This blog post is a response to the article that was posted in the New Mexican titled, “The Greening of Oshara Village”.
One of the commentators believes that there is no future in real estate. Here are facts to refute his statement, to give a more realistic view. I submitted this as a comment to his response, and wanted to share it with you.
If you are interested in keeping up with all the comments, please visit the original post at the New Mexican. http://www.topix.net/forum/source/santa-fe-new-mexican/T4BMSBTHDH6TVSGHS
My Response
Some of the comments above question the future of the real estate market and consequently the future of the nation as a whole. This is short sighted in the face certain facts. Firstly the population in Santa Fe and the nation continues to grow and with curtailment of sales in the past 24 months, demand is growing on the sidelines. In the last two real estate recessions, all be it to a lesser degree, sales slowed as the prices fell. When it became clear that the demand remained and people needed homes, the fear that the train was leavening the station outweighed buyer’s fears of the market and they jumped on in significant numbers. Look at the math, at 2.7 people per household there are around 45,000 residences in the County. At 1.5% growth, that would be around 670 new homes needed each year and that does not include second homes. This fundamental need will gobble up this inventory in just a few years. Moody’s Economy.com recently reported their findings that over the next 10 years real estate in Santa Fe will appreciate on average 3.57% per year and Moody’s is typically conservative.
But this recession is very different from all that came before. Remember, this recession came during the oil shock that peaked in 2008. The first shoe to drop was the inflated real estate markets of, southern Florida, Phoenix Tuscan, Las Vegas Nevada, and southern California collapsed. It is telling to note that these are the most auto dependent places on Earth. The enormous losses sustained by the big time developers as the price of gas went up will not soon be forgotten because every one knows that gas prices will go up again. Conversely in the places with the most public transportation like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, you see the lowest rates of foreclosures. Now I agree these are extremes and not everyone wants to live in New York City (not me) but historic Santa Fe is a great example of a small-scale walkable village. Why not emulate this model. The building code used to build Santa Fe was the Law of the Indies from the Royal Court of Spain; we used this exact code to create Oshara. It is easy to be critical but is not so easy to find a group of people willing to do the right thing even if it is a little ahead of its time. And now is the time for mixed-use walkable communities. Add to this LEED certified homes and 100% water reclamation (which is up and running) and you have a viable model for the future. (Google Obama’s Future Today)
What do you have to offer?
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