The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast

There is a utopic vision that farmers will put down their pesticides, herbicides, and other chemical cocktails conceived and peddled to eradicate pests and weeds in order to save the planet. However the challenge is that the land can become so degraded that once you go cold turkey and stop applying chemicals, everything seems to collapse around you.That’s exactly what happened to Jesse and Cally McDougall when they took over Studio Hill, the family’s fourth generation farm in Vermont. For decades, Cally’s aunt had farmed the land with the assistance of chemicals. That is, at least, until she passed away from brain cancer. For Jesse and Cally this was a life-changing opportunity to take over the farm. They wanted to do the right thing—although as non-farmers they didn’t know what that looked like. The first step they decided was to not spray chemicals. “The first year was a complete disaster,” Jesse recalled. The 250-acre farm turned to bare ground, dirt, and mud. In a state of despair, the two found Alan Savory’s work with Holistic Management that helped to change everything. They began to rotate chickens around the farm. They started to breed sheep. And before their eyes they started to see the miracle of life return. In a true hero’s journey story, Jesse recalls the critical help they received along the way that includes both technical help from the Savory Institute and financing from Steward, while also offering tips on how to operate a successful regenerative farming operation. The second half of the story takes us out of the farm to the work they are now pursuing with the Regenerative Food Network. This is one of the most exciting regenerative agriculture-based projects we’ve come across, and it provides a framework that has the potential to transform food supply chains towards bio-regionalism.———————-This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life: Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner. Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments. Get full access to The Regenerative Real Estate Newsletter at regenerativerealestate.substack.com/subscribe

Don Hall is a trainer and facilitator with TransitionUS, the US hub with the global Transition Network. He is a permaculturalist and former Executive Director of Transition Sarasota. Don recently joined us on The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast to talk about his life’s work and the Transition Network’s playbook called Five Stages of Transition.If you’re not familiar with Transition or Transition Towns, it is a movement that has been growing since 2005 across the globe. Community-led Transition groups focus on a low-carbon, socially just future with resilient communities, and active participation in society.In practice, they are using participatory methods to imagine the changes we need, setting up renewable energy projects, re-localizing food systems, and creating community and green spaces.  They are nurturing the Inner Transition of the cultural and mindset changes that support social and environmental change.  They are sparking entrepreneurship, working with municipalities, building community connection and care, repairing and re-skilling. The community level of scale has huge potential to influence change and is a crucial part of developing and guiding social and economic systems toward sustainability, social justice and equity. There is an increasing recognition that top-down approaches are not sufficient alone to affect change and need to be combined with community-level responses.  It’s an approach that has spread now to over 48 countries, in thousands of groups: in towns, villages, cities, Universities, schools.  Around the world, there are 23 Transition Hubs that support and connect Transition groups in their country/region and connect internationally. ———————-This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life: Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner. Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments. Get full access to The Regenerative Real Estate Newsletter at regenerativerealestate.substack.com/subscribe

Despite being named one of the top ten landscape designers of all time, Mary Reynolds describes herself as an ex-gardener. That’s because after years spent designing award-winning gardens and landscapes across the globe, Mary was tired of fighting nature back to fit into the mold in which she originally designed.If you don’t know Mary Reynolds then you are in for a real treat. She is the author of “The Garden Awakening: Designs to Nurture Our Lands and Ourselves” which has been endorsed by Jane Goodall, a public speaker, and the founder of the international garden rewilding movement We Are the Ark. A movie has been made about her life called Dare to be Wild, which should certainly be added to your watchlist. Mary has been featured in Paul Hawken’s book “Regeneration” for her work launching We Are the Ark, with Ark standing for Acts of Restorative Kindness. Mary advocates that if you are fortunate enough to own a little piece of the earth, then it is your responsibility to not be a gardener, but a guardian of life. She advocates for leaving half of the land for the wild, and half for human cultivation.On a deeply spiritual level, Mary speaks to how both humans and the land are broken and need healing. Humans, she asserts, are not good at healing themselves, but through the process of healing the land we can begin to heal ourselves. This podcast episode is a deeply moving story of Mary’s life that should resonate with people as a classic hero’s journey. Within her story you will find grit, determination, hope, despair, struggle, and unwavering faith. You can follow Mary and her work at marymary.ie, or on Instagram at @wildmarymary and @letsbuildanark---This podcast has been sponsored by Wise Matter, a materials consultation firm that works with homeowners, architects, designers, and developers to choose materials, furnishings, and finishes that are non-toxic and do not come at the expense of human or planetary health. Get your free 30-minute consultation by visiting their website wise-matter.com.———————-This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life: Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner. Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments. Get full access to The Regenerative Real Estate Newsletter at regenerativerealestate.substack.com/subscribe

