CORTEZ, Fla. (SNN TV) — When Category 3 Hurricane Idalia made landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida, the outer bands brought up to 7 inches of rain to much of the Suncoast.
And while many homes experienced flooding, the waters still had feet to go to reach the Hunters Point community, just a half mile away from Anna Maria.
“This home is the home of the future,” said Pearl Homes President Marshall Gobuty.
Gobuty said these homes need to be built at least 3 feet above sea level to be built to code. They’re 16 feet above sea level.
“You have a little bit of elevation going from the sea wall up as you’re building the home, and the home is even raised higher than that,” explained Coldwell Banker Realtor Kaisen Mitchell.
That’s how the homes avoided Idalia’s flooding, while some surrounding areas weren’t as fortunate.
The homes are built with hurricane impact windows and sliding doors which, in a community that experiences plenty of construction, means the outside noises are kept to a minimum.
The houses are also built with 2×6 wood framing with 6 inches of closed foam insulation and, in case of a power outage, solar panels and a big backup battery.
During the day, 100% of the house runs through the solar panels, and the panels charge the battery.
“Then at 5 o’clock at sunset, the battery kicks in and throughout the night to the next morning, the battery operates your home,” Gobuty explained, “So, you’ll be working off your battery every single night.”
This allows for homeowners not to lose power during a hurricane.
The concept behind this community began in 2017 after Gobuty completed his Mirabella property in Bradenton. The challenge was to create homes that were net-zero.
“Meaning do they generate more power than the homeowners consume?” Gobuty said.
One home was built in a research and design center in Palmetto.
“For 18 months, we monitored the home and had it perform itself as the Department of Energy certified it a net-zero home,” said Gobuty. “A normal home this size would put out eight tons of CO2 annually. We have a positive CO2 output.”
Gobuty says climate change is affecting the Suncoast now, and he wants more builders to create neighborhoods similar to Hunters Point.
“We want competition. We welcome any builder to come, we’ll open our books and show them how to do it,” he said.
And he’s done it, having recently traveled to Nashville to share the net-zero design to a developer who asked.
“The more we can get our message out, more people will want clean energy. And the future is clean energy,” Gobuty said.
A home at Hunters Point would run from around $1.4 to $1.8 million. SNN checked Realtor.com and saw many homes in the area are actually more expensive than that.
Still, if you have a modest income and can’t afford anything in that area, Gobuty told SNN other inland communities are in the works that would cost less money overall.
