For future electric car owners, a suburban home might just have the answer for a convenient overnight recharge.

Developer Vic Remmers is incorporating electric-car charging stations into two suburban Portland subdivisions where he’s building homes. His company, West Hills Homes NW, recently broke ground at Pioneer Highlands in Happy Valley, where he plans to build 65 homes. Remmers plans to begin building 118 homes in August at Thompson Woods in the Bonny Slope-Bethany area of Washington County.

All 183 homes will feature electric-car charging stations in their garages. The homes also have WiFi-capable thermostats and garage doors, and WiFi boosters to eliminate dead spots of wireless coverage in homes.

Remmers’ homes show home builders continuing to adjust to and stay in front of buyers’ expectations.

“One thing we’re really focused on here in 2017 is the technology in the homes and pushing forward with what we can do,” Remmers said.

In higher-income portions of the Portland metro area, Teslas seemingly have become as common as Hondas. As Teslas and other electric cars become more common, in-home charging stations begin to become a sensible amenity for developers to consider.

Remmers first tested the reception for in-home car charging stations at homes in Portland. “It’s been really well received,” he said. “It gets your homes ready for the future.”

While many homeowners have installed electric car chargers on their own, Remmers may be the first developer to do so in new homes on a wide scale in Oregon.

“It’s not common at all,” said Terry Bernhardt, an appraiser in Southwest Portland who tracks green home technologies. “Normally you have to have it installed at considerable expense.”

He estimates adding a charging station adds about $4,000 to the cost of building a home.

Paul Grove of the Home Builders Association of Portland said he was not aware of any other housing developments with charging stations installed in each home. But he said he’s noticed more public charging stations, even in rural areas.

Some downtown Portland parking garages include electric charging stations.

“You can definitely see a trend as more and more people choose to drive electric vehicles,” Grove said.

While Tesla vehicles can be plugged in directly to a wall outlet, it can take about eight hours to fully charge when connected to a 110-volt outlet. Dedicated chargers are much faster.

Bernhardt sees more residential developers adopting charging stations as electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids become more common. “The market’s going to catch up,” he said. “I think it’s a technology which has arrived now.”

Homes that include useful technology like electric car chargers both set housing apart and increase its resale value, Bernhardt said.

Electric cars can be charged in the home or at public charging stations. But most vehicle owners prefer the convenience of charging their vehicles at home, typically overnight, said Beau Snyder, an owner advisor at the Tesla dealership on Macadam Avenue, one of two in the Portland area (Tesla also has a dealership at Washington Square).

Tesla operates public charging stations that are free for Tesla owners to use. The Portland area has two so-called Superchargers, one in Woodburn and another in Sandy. There are also charging stations run by various private vendors that use differing technologies.

Some government agencies are working to expand charging stations, too. Seattle City Light, a publicly owned utility, announced plans to install 10 charging stations for drivers.

Oregon’s Building Codes Division also has discussed how to make sure new homes are electric-vehicle ready, said Jon Chandler, chief executive of the Oregon Home Builders Association.

A new era for electric cars appears to be dawning as automakers race to meet emissions mandates. Tesla is the current market leader in electric vehicles, with plans to produce 500,000 fully electric cars in 2018. But other automakers are following close behind. Volvo on July 5 announced plans to offer every vehicle with an electric motor beginning in 2019. Volvo will launch five fully electric models between 2019 and 2021, supplemented by plug-in hybrids and vehicles with so-called “mild hybrid” engines that automatically shut off when a car comes to a stop. Mercedes is also heavily investing in a new line of electric vehicles.

As electric cars become more popular, developers of single–family homes are facing fast-changing demands to respond.

“It’s something that we’re doing across the board right now,” Remmers said. “We think it’s the right thing to do, and we think it’s a feature buyers are going to appreciate in their new homes.”

Remmers uses electrical contractors Three Phase Electric, based in Canby, and Garner Electric, in Portland and Hillsboro.

