Blogs by Alan Hoffman

Alan Hoffman started designing and building Passive Solar Homes in 1974. In 1977 he decided to sell his first solar home and found that not a single real estate agent knew anything about Passive Solar Design, so Alan got a real estate license and sold the first of many solar homes as an agent for Christopher Webster Real Estate, the Sotheby’s affiliate in Santa Fe. For the next 13 years Alan worked with Sotheby’s eventually becoming the Marketing Director before leaving to start his own agency, Frederick- Hoffman, Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate. In 2000 the real estate company that is now Prudential Santa Fe Real Estate bought Alan’s firm and Alan continues to work with Prudential as the leader of the Natural Homes marketing group specializing in energy efficient and solar homes.

In 1993 Alan realized that building a solar home in an auto dependent community still required too much energy for transportation so Alan turned his attention to historic town designs that encouraged walking and a close knit community. That led him to a new organization, The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). The CNU is a professional organization made up of designers, engineers, developers, academians and public officials. Alan is a signatory to the CNU Charter and continues to associate with the leading minds in the field. Around this time, work began on Aldea de Santa Fe with the help of Andres Duany one of the founding fathers of New Urbanism. Aldea is quite beautiful and mostly complete with almost 500 homes occupied.

Alan went on to develop, Oshara Village, a larger village approved for over 1,000,000 square feet as a Sustainable Enterprise Zone encouraging sustainable industry. Oshara, next to the Santa Fe Community College, is a rare combination of mixed use Smart Growth design to reduce driving, super energy efficiency and 100% water reclamation and reuse. Alan continues to design and sell Solar Homes and is helping buyers find and remodel historic homes to meet the modern Green Standard.