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One of the best insights about green building for tomorrow comes from a builder who has been focused on quality building for decades. Chuck Schoenberger, Senior Vice President of Operations for O’Brien Homes, could write the book on quality homebuilding. So it’s not too much of a stretch to see O’Brien Homes take on a leadership role in the green building movement as well.

Chuck talks this week about participating in focus groups with prospective homebuyers to understand how a homeowner perceives “value” in different aspects of green building. Surprisingly, most of the prospective buyers couldn’t name a green feature after solar panels and tankless water heaters. Given the enormous undertaking of researching and selecting construction vendor partners who understand the materials and have the installation know-how, Chuck wants to spend more time educating the new home buying community about the kinds of things that can make a house healthy, and more energy and cost-efficient.

“Today’s buyer equates saving energy to saving money,” he says. Yet in a new home community, like O’Brien’s “Fusion” neighborhood in Sunnyvale, which has been built in excess of Build It Green’s 50-point checklist, the homebuyers—mostly first-timers—also have an opportunity to live a greener lifestyle by bicycling to work and using community-designed recreation and gathering areas instead of driving around town.

“Human behavior will work itself out,” says Chuck. But in the meantime, Chuck sees cities like Sunnyvale leading the charge for the change to green.

Next week, The Real Story talks to Chuck about the economics of green development in a recession, and how green construction translates into dollars in the consumers’ pockets.  You can download this interview on iTunes or listen in on Facebook.

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Quick: describe the American homeowner. If you’re stopped by the sheer enormity of the task of consolidating the wants, needs, and household formation—as well as the ages, geomarket and financial wherewithal—to come up with a consumer profile, you have an idea of what a homebuilding company faces every time its leadership decides to build a new model complex.

Now add to the profile of a zillion parts the acceptance of green, or sustainable design and building practices. Is it a hot button or a ho-hum? Does it sound wonderful when it’s called a healthy home, and even better when it’s packaged as a way to reduce and control energy consumption?

CR Herro, Vice President of Environmental Affairs for Meritage Homes, says he has learned that one size does not fit all when it comes to designing homes, and that it’s more important to figure out how the buyer wants to live than how cheaply a home can be built. His guideline for action? “Listen. Take criticism. And learn.”

In a recessionary market, he says, builders can choose one of two paths: the commodity, a “box of shelter” that stands on its price and competes with foreclosures and short sales, and the “be something better” path of creating something new, something that exceeds buyer expectations and keeps the company moving ahead.

The Real Story completes its conversation with CR this week. Take a listen today, or download the podcast at iTunes.

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Here’s a news flash: new home smell is bad for you. When you walk a new home, and get a big lungful of the fresh paint, varnishes and carpet, you may be inhaling way more than you bargained for. According to CR Herro, Vice President of Environmental Affairs for Meritage Homes, among the worst things you can breathe in are emissions from new paint, varnish and carpet.

Over at Meritage’s corporate headquarters in Scottsdale, CR tells us that he is constantly checking on “tester waffles”—new products and programs that he can follow close to home, and roll out on a country-wide basis as favorable results roll in.  He is excited about the many ways that the home-buying consumer is looking at green built homes—from the aspect of reduced utility bills (almost always the leader in conversation) to the overall comfort of a home without hot spots or cold areas to healthier air quality and a safer environment. The cost, he says, of integrating the new green building standards (which vary from state to state) is offset by the substantial improvement in how a home lives.

This week’s interview with CR Herro is available here, or as a download from iTunes. Keep listening; we have some wonderful interview topics coming up in the next few weeks.

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CR Herro is one busy guy: in the course of any given month, he may be found leading education seminars for the sales staff at Meritage Homes, speaking at trade shows or conferences and meeting with the building trades on new materials and construction methods. As the Vice President of Environmental Affairs for Meritage, CR is always looking for the next great idea, product or potential partner.

His real passion, though, seems to be in calculating the value of all of this innovation as seen through the homeowners’ eyes—and their wallets. CR talks to The Real Story about evaluating homes based on the positive return to the homeowners’ pocket… and the constant debate about the cost of an improvement versus the actual value it brings to a buyer.

This week’s segment of The Real Story is embedded here, and is also available as a download from iTunes. More on CR and the Meritage green building program next week.

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C.R. Herro is one busy man. As the vice president of Environmental Affairs at Meritage Homes, one of the country’s Top Ten production builders, C.R. crosses the country speaking about how improvements in building science and home products now makes choosing a green home not about sacrifice, but about the enjoyment of living in a well-built home—with both energy and water demand cut in half.

That’s a pretty big claim, and C.R. says this kind of innovation it can’t happen unless it is top-down and corporation-wide. Meritage Homes, it turns out, has built its business strategy on delivering energy-efficient, sustainable single-family homes—“top line, bottom line, and P&L”.

It is interesting to hear him talk about the two generations who are the most interested in green, and their completely different opinions about why green building matters. According to C.R., the Boomers are tired of escalating energy bills, and love the idea of controlling their costs without sacrificing their lifestyle. The Millennials, tech-savvy cynics that they are, are looking for an honest approach to reducing the carbon footprint—and enjoying running their homes on mobile apps.

This is the beginning of a four-part series; take a look next Monday for the next segment of this interview, recorded on the exhibit floor of the 2011 Pacific Coast Builders Conference in San Francisco. For more information about Meritage Green, go to www.meritagehomes.com.

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The Real Story spent some time during PCBC in San Francisco with Jim Heid, founder and president of Urban Green. Looking back on the economic morass of the last five years, Jim thinks the bright spot in so much change is that everyone—builders and government—is paying attention to the overarching issues in the development and how decisions made now will impact people’s lives for years to come.

How are we going to get some critical traction for any kind of meaningful recovery? Jim sees the government nudging the market, and then letting the private sector do what it does best. As socially responsible investing gains interest, so will smart thinking about the built environment.

For more information about Jim Heid and Urban Green, go to www.urbangreen.net.