West Hills Homes NW is developing Pioneer Highlands first, having garnered building permits from the city of Happy Valley. Remmers purchased the unbuilt lots in Pioneer Highlands from Holt Group, another residential developer.

“Over the years we’ve been watching Happy Valley, and it’s been growing tremendously,” Remmers said. “The demographics are excellent.”

Remmers said new Fred Meyer and New Seasons grocery stores have increased interest in the area.

The Pioneer Highlands homes are 2,500 square feet to 4,000 square feet, and are designed by an in-house architect, Brad Hosmar. Some of the homes will be one level, which is in demand for older buyers, Remmers said. Other homes will also have the master bedroom on the ground floor.

The single-family housing market has suffered from a lack of inventory. The Portland metro area had only 1.6 months of inventory in June, according to RMLS, a listing service. Total time on market for sold homes averaged 38 days.

“It’s a lot like the inner city where there really is a lack of inventory,” Remmers said. “It’s definitely a strong demand right now.”

Remmers had focused on the urban infill market before last year, when he began to build in Findley Heights, a subdivision in the Bethany-Bonny Slope area of Washington County.  A 40-lot buildout there is almost complete.

“That was tremendously received,” Remmers said. “We have a handful of homes left there that we’re building. Those have all sold well.”

Remmers is still building apartments and some condos in urban Portland, but has sought suburban developments to diversify and grow his business.

“We’re still doing a tremendous amount of homes in the infill market, just like we’ve been doing,” he said.  “This is another avenue for us to add some volume. That’s what families are looking for.”

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With Portland’s population increasing and the cost to live in the Rose City soaring, the city’s trees have become caught in the middle. The comprehensive law the city council passed to protect them, Title 11, has upset neighbors and tree boosters, some of whom have come to council to represent of old giants felled since the law went into effect on Jan. 1, 2015.

“There’s nothing that can be done in arrears about those trees that were killed, wrongly,” tree advocate Sara Long told council last week, describing two trees her landlord had cut down.

Less publicized but no less sincere have been the complaints of private-side interests who say the city’s new tree code is confusing and ineffective.

“Most professionals I have spoken to have said it is one of the more difficult codes ever implemented,” said Joseph Petrina, a member of the Oregon Remodelers Association and owner of Petrina Construction.

Critics from the business and development communities shared anecdotes of absurd unintended outcomes of Title 11, like a contractor needing to fence off a tree in the backyard for a small remodeling job in the front. They say, more gravely, that Title 11 has led to more trees being cut down, and might be making housing in Portland less affordable.

The spirit of the code

Vic Remmers knows preserving the city’s urban forest is an emotional issue in Portland. The owner of Everett Custom Homes became the object of protest this past fall when three 150-year old sequoias were scheduled to come down as part of an Everett project. Protestors carrying signs like “Remmers lies, Trees die” took to the neighborhood, and the story made national news. A neighborhood group eventually came up with a crowd-funded $800,000 to save the trees in a deal brokered in part by Mayor Charlie Hales.

Remmers said a better way to save trees is to change the code.

Everett develops new single-family houses, up to eight per lot. Remmers said outcry from pro-tree Portland has gotten louder and more severe since he started the company six years ago.

“It’s getting worse because I think people see that if they make a big stink about something it leads to more changes, which makes it more and more difficult to build homes in the city of Portland,” he said. “We’re building in established neighborhoods, and folks get upset about change. They get fearful because they don’t know what’s going to happen. We deal with that all the time.”

The city passed the comprehensive tree code in 2011, but due to the recession, it wasn’t implemented until four years later. Before Title 11, rules relating to trees were scattered across various bureaus.

Title 11 of the Portland City Code sought to combine tree-related laws for full-site development and smaller, homeowner-led remodeling work, under one heading. One goal was to get developers to consider saving trees earlier in the project planning process.

Under Title 11, developers of projects involving ground-disturbing construction on properties 5,000 square feet or larger must submit a tree plan accounting for all trees 12 inches in diameter or larger. Developers must preserve at least one-third of those trees, or pay the city $1,200.

