I have completed my masters in architecture and urban planning and my husband has a masters degree in computer science. We are looking for opportunities but not sure which states should we focus on? Any advice/ suggestions would be helpful.
The strong technology sector in the state might make your husband's job search easier than in other places. "Easier," being relative, of course, since it's bad all over. I have no idea what architecture firms in TX might be hiring though. But hopefully once business picks up for the technology and energy industries it will lead to work for local architects.
Anyone else have a state to recommend for first to recover?
i'd come out west. i just got my old job back. wyoming, idaho, and montana's economies seem to chug along, because they are big energy/tourism states. and yes, texas is probably a good suggestion. just don't go somewhere where they rely entirely on building houses for their economy. i would say this part of the country is already in recovery.
le bossman is right: going west is probably a good rule of thumb, and agree that areas w/ massively bloated housing stocks are to be avoided.
I had always heard that areas like Nebraska and the Dakotas never hit the lows that other areas of the country did, mainly because they weren't as affected by the housing bubble as other states.
I'd steer clear of states where they have crushing state debt and liabilities. They are sure to jack up taxes and regulations which in turn causes business to flee. The current issue of Forbes has a good article about public debt and highlights some states that are bright spots - Utah, Texas, Virginia, Nebraska.
The places to steer clear of are generally costal ~ West Coast, New England and places like Illinois and Michigan.
Mountain states are looking good now but your only realy big markets out there are Denver and Salt Lake City. Both fine towns but just one Houston or Dallas dwarfs those places in combined pop. Likewise prairie states like the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas aren't doing terrible but there really are no major metros that will employ a wide variety of professions.
I'd do a little research on commercial and residential inventories (the amount of buildings and housing units that remain vacant and unoccupied) in big cities. New construction tends to go to places where inventories are declining sharply. Thus San Fran and San Diego are better than LA and anything is better than Miami. Dallas is better than Houston, and Austin is better than Dallas. Las Vegas is awful but Denver is actually looking pretty good.
I agree that Texas and the mountain states are generally good bets. In terms of technology, Houston, Dallas, & Austin all have decent sized technology sectors and people keep moving there. Also some pretty cool residential architecture there and with the lack of regulation, it seems like you could do some pretty cool stuff.
If you're interested in living in a "failed state," there are still plenty of tech. jobs in California, both in the Bay Area and down here in LA.
Architecture & construction is pretty much finished for a long time. You can find work though in urban planning or become an "information architect" or work in the film industry as a set designer, all things I've seen people doing since the downturn.
I think that the reality is much more nuanced than just to say that entire regions are off-limits or, alternatively, hot. As I tried to point out above, inventories and market conditions vary significantly between cities in the same region. New large projects are creeping forward in parts of Southern Cailfornia, for example, and in some neighborhoods in New York City. Buffalo is rather hot for smaller developments now.
I mean I'd be very happy if all you potential competitors move to Texas and leave the rest of the country (where they don't engage in behaviors like mass executions and state-sponsored torture) to fewer of us on the coasts, but it would simply be incorrect to say that architectural activity is "dead" on the coasts for the foreseeable future. It really isn't. Either that or all my clients are lying to me.
I'd just like to point out the film industry is not the fail safe job option that many people have suggested. It's extremely difficult to get your foot in the door without proper connections and experience, most jobs are temporary and usually for a very specific task or skill and once production finishes, so do you. Also realize that despite making record box-office sales, the film industry is also looking for ways to trim the budget, which has often resulted in moving productions to states that provide the biggest task-incentives and milking inexpensive labor in a new market for all they can get. It's not all bad, but just be aware it's nothing like working in an office.
the film industry is tough to break in, unless you're in the right spot at the right time or your last name is coppala. The pay can be better or worse, especially in entry level production assistant spots and the no-budget world that is the bottom of the ladder.
Also, an architecture education isn't the same as knowing how to make film/tv/commercials/porn.
If you truly love designing architecture and building real stuff, the world of hollywood will ultimately be unfulfilling. if you like creating stuff inside a computer, then go into video games, not film production.
I'm really getting jumped on for suggesting the film industry. I only brought it up because most of my friends here in LA do work in the film industry, two of them with architecture backgrounds, and do really well for themselves. A couple are also totally f'd and living on food stamps. It's a long road to hoe, but is possible to do something there; I'd be interested to know which industry appears more bleak right now, film or architecture? The video game industry isn't all fun and games either...
Urbanist, I'd really be interested to hear what large projects you're talking about in California. Yes, there's still some massive high rise projects underway in and on the books in San Francisco, and people I talk to in the industry up there are hopeful that some will go through. However, most of these are already or have been in DDs or CDs for awhile. I don't hear about too much about brand spanking new development proposals in the Bay Area. Hard when you've got resolutions going through city council every year to literally ban all new construction in San Francisco. Not that I'm all for the big developments up there, I'm just sayin...
There's the high-speed rail project between the City & LA, but it will be interesting to see where the dollars come from, since the bond is hardly enough to get the project off the ground. Will Obama's new 2 billion or so stimulus money really help the project get off the ground? I'm not so hopeful. Maybe I'm wrong.
Are you talking about the large airport remodels? John Wayne, LAX? Or the completion of the metrolink out to the Westside? These things can all, in time, bring LA back from the abyss, but I think we're looking at a really long trajectory before we see them really help out the economy. Fighting through NIMYism and labyrinthine regulations makes large infrastructure projects in California take decades to complete and billions of extra dollars...
The last four developers I've talked to think the San Diego real estate market will continue to be weak for a long time. Foreclosures are still really high down there... Yes mortgage defaults have dropped, but these are dropping from really high levels, plus it's just a sign that banks are working to stem the tide of defaults... Condos and homes in SD continue to sell for rock bottom prices. I haven't heard of any signs of an uptick. Maybe I'm a couple weeks behind the times... What large infrastructure is going on down there? Am I totally out of the loop?