Biophilia was first introduced as a term in 1973 by Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, which put forth that biophilia is “the passionate love of life and all this is alive.” The term was later used by legendary biologist E.O. Wilson in his 1984 work Biophilia, in which he proposed that humans tend to focus on and affiliate with nature and other life-forms because of a genetic basis.Since then biophilia has been gaining in popularity amongst architects, designers, and even urban planners and sustainable city researches like Dr. Timothy Beatley, who is a prominent advocate of biophilic cities, with a book published by the same title. What exactly is a biophilic city? It is a city that puts nature first in its design, planning, and management. It recognizes the essential need for daily human contact with nature as well as the many environmental and economic values provided by nature and natural systems. Biophilic cities and green urbanism, a term Dr. Beatley coined, can be found around the world as cities are looking for ways to create more sustainable and livable urban environments for humans and wildlife. Dr. Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities, in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, School of Architecture at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for the last twenty-five years.  Much of Dr. Beatley’s work focuses on the subject of sustainable communities, and creative strategies by which cities and towns can fundamentally reduce their ecological footprints, while at the same time becoming more livable and equitable places.  Dr. Beatley believes that sustainable and resilient cities represent our best hope for addressing today’s environmental challenges. He is the author or co-author of more than fifteen books on these subjects, including Green Urbanism, Native to Nowhere, Blue Urbanism, and his latest, The Bird Friendly City.  To learn more about his work and to get inspired by the work cities are doing around the world to embrace biophilia and green urbanism, be sure to visit BiophilicCities.org. You can find films, articles, and other resources including a way in which your city can sign up to be a partner biophilic city.---This podcast has been sponsored by Wise Matter, a materials consultation firm that works w———————-This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life: Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner. Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments. Get full access to The Regenerative Real Estate Newsletter at regenerativerealestate.substack.com/subscribe

The world we design for is the world we get. That's why we are excited to share this episode with you featuring designer Ian Peterman. Ian's firm specializes more in the products that we fill our homes with than the actual design of a property, but the underlying design philosophy is one and the same: creating environmentally and socially just products, brands, and companies.In this episode Ian introduces listeners to the "conscious design" category and gives us highlights into how both large and small companies are beginning to redesign their products, packaging, and supply chains. For some it is easy to begin from scratch, for others it is a multi-year journey to unravel a complicated, opaque global supply chain.Be sure to visit the Peterman Design Firm, read Ian's book "Conscious Design", or tune into his podcast of the same name, "Conscious Design Podcast."---This episode was sponsored by Wise Matter: Healthy materials for people, home, and environment. Wise Matter offers free 30-minute consultations for homeowners, architects, designers, and contractors that are looking to create healthy indoor environments through materials, furnishings, and finishes.———————-This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life: Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner. Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments. Get full access to The Regenerative Real Estate Newsletter at regenerativerealestate.substack.com/subscribe

The cutting edge of regenerative technology is aligning market incentives with regenerative land stewardship. This is an area that Gregory Landua and his colleagues with the Regen Network have been pioneering since 2017 as they began asking questions of how to scale impact and help farmers and land managers switch to regenerative practices.By focusing on what Gregory calls a watershed view, the Regen Network was able to put the pieces together to monitor, value, and sell ecosystem services directly to buyers around the world. This may sound familiar as the carbon credit market has been gaining traction over the last decade. In fact, it has been growing 30% year over year according to Gregory and it will continue to heat up as more and more companies and organizations voluntarily pledge to offset their carbon emissions.In this podcast episode Gregory talks about his background and the catalyzing moments that led to the genesis of the Regen Network. He covers the critical challenges that they had to overcome in order to not just create the marketplace for these credits, but also how to work with the farmers and gather data about the underlying ecology including soil health, aforestation, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and more.This episode should give you an introduction that there are some major things in the works to help bring about a healthy, resilient, and regenerative future. While some of the technology may be complex, at the heart of the matter is the revitalization and preservation of land and nature. ———————-This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life: Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner. Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments. Get full access to The Regenerative Real Estate Newsletter at regenerativerealestate.substack.com/subscribe

The world is beginning to go through an electric revolution, and real estate is at the epicenter. Sean Armstrong, principal at Redwood Energy, happens to be one of the revolutionaries of this movement and has designed over 10,000 residences in more than 200 developments that are 100% all electric, Zero Net Energy with many of those being low-income affordable housing.Sean is a rare combination of advocate and activist with sustainability, justice, and doing the right thing at his core. His passion for sustainability started when he had a life-changing experience at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, where he lived in the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT), a student-run demonstration house that was off-grid (solar, wind, biodiesel and batteries).After college Sean left his imprint on organizations he worked for including a large general contracting firm begin to incorporate solar power into their projects. As a designer, Sean found a winning formula by combining all electric solar powered designs with affordable housing developments. This, he says, is because it helps developers become more profitable because electric design is cheaper to build and there are incentives for affordable housing.For Sean, there is an environmental cost to everything, but scale is important. The cost of solar is far outweighed by the positives that it creates to decarbonize the atmosphere, increase indoor air quality and create healthier living spaces, as well as create much more safe communities without the threat that comes with combustible fuel like natural gas. He has many personal gripping narratives of how his family has been impacted by events such as gas leaks, forest fires, and toxic indoor air quality. At the end of this Regenerative Real Estate Podcast episode, Sean mentions several resources that his firm Redwood Energy has put out for people interested in Zero Net Energy which you can find at their website here.———————-This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life: Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner. Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments. Get full access to The Regenerative Real Estate Newsletter at regenerativerealestate.substack.com/subscribe

