked down N street, the driver of a Mercedes station wagon slowed down to honk and wave. A lady walking a large dark gray dog stopped to ask what he was filming that day (a reel about a Colonial-era bottling plant.) Peva knew the dog from walking his two springers, Jumpy and Peggy-O, in the neighborhood.
“I need to make a video about the pooches of Georgetown,” he mused.
A growing number of real-estate agents now use social media to sell, and some have millions of followers with reels featuring ultraluxury pads, selling tips or reality TV-style reports on their daily lives. While Peva posts about his listings—and sometimes those of other agents—he mostly focuses on Georgetown history, local businesses and community events, saying his goal is to benefit both his business and the neighborhood.
“If we don’t find something genuinely interesting and worth sharing, we won’t do it,” said Peva’s daughter, Violet Peva, a New York social-media strategist who films, edits and posts his reels. “We cover many topics, not just real-estate information.”
Peva is originally from Connecticut, but has lived in Georgetown for over 30 years, currently in a cottage-style house with a white picket fence. Over the years, Georgetown has changed. The Georgetown Set, a powerful group of Cold War-era residents whose Sunday-night potluck dinners are said to have swayed U.S. policy, has long faded away. The community is still home to high-profile Washingtonians, including a Republican senator and several cabinet members. But it increasingly also attracts technology and finance executives, according to Peva. He now routinely signs nondisclosure agreements, ensuring privacy for wealthy clients. The shift has made him rethink his marketing approach.
“For years, a big part of our Georgetown business was made up of people who maintained a low profile,” he said. Real-estate agents were similarly low-key. Today, curb appeal is more important, he said, and agents are promoting themselves more. “As this change was underfoot, I was thinking that I needed to evolve myself too,” he said.
Though his own social-media use is mostly limited to following sailing accounts, he asked his daughter to help him post his listings online. Violet, now 26, started coming to D.C. once a month to film his reels. After an early video, on a condominium building called the Elliott, her sister Fern called her to report: “Daddy’s blowing up on Instagram,” Violet recalled. The reel got over 50,000 views. The next two each drew over 300,000. Peva’s most popular post ever, with over 838,000 views, was about the Grateful Dead playing in Georgetown. Sometimes, Peva interviews Georgetowners such as Quinn, the author, or Jamie Stachowski, the owner of a local butcher shop.
Peva, who majored in history in college, now spends up to two hours a day on research, usually in the morning while on his stationery bike. Online, he pores over old newspapers or the Library of Congress website, and he has a collection of articles and books—in and out of print—about Georgetown.
Companies often approach Peva for promotional posts, he said, but he turns them down, feeling that followers would lose interest in constant commercials. One exception is a recent paid post on Mount Vernon, the former home of George Washington. Peva wanted to share its history, he said, and didn’t want to lose the opportunity to another Instagrammer.
Anthony Arend, a professor at Georgetown University, has lived in his current home for 19 years without any plans to sell or buy real estate. But he follows Peva and often likes his posts.
“He is very charismatic, he is energetic, and he obviously knows a lot about the community,” said Arend, who has referred house-hunting friends to Peva.
One of Peva’s biggest deals—the $10.5 million sale of a 19th-century Italianate mansion—came after he made two 2024 reels featuring the property. In March, he sold the longtime O Street home of Tim and Jane Matz for $5.8 million after featuring it on his Instagram. Peva had showed them the home 25 years earlier, with Violet in a baby carrier on his back.
Last year, Kate Watts, 49, a digital consultant, called Peva to sell her late father’s three-bedroom house on Q Street; her husband had seen Peva on Instagram. In an October reel, Peva praised the architecture of the house, designed by modernist Hugh Newell Jacobsen. Halfway through, he mentioned an open house the next day, ending with an upbeat: “Did I also mention this house is for sale? $3.75 million!” The reel got 27,000 views, the open house was packed, and the buyers made an offer at the list price on the same day.
