UPDATE: March, 2009
PLEASE KNOW that all of us at the Eco-Steward Real Estate Firm are Eco Certified® Real Estate Consultants, and specialize in land carefully and thoughtfully reviewed for eco-friendly development. Also, please know that we consider steep slopes and landslides a potential hazard ( I have personal experience with the result of flat-lander inexperience in my own neighborhood and decry it)...and that we DO recommend that our clients contact Professionals and bring in a State licensed geotechnical engineer, if necessary ... to look at potential hazards ...
HERE IN BUNCOMBE COUNTY just this month in fact, we have been having quite a brouhahain terms of Steep Slope development...and landslides ...Fingers have been pointed at Developers, Sellers and at REALTORS® . .. THIS IS ONE Real Estate Firm NOT to be disparaged . Again....in the Eco-Steward Real Estate Firm ALL members are Eco Certified® Real Estate Consultants, and specialize in land carefully and thoughtfully reviewed for eco-friendly development
I wrote the following post back in 2007....
___________________________________________________________________________
Real Estate Investors and Developers with little experience in terms of steep slopes might want to seek out the assistance of an ECO certified REALTOR® and her team of Experts. Here in Western North Carolina, Landslides are a reality as you can see with this graphic shared at a class we recently took with Richard Wooten at the Warren Wilson College Environmental Leadership Centerjust outside of Asheville. 
Some landslides only consist of soil, called an earthslide. Some are a mixture of soil, rock trees and mud, called a debris flow. Other landslides contain only rock, called a rockfall or rockslide. In any case, it behooves the REALTOR®, and developer to be conscious of that fact, and so advise clients. Not long ago a developer from a State where mountains are not so common, bought a huge ridge top where he planned to erect 4000 sq ft homes on 1 AC lots and place them atop the lofty peaks. What the developer didn't know was that this" prime acreage" was unstable.
The result for the developer was a combination of community concern, private embarrassment, and public back-peddling. Once the community found out that the "flatlander" was planning to build on steep slopes in an area prone to landslides, they were (rightly) distressed. Who wants to live downhill from where a landslide might take you for a fast ride in the middle of the night? For that matter, who would want to invest in a home under those conditions? Obviously, the community groups reasoned, that developer must not have a clue as to the dangerous conditions with which he was tampering. Shouldn't he at least have looked at the property to see if there were signs of danger such as breaks in the ground surface and/or curved trees? (see photo below our photographer took at an acreage soon to go on the market.)
Back to the story....Community members, fueled by their feelings of extreme concern,
formed vocal groups.
They came in noisy 
droves to the commissioners' planning board meetings,
making it necessary for the meetings to be moved to larger and larger rooms.
The media picked up on the story. A few months passed. The developer learned that the community groups had hired an attorney. Having done that, the attorney began his process of discovery. He verified that slope stability analyses from the planning through construction and inspection phases of developments can help mitigate the potential for landslide damage.He also found out that the analyses, best done by the cooperative efforts of qualified geotechnical engineers, geologists and soil scientists, were nowhere to be found.
This lack of due diligence on the part of interested parties created an opening for the community groups to question the safety of the project. They were able temporarily to halt development pending environmental assessment studies and review of steep slope ordinances.
Soon, in our part of the mountains, landslides and potential landslide areas will be mapped.Then investors, developers and REALTORS® will have readily accessible tools with which to identify and disclose that home sites and homes in those areas are vulnerable to landslide. For all of us, it is a good idea to know certain pertinent facts about the topography and geology of a tract of land that go beyond desirability of location.
What do you think?
Copyright © 2007 All Rights Reserved Asheville ECO Real Estate: Trends, Legacies & The Home Place Greenolina
####
Comments(15)