Hello everyone and welcome to the real estate minute. I’m your host Ivan Estrada with Ivan Estrada properties from Douglas Elliman. And here we are at the Natural History Museum again for a second month because there’s just so much to see I needed to bring you back. I remember coming here as a kid and walking around and looking at the dinosaurs and wanting to read and learn more. I’m now part of the advisory council and I’m excited to tell you a little bit more about that a little later. The real estate minute is going to work this way. There are three segments one minute each, three minutes total. Let the real estate minute begin.
On November 24th we have Thanksgiving. On the 25th. We have Black Friday. On the 28th we have Cyber Monday. But have you heard of Giving Tuesday on the 29th? Well, this is a social media collaborative effect started last year which included 700,000 people in over 70 different countries that were able to raise a hundred and sixteen million dollars for charity. Either you as a person or your family or your friends or people at work could come together and give your time or your money to your favorite charity such as the Natural History Museum. No matter the charity as long as you’re giving back that’s the most important thing. Now for more information on this you can go to www.givingtuesday.org.
According to the UN over a billion people around the world are homeless. Nick Cooper, a real estate agent from San Francisco was in Guatemala, and he decided that he wanted to make a change. He created the organization Home for a Home. What this works is that for every real estate agent involved every time we close a transaction a portion of that goes towards a charity to build a home. The total cost of building a home is $2,200 and that takes care of the materials and the labor and everyone involved in making sure this job gets done. Other than giving a portion of your commission to this amazing organization you can also go out to Guatemala to help build a home yourself. The homes are about four to five hundred square feet and the owner actually gets involved in picking the paint colors and it comes with a bunk bed for the entire family. For more information on this amazing organization. You can visit www.homeforahome.org.
This one Innovation will help solve two of the world’s biggest problems: pollution and homelessness. Now think about this in areas such as Latin America, Africa and Asia, 40 percent of its population are living under deplorable conditions. That’s awful. Now Oscar Mendez from Bogota, Colombia has come up with a solution which is called ConceptosPlasticos. In Colombia alone, there’s about 650 tons of plastic or rubber that are thrown away every single day. And Oscar said why don’t we make bricks out of this. And that’s exactly what they’re doing. Now these bricks will be able to be stacked just like Legos and it’ll take four people five days to put the home about 400 to 450 square feet. Now the cool thing is that if the family decides to move they could take their house with them. So they’ve built about 16,000 square feet of these homes. And they’re hoping to complete 219 by the end of 2016. What an amazing idea.
I hope you enjoyed this tour of the Natural History Museum, and as a member of The Advisory Council, I invite you to come back. Things are changing all the time. There are new exhibits. There are events all throughout the year, and you can also get involved as a fellow and for more
information on that you could visit www.nhm.org. And don’t forget to follow me on social media on Instagram Twitter Facebook and YouTube at Ivan Estrada properties. I will see you next Month.
About Ivan Estrada Properties: Ivan Estrada and his elite team of real estate agents are dedicated to providing an unforgettable experience in finding your dream home in Beverly Hills and other areas in Los Angeles County. Call us today at 323.574.2317 or contact us here.