The Bad

The real estate market is getting worse every day… Don’t you just want to throw your computer when you read a paragraph that starts out with that sentence? I swear, every day I read another article about how bad its all getting and how we all need to just hide in caves for the next few years.

Well I want to offer another point of view.

I think we all got out of hand in the market and that we deserve what we are getting. I think that the market was never really as high as we thought it was and that a little reality is a good thing. I know that its painful to hear if you bought your house in 2006 (like me) but we all need to get over it and realize that things are going to be going down for a while because they should go down.

The indisputable fact of the matter is that more people can afford houses every time the prices fall even a little. There are some things that I think should go up in price, like gas, for instance. The best thing that could happen in this country is $5.00 per gallon gas because we would finally then start to get our act together and figure out how to drive less. Cities would be better off and people would start to figure out how to live closer together. I live near downtown and only put gas in my car once or twice a month. When I lived a ways out of town I would fill it up once or twice a week. Times that by the 300+ million people that live in our country and you have a lot of gas being wasted and a lot of pollution getting created.

Anyway, I am off the point here. What I am saying is that there are some things that should go up in price and others like housing that simply need to be reasonable. And the more we all get a sound perspective on things, the less we are going to be whiplashing up and down needlessly.

At LJ Urban we have had to make some pretty drastic changes to get through the market shift. But I can not say that all of them were bad. We are now able to build the same Eco-Urban house we set out to build but instead now its for far less money. We sat down rolled up our sleeves and figured out how to get our overhead way down and get through this. One of the things we had to do was let go several of our staff.

I have had few harder things to go through in my life, many of them in recent months. (More on those in Part 3.) It’s just the worst conversation to have to sit down and have with someone.

I always seem to avoid the point and take too long to say what I have to say. It usually goes something like this:

“Hi, uh… Well I want to talk to you… uh… I want to tell you about some changes we are having to make… you know major changes… Yeah, big ones… You know, ones that well affect all of us… Well more you than the other people… Do you get my drift?… No?… Well, I guess what I am trying to say is that I really like having you around… and want to still have you here… just not as much… You know like maybe we could hang out on the weekends…”

I hate that no matter how much I would love to keep the person around and respect them, it always feels like I am having to reject them. I guess it’s just not one of those conversations you planned to be good at. Thankfully everyone was very understanding and there were no hard feelings (that I know of..) We were able to still be friends and now have much lower costs. At one point there were 13 of us, including myself, and now there are 4 of us. Yeah… way different dynamic. But, you know, things are good. We are getting into a new rhythm and are still going to be here to see through the fantastic vision that was birthed over 4 years ago. LJ Urban is here to stay, and let me tell you it feels good to know that we can make it through times like this and still keep striving for what is right. Jason always used to say when he was with us that someday someone was going to make a movie about what we are doing, and now more than ever I can see that it just might be a movie worth watching.

Another one if the things we did to make sure our costs stayed low was taking our super cool brick office on 20th and H and subleased the front half of our space to some of the neatest people you will ever meet. Instead of just being here all alone, we now have GreenBuilt and Green Sacramento to help take up the torch (no Olympic pun intended) for sustainability. We are still here, just in the back part of the office now, with good neighbors.

Anyway, I am rambling. What I wanted to say was that things have been tough, but we have all learned a lot. We now know that this is our mission and that we are going to see this through. It’s going to be a great day next month when we open the doors for the first time in our Good project and I know that its all going to be worth it. I don’t take lightly our goals and it seems the harder things get the more we sharpen our focus and strengthen our stance on what communities should be and how business should be run. It’s a good thing to get tested when you come out the other end stronger and with a better sense of how to move ahead.