But the law hasn’t worked as intended, and numerous residents upset with what they see as a shrinking urban forest have told council to strengthen or add disincentives. According to the city, 18 trees of at least 45 inches in diameter were cut down during the first nine months the law was effective.

The council will take to devising amendments to the tree code this summer. For now, though, a smaller package of targeted, “stop-gap” measures – called “Fritz-Saltzman” for city commissioners Amanda Fritz and Dan Saltzman, the amendment’s two backers  – is being considered. The stop-gaps would impose in development situations a tiered fee in-lieu schedule for trees up to 50 inches in diameter, and an inch-by-inch fee for trees 50 inches in diameter or larger.

The Oregon Remodelers Association submitted several proposed changes to Title 11, including allowing use of 4-foot orange fencing to mark off trees. The code currently requires 6-foot chain link fencing, which costs more. Most contractors have been renting the fencing and passing the cost along to homeowners, Petrina said.

Petrina also suggests exempting from the full force of the code hand-dug footings and foundations as well as other smaller work. He thinks small contractors will avoid obtaining permits if the rules stay the same.

“These changes would save the homeowner unnecessary expenses, but still live by the spirit of the code,” Petrina said.

Eating the costs

For some of landscape architect Brian Bainnson‘s clients, it’s a shock to learn what they can and can’t do with their property.

Bainnson said clients of his company, Quatrefoil Inc., are often surprised to learn that in addition to hiring a landscape architect, they’ll have to spend between $800 and $1,500 to hire an arborist to help write their project’s tree preservation plan. Follow-up arborist services can run up to $1,700, plus a few hundred more in billable hours for Bainnson.

“We’ve seen projects put on hold because there’s one more layer of cost that they hadn’t anticipated,” he said. “Escalating building fees are really limiting what people can do on their property in Portland.”

Bainnson cited one project he’s working on – a retaining wall that’s costing the owners $5,000 for materials and labor, as well about $5,000 in permit costs and arborist fees. He suspects rising costs will lead more homeowners to break the law and build out of permit.

“All you have to do is spend some time at the permit center with people who’ve gotten caught for building without a permit to know that if there are people getting caught, there’s a whole more people out there who aren’t getting caught,” Bainnson said.

Deconstruction/demolition firms also are affected by the new tree preservation law.

“It’s gotten so ridiculous with the tree protection,” said John LaBarge, owner of Oregon Demolition. “It can add significant cost to taking down a house, and it’s most likely a house that needs to come down. There’s no way it can be affordable anymore.”

One of LaBarge’s project owners last year opted to pay $1,200 to remove a tree rather than fence it off and preserve it, because the area to be fenced off was so large it would have inhibited the use of an excavator. He said he’s seen that happen a lot.

He said even if there were no tree protection rules in Portland, developers would still favor them, because “curb appeal” sells houses. He rejects the argument made by affordable housing advocates who say projects can be affordable if developers try harder.

Passing along the new costs to owners is inevitable, he says.

“You start adding costs and the margins aren’t there to eat it,” LaBarge said. “I would be running a nonprofit or a company losing money if we started eating all these costs.”

To address this, Commissioner Dan Saltzman added a provision exempting certain affordable housing projects.

“I don’t want people to think of this as trees versus affordable housing,” said Paul Bello, chairman of the city’s Urban Forestry Commission.

Remmers is in favor of decreasing the “root protection zone” for trees with narrow root systems as one way of loosening. As the law is now written, an area equal to foot for every in diameter of a tree must be protected against development. Remmers and others say that many trees endemic to the Pacific Northwest don’t have such wide-ranging root systems. Many developers have been opting to cut down a tree and pay the “tree tax,” because they’re committed to developing the property, and no other option exists, Remmers said.

“A lot of the time we have to put up these crazy fences around a tree way in the back, nowhere near anything that we’re going to be doing,” he said. “Or they’ll be right up against what we’re doing, making it harder for the contractor to excavate, and things like that.”

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