101 Bristol Hill Road

The lot was raw ground until recently. It sold four times in the public record, and the last of them is the one that matters: September 20, 2018. The house went up the following year. Ulster County assesses the land at a fraction of what stands on it.

The MLS public-record field gives the owner's surname as Wentland. Michael Wentland is a New York State registered architect and a Building Performance Institute certified building analyst who lives in the Town of Hurley, sits on the town's Housing Advisory Committee through 2027, and runs ORA Architecture PLLC, a practice whose one stated specialty is energy-efficient and passive house design, and whose business page was filed under Glenford before the office moved to Wall Street in Kingston. The listing says the house was designed by an architect for his own family. The record says who that architect is.

Nothing in the MLS claims a Passive House certification, and none appears in the certification databases. What the MLS does claim is an ENERGY STAR certified home with a HERS index score, and the description hedges the rest in its own quotation marks: built to "passive house" standards.