Many people have asked about the Good project and what is going to happen to it with all the changes going on around here so I thought I would do a post on the topic and see if we can’t spell it all out.

Basically we have hit a wall with pricing where the current market has gone below what it costs us to build the product we believe so strongly in. So what we are going to do is finish and sell a few more houses that we already started and put the project on hold for a bit while we wait out the storm. It’s no secret that the market has taken a huge hit in the past year and our project although still faring better than others has been hit and is now in a spot.

There is one good thing about all this….If you want a good home, we are going to be selling the few that are under construction at below the cost to build them! So you could come in and get a killer deal on what I still believe to be the best example of Eco-Urban housing anywhere in the world.

We hope to be able to resume construction soon on the remaining lots and are already seeing signs that the market has bottomed out and is leveling off. Inventory has been in steady decline for the past 5 months which is typically the precursor to a recovery. At least that is what has always happened in the past.

So that is the story of Good.

to be continued…

Levi

So if you are an avid LJ Urban reader you may have noticed a bit of a tone change in the writing here for the past few weeks….Didn’t notice? Oh well. Anyhow…I have been gone for a bit and can’t wait to tell you about where I was, but I think its best if I start at the beginning and take you all the way through what has gone on since this month started. Because when the month started I had no idea any of this was even going to take place, it all just unfolded like a crazy movie.

Steve (a good friend of mine who I have known since I was a young kid) works at a Church in Roseville called me to tell me about a some interesting news he had heard. He said that he had received word that there was a group in Ethiopia who had been visiting a tribe in the south called the Karo and had learned of a terrible ongoing tribal practice, basically the tribe believes that the Karo people are pure and need to be kept that way and that some of the babies who are born are not pure and need to be killed. So for the past 200+ years they have been killing many of their babies by throwing them in the river with their hands tied or by putting them in the bushes to die.

There is some good news in this though. The team that was there went to the tribe elders and made a proposal. You let us take the children off of Karo land and you will not have to kill them. The elders agreed and in the first two weeks 9 children were taken from the tribe and brought into a little town called Jinka.
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We see it all around us: We see it in the failing banks, auto manufacturers, and newspapers. We see it in our local, state, and federal government. We see it in the talking heads that we can’t seem to escape on the 24-hour news channels. We see it with our neighbors who can no longer afford their mortgage. And (of course!) we all see it in ourselves–a failure to think long-term, to look around the next bend, to sacrifice immediate gratification for a better future.

So, I wonder, do you think we can change? Will we learn from this current crisis and example of our gross short-sightedness? One controversial writer even goes as far as to argue that we may be doomed by our economic system, arguing that “capitalism is not up to the challenge is that it improperly and systemically undervalues the future”. What do you think? Are we doomed to the same missteps? If not, how do you think that we (you) can do to affect that change?

We have done this before but the world was different in 2008 than it is today so I thought it might be worth another round. The game is simple all you need to do is answer the question in the last comment ahead of you and ask another one for the person behind you. The topic for today is – The Economy. Ready?

Ok I will start.

How do you feel the movement towards sustainability is affected by the market turmoil we are experiencing?

Levi

Last month I got our electric bill and have to admit I was a bit ashamed. Well first let me tell you a little background on the story, we moved into the Good Project about 4 months ago now and were very excited that our utility bills were going to be super low compared to the standard efficiency home we were living in before. We now have solar panels and high efficiency appliances and all the other goodies crammed into the Good project. Anyway, month one came and went and we did not have an electricity bill so we called PG&E and they gave us their usual shpeal about new accounts and some paper mill that sent out bills being slow to respond. Month three rolls around and we finally got our first bill and I was ecstatic to see that we were only paying about a dollar a day in both gas and electricity. Yeah well apparently I am not that smart because what I forgot about the whole solar on the roof thing was the fact that our bill for electricity is set up on an annual billing cycle….Yeah so we were not actually being all that good with electricity after all, the real bill that I was finally able to get from PG&E was much higher. [Read more →]

Its a problem I am sure fewer and fewer people have this year than they did a few years ago. Which puts a new perspective on things that makes it all that much more preposterous when you see what people decided to do when they thought the money would not stop flowing. But what this guy decided to do was simply off the charts. He literally built himself a full scale replica of the white house in Atlanta. Complete with floor mats that have the seal of the president of the united states on them and a real oval office.

Now I know that he must have been making so much money that he thought he was indestructible at the time but is it really any surprise that he is now having to sell the home to pay off debts? I mean was there any shred of business savvy in a man who thought it was a good idea to build a white house in Atlanta?

You can read the original article in the NY times here.

As you have all noticed by the price it costs to fill up your tank with Gas, Oil prices have taken a steep nose dive. And next year looks like it may even keep going that direction. The chief energy economist of Deutsche Bank, Adam Sieminski, said recently that the demand for oil in 2009 will drop more than any other time in the last quarter of a century, due to the weak economy. Sieminski forecasts oil traded in New York falling as low as $30 and averaging $47.50 for the whole year. He says higher forecasts haven’t adequately factored in how the global downturn will hurt oil demand. So…gas may be getting cheaper than cheap…But there is a flip side to that good feeling you are getting at the pump. With oil at 145$ this past summer alternative energy was entering what seemed to be its prime time debut, finanicers were willing to pour money into anything that held even the slightest promise of sustainable energy, even the Venture capital funds known for their technology plays in the past 20 years dumped more money towards green technology than information technology. But with prices at 37$, now what? The question on everyone’s mind is what will that mean for sustainable technologies?

And here is the million dollar question for you today. Given the increase in funding for the right kind of innovation when pricing is high how much are you willing to pay for a gallon of gas?

Levi Benkert

Some things just take a lot of patience, like waiting for the Astronaut Ice Cream I ordered off the back of a box of Raisin Bran when I was eight to come in the mail. (It takes 6 weeks by the way). The Good project has joined the ranks as one of those things in life that takes time. I was going through papers in my office yesterday looking for something and came across our planning commission approval documents and saw that we were approved in September of 2007 which does not sound all that long ago except that we had worked on the project almost a whole year leading up to that point as well. These things are like a good soup, they take time but when cooked just right with the right amount of patience come out tasting pretty darn good.

If you have driven by lately you will see that the first phase is complete (and sold out) and that the second phase has only three concrete pads poured. If you had driven by 2 weeks ago you would have seen the same thing….And 2 weeks in construction time is a lifetime (unless of course you are working on finishes in which case 2 weeks means you have hardly done anything). [Read more →]

It comes as no surprise to see that GM has decided to halt plans on the one project in their books that had promise. The Chevy Volt. Really? I mean Really? You have seen your company get this close to failing and everyone and their mother knows that its because you ignored the writing on the wall about SUV’s and energy costs. Oh but wait you must have seen that this month you were starting to sell more SUV’s again because gas went down….Oh! I see now we are going to have cheap gas forever and won’t need to drive electric cars anymore. I am so glad to know that the future is so clear to you.

Jessie posted an interesting question on her blog that I have been thinking a lot about today.

I have stolen the post and and am posting it here.  -Shhh-

I was listening to the radio the other day and they were talking about how people are not spending as much and it was a bad thing. I could not help but feel very differently about it. Is it really such a bad thing? I understand that it effects peoples jobs and I am sorry for that but is there a way that we can spend less and it be ok? I think that if this Christmas people decided to make more presents that would be a good thing. Or to give to an organization to help the hungry in someone’s name instead. Can this really be all bad? Have we gotten ourselves into a place where we have to spend, spend, spend for everything to be alright or is there a way to adjust? These are the questions running around my head today. What do you think?