The greening of Oshara Village

"This is going to shake up the market." How many times has Hoffman said those very same words just before the crash? He is a weird cat.

The 'village' is located in a hole in the ground below the community college.

It looks more like Rio Rancho North.

And any builder at Aldea doesn't get any points for style.

Cookie cutter, and fake looking, I'm sure someone will buy in.

According to the August 2009 SF New Mexican Real Estate guide:

Oshara:more than 800 units planned; 46 are completed

(there are no figures for what is actually occupied)

Rancho Viejo: 30 year projected 12,000 homes
Since 1998: 1,115 completed (only 10,885 left! Hurry!)

Tierra Contenta: 1,933 built, 155 to go

Monte Sereno: 276 planned; 20 built, 15 under construction

Zocolo: 300 planed, 199 built

Aldea: 476 planned; 372 completed

Homewise/Old Las Vegas Place: 25 "affordable" and 25 "market" planned; "construction should begin end of year"

That's just a few of the currtent developments, obviously with lots of capacity. Meanwhile, developers are itching to build more, especially in rural Area 1, and the City just accomodated them by changing zoning from 2 per acre to 5-6.

Stop the madness.

Do they meet the Passive House spec?

That is the 'acid test' for environmental impact, and good building design standards.

Can you answer this question Alan?

Oshara Village has some huge homes that abut directly on the street. What's up with that? It seems that the only homes that are "selling" are the Habitat for Humanity houses that have been recently built there. And where is this big retail compnant that they have been promising?

It is hard to imagine a healthy real estate market again. Yet, some day we may achieve equilibrium, where buyers and sellers agree on a price point and transactions start to absorb some of these large inventories.

In the meantime, it's encouraging that home builders are investing and demonstrating better ways to build homes, that is, more environmentally sensitive and energy efficient.

Let's remember that builders take a risk, as do their lenders. As long as our tax dollars aren't at risk then I'm ok with that.

Well! At least you`re not going down without a fight. But you`re going down.
The primrose path to hell is paved with good intentions.
Don`t worry be happy. Keep watching your happy talk TV. They`ll point the way.
To Oblivion.

Happy talk, keep talkin' happy talk,
Talk about things you'd like to do.

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 Future Today”) What do you have to offer?

Entering the Greatest Depression in History
More Bubbles Waiting to Burst
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php...

Hope springs eternal. Reality trumps hope. The powers that be would rather dump the economy in cold seasons. People are not as apt to riot in winter. Enjoy your last summer in Fantasy.

Santa Fe will do fine. Just a different way of doing fine. Not the old paradigm`s fine.

You can not fix a broken chassy by washing the windows. That`s all we`ve been doing thus far.

Look to derivatives as the Elephant in the room no one will talk about.

That place is a dump

All buzz wrote:

<quoted text>
All buzzwords. Do you have a college degree? Because I have met you several times and can say I have never been impressed. In fact, anything but.

He`s one of the good guys. No need to get personal.

Strictly speaking, "green" "development" is an oxymoron.