Passion, service, community, and curiosity are the threads that weave the story of Mark Voss. Mark is a consummate educator, farmer, and real estate professional residing in Madison, Wisconsin. He is the founder of Voss Organics and is a Latitude Change Agent. Like many young people, curiosity and the longing for adventure first lured Mark to venture far and wide from his humble youth in the Midwest. From paradigm-shifting lessons during a Peace Corps service in Africa, a pilgrimage to Masanobu Fukuoka’s farm while teaching English in Japan, and immersion into the field of biodynamic agriculture while starting a 60-family CSA farm, it is evident from this story that Mark has embodied the experiences and lessons to become a wise teacher himself.Mark lives and breathes community. His urban farm produces seed starts for his business Voss Organics, which serves the Madison area farmers markets. He is a recently retired public and charter schoolteacher where not only he taught French, but also left a wake of school gardening programs. During his last year of teaching in 2021, Mark and a fellow science teacher created a course for the students called “The Honorable Harvest” that they based on the literary work of “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This special course helped students learned how people and plants have an integral relationship with each other. Mark sees tremendous potential to use real estate as the catalyst for positive social and environmental change. For him, real estate serves as an educational tool to not only impact individuals and families, but strengthen communities and networks of aligned businesses and organizations. ———————-This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life: Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner. Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments. Get full access to The Regenerative Real Estate Newsletter at regenerativerealestate.substack.com/subscribe

At the core of every real estate project is finance. That’s why we are excited to share this interview with Eve Picker, founder of the real estate crowdfunding platform Small Change. With a focus on helping impact-driven real estate projects get funded, Small Change represents a shift towards community-based finance. This is significant as federal regulations have historically barred the majority of the American population—the 97% of people that are not accredited investors—from participating in real estate investments. Eve, a disillusioned Australian architect that calls Pittsburg, Pennsylvania home, has a long history of spearheading challenging real estate projects. Her development career focused on projects that would help to revitalize communities where little to no investment money was readily available. She learned to piecemeal together sundry funding sources that spanned private capital, conventional funding, and public financing such as community reinvestment grants.In a male dominated industry such as real estate development, Eve’s passion for Small Change comes from the hurdles she faced trying to secure financing. Turned down and diminished by male bankers, Eve claims her ability to push forward on projects came as a result of two female bankers that believed in what she was doing. She now is passing that spirit on and is excited about creating a platform that helps to level the playing field for female and minority developers.We believe that Eve and her work at Small Change is at the frontier of finance and real estate. By both enabling ordinary people to invest in transformative projects in their own communities, as well as supporting local developers accomplish incremental development projects; this is where the winds of change are blowing. ———————-This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life: Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner. Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments. Get full access to The Regenerative Real Estate Newsletter at regenerativerealestate.substack.com/subscribe

Do you happen to be someone that thinks the dream of the white picket fence and the manicured lawn doesn't sound all that appealing?Maybe you are the kind of person that would rather live closer to nature? Or in a place with multiple generations living together with shared amenities?From off-grid and sustainable agrihoods to urban ecovillages and income sharing communes,  "intentional community" is quickly growing in popularity as a housing concept.On this podcast episode, Cynthia Tina, co-Director of the Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC), talks about her initial interest in intentional communities and how that led her on a quest across the globe to visit as many communities as she could.  She was then able to dove-tail her passion for deep living into a career helping to support the growing movement.With 40,000 unique people visiting ic.org each month, Cynthia says that intentional community is on the rise. Community types  vary widely across the world. Some are newer communities that may still have quite a bit of work to do to be fully established. Others have been around for decades and have been through multiple generations.Cynthia's advice to those interested in this type of living is to first check out their directory of intentional communities and to take time to visit places of interest. While many people have the desire to found their own communities, she says that it can be a lengthy process typically spanning 4-7 years. Through the foundation you can also find resources and a host of educational opportunities to learn about all facets of intentional communities.———————-This podcast isn’t just about ideas—it’s about action. From these conversations, two organizations have emerged to bring regenerative real estate to life: Latitude Regenerative Real Estate is the world’s first regenerative-focused real estate brokerage, dedicated to aligning values-driven buyers and sellers. With a strong presence in the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes regions, Latitude also supports purpose-driven developments across North America through strategic marketing and branding services. If you're looking to buy, sell, or amplify a regenerative project, Latitude is your trusted partner. Hamlet Capital is an investment and development firm committed to building resilient communities rooted in working farms. If you’re developing an agrihood or conservation community, we’d love to hear from you. Together, we can turn visionary ideas into thriving, place-based investments. Get full access to The Regenerative Real Estate Newsletter at regenerativerealestate.substack.com/subscribe