My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

Tonight I attended the Group Inc’s real estate forecast presentation for 2008. For those of you not in Northern Colorado, The Group is the largest real estate firm in Northern Colorado. The main thing I got out of it, which is what I have been thinking, and have been hearing from many people, is that our local market has “bottomed out” for lack of a better term. Things are going to start improving. It won’t be booming by any means, but it will be more balanced. The latter half of the year looks to be better than the first half, and that will carry over into 2009. For the next year, they are predicting that sales will be slightly over 2007, which was down a little from 2006, which in turn really dropped from 2005. That points to a bottom of the market. It is funny though how things are in perspective. For Fort Collins, they are predicting about 3,700 home sales. For everyone concerned that is a down market for around here. Interestingly, that is only 300 sales less than the peak back in 2004, and is similar to the sales pace in 1998. I remember 1998 being a pretty good year. It is amazing how it is all relative.

They also stated that in some neighborhoods, price points, etc. there is actually a shortage of homes available, which can happen in any market, good or bad.

Now for what I wish they would have done. I wish they would have spent some time talking about the various market segments, where is the activity? I wish they would have spent some time talking about what buyers are looking for, where they are coming from…what product is selling. Is the only thing selling homes Granite Kitchen counter tops, or are buyers looking for something else.

Now, for my predictions. Overall, I feel the market will continue to improve, though at a sustainable pace, not a torrid pace. I think the markets will be there for infill product, niche product, and amenity based communities. I think people are going to demand more from good design and architecture. They will want their homes to be unique and individual, a reflection of who they are…even from production builders. The street scape will become more important, with a variety of architectural styles, colors and materials. The look alike homes of the past decade will become a thing of the past. I predict buyers will become more interested in mixed use and mixed income neighborhoods…intermixing products within blocks, and not so segregated as they have been in the past. Buyers are going to continue to look for homes and neighborhoods that are designed within the context of the green movement, and that are energy efficient.

Well, that is all for now. I would be interested to hear what your thoughts are!

You would not believe it, but on Thursday, my back up laptop went down for the count. At first I thought it was the power cord as I have had issues in the past. But it turns out it was the internal power system. I am seeing if that is fixable, or even worth fixing.

So I went and bought a new hard drive for my main laptop, got it all setup again, only to find that I was having the exact same problem with the same program as I had before. Arrgghhh. I did some online research, and discovered that it was a software problem, and there was a fix available. So I was able to get it fixed, and moved on with life. Now the question is, why did it quit working in the first place? I had been using the same settings and hardware configurations for some time. Why would it work one night, and not the next morning?

Technology…you love it and hate it at the same time. On the bright side, during all the rebuild I discovered that my laptop has bluetooth capability. Now if only I can get my Blackberry connected by bluetooth, life will be good.

Today I finally received notice that my licensure application was approved. I am now Landscape Architect #290 in the State of Colorado. This is a follow up to my earlier ranting about the State government misplacing my application!

It must be Murphy’s law, the best laid plans of mice and men. Yesterday I had a big deadline trying to get 3 home plans out the door to structural engineers. I had my whole day planned out, with no meetings scheduled. The day started at 5:30 am when my daughter came in crying with an ear infection. Since my wife was a teach parent at the preschool with my son that day, I was the one who had to take our daughter to the doctor. So I got on my computer to work on my deadline, and I couldn’t get into CAD. After trying several times, I came to the conclusion that my hard drive was failing. I realized this, because this has happened to everyone one of our laptops. So instead of working on my deadline, I spent the day backing everything up (which I do anyway), and getting my back up computer up and running again. Fortunately, I didn’t lose anything, and I did manage to get everything out, though a few hours late!

Recently a friend of mine and I were discussing what I was going to do with my LEED accreditation and discussing LEED in general. I actually have thought about this, and what I would like to do is specialize in LEED for New Developments, as well as New Home Construction. This will be in addition to what we do for commercial projects, but I want to specialize in the residential end.

With new development, particularly residential neighborhoods, there are very few standards for green development, other than doing what is right to minimize the impacts of development and creating them to be more sustainable than the current development patterns. In this respect, I think LEED-ND will be very beneficial and I want to be in the forefront of this. Convincing developers to go this route will not be easy, and it will also require municipalities, utility providers, and contractors to all think differently. One of the first projects I want to test with this will be own development. Right now, LEED-ND is in the pilot process, and will not be brought online until early 2009, so we will follow the pilot guidelines and hopefully become certified as we go to construction.

LEED for homes is an entirely different matter. There are many green building standards for residential construction. Locally, we have the Built Green program administered by the Metro Denver HBA, Energystar, the upcoming ANSI national standards, and some others. All are good programs with varying degrees of market acceptance. When I was building several years ago, I followed the Built Green program, and even listed some of the homes. At the time, that program was unknown in Fort Collins and it had little market viability.

Both the Built Green and Energy Star programs focus more on the building, mostly favoring energy and water consumption. I think where LEED might be different is that it looks at a more comprehensive picture from site development all the way through indoor air quality. It is also designed to dovetail with LEED-ND. With our development, we will also require the builders to follow some kind of green standard. Whether we want to dictate which standard, or allow flexibility we will have to decide. Of the measures that we will have to evaluate will be market acceptance of the various standards, and the cost of implementing those standards. LEED in particular can be quite expensive. Just the fees paid to USGBC and to have a third party rater involved can run from $3-7,000 per home depending upon the level of certification (taken from Green Builder magazine, July 2007). This is pretty steep for the typical home where every dollar counts for affordability and buyers compare prices per square foot more than features. That being said, there could be some economy of scale achieved if a builder has stock plans that are repeated several times, or uses the same materials and specs from home to home. This would in theory reduce the paperwork that is incurred. I don’t know if this is possible, but will look into it further. If USGBC wants LEED to be a viable standard for home building, they will have to address the cost issues.