Also, speaking about nuance, you just painted 24 million people as mass executioners and pro-torture activities. Yeah, a lot of them are. There are also some really cool people that live in Texas that aren't on that.
I hate to be a pessimist. I think, or rather believe or hope that California will come back in the next couple decades and I plan to be here to see it happen and work towards it. And I'm sympathetic to a lot of the regulations and environmentalism here. I get it. At the same time, it makes it really hard to get anything done. Hopefully we can muddle through...
I just see the mid-western states and Texas as having a lot of potential in the short and long-term. I think the coast has had a good run and it will be awhile before things bounce back. Just my two cents.
I don't think you're out of the loop - don't get wrong, things are glum. But there are several large projects I'm aware of with 2-3 year entitlement horizons are moving forward in North County. Prices per square feet are up month-on-month for the last three months. GSD is an example of a city with fairly tight inventories (and, no, I am not talking about the massive glut in Centre City condos). Price per square foot has fallen about 45% across the county beginning precipitously in 2007.. so no production stopped a long while ago. Now inventories are getting worked through, and developers are coming out of the woodworks, knowing that they face 2 year+ entitlement cycles.
Didn't mean for the film industry response as an attack. I'm just trying to point out that many of the "alternative" avenues for architects are having just as hard of a time as we are. As nice as the idea is that architects can just slide in and out of other design related professions, the fact remains that in a struggling economy your not going to be able to just saunter into a job in the ( film industry, graphic design, gaming).
As happy as I am for the few who have managed to make the transition from architect to something else, I'm kinda tired of it being used as an example of how people just need to "think outside the box" to make it in today's market (example, that NYT article). I generally find those people were not really all that enterprising anyway, they just have friends in the right places.
the openings are gonna come from an imaginary world inside of Obama's mind
Del Toro will probably make a Pan's Labyrinth film about the delusions of Obama
Look. There is a light at the end of this tunnel. There WILL be a recovery in new projects and probably fairly soon. This isn't really a debatable point, unless the recession double-dips, and even then... About 3-4% of the nation's building stock HAS to be replaced each year, or at least 7.5 billion square feet, plus whatever has to be produced to provide for our country's 0.8% per annum in new population growth.
The financial collapse and bubble cause this process to be deferred by a couple of years but not longer than that. At some point, inventories dry up enough that new activity moves in to replace these draw downs. Some evidence suggets that nationally we had as much as 30 billion square feet in excess inventory to work through since 2007 (due to the bubble), but as you can see that's 4 years worth and its now 2010, or more than 3 years into the draw downs, and some of those draw downs have been huge. The light at the end of the tunnel is now visible, although still a little ways away. That's just how the real estate industry works.
It's an open question at what price per square foot that new production will come in it - in some markets it's going to be 50% lower than peak prices, with a lot less leverage, but developers will just have to deal.. and we will too - by designing for a cheaper and more cost effective product, with less of the frills and a lot more focus on value. But it will come.. and architects will be needed to design it.
Put another way do you really care if your clients have to build to $75 per square feet as opposed to $150 per square feet in hard costs, because they can only get half as much leverage as they could pre-crisis? Probably not.. a commission is a commission.
The world to come will be cheaper, less opulent, more sustainable.. but it's not going to be a world without new developmnt.
To be clear, I meant to say above that there will an inevitable and imminent recovery in architectural and urban commissions. I am far less optimistic there will be a recovery in our country's grim political and economic prospects, overall. We're still fracked as a nation. But we WILL be employed.
._._ I do agree with you and I should've voiced a bit more skepticism about the "alternative" route, especially in the film industry. I think we all agree that the NYTs article about alternative careers was pretty ridiculous.
It does largely come down to who you know. Things are just really terrible everywhere, with the exception of certain fields in programming, engineering, medical... There are ways to leverage that architecture skill though and work your way into a different industry. It's a matter of luck, kissing the right asses, and having a modicum of skill.
Urbanist. You're right that the freefall has already happened. There is a lot of activity, even here in LA, but a lot of it is just conceptual stuff that has been on the board for a couple years and most of it feels like we're just going through the motions, rather than really moving forward and getting things built. We are starting to see some life with small 30-40 unit developments in East LA, Alhambra, etc.
It does worry me that, if things sort've got better too quick, you could see this large take-off of multi-family stuff that's been on the board for years and then you end up with another bubble driven by the "get-rich-quick" mentality. I think, in a way, and maybe I'm being really selfish here, it will be good for things to stay down for awhile longer. When growth resumes, hopefully it can be more sustainable.
I'm worried about the negative growth rate in California and the amount of time and money it takes for the large infrastructure projects to be completed. These things are so important to the growth of this part of the country.
On a related note, more sort've "networked" infrastructure, a la Vernelis, like free wi-fi hotspots, or encouragement from cities to let employees work from home, bus tracking so you know when the bus is arriving, could be helpful. At USC, they talk a lot about reinitiating fees on the freeway system to pay for more public services, road upkeep, new infrastructure. I think that could be really helpful. Also, I thought that UCLA proposal to green San Francisco was interesting. I was recently talking to a friend about a project to create "moped / motorcycle" only lanes throughout LA, like a secondary "freeway" for alternative individual transport.
intotheloop, I think it will be a little more sustainable just because of the math. Before, you were willing to pay $150 a square feet in hard costs, against which you could borrow 90% or $135 (probably for 70-80% total leverage, given the price of the land). Now you might be able to to borrow $50 if you're lucky, and selling price per square eet in the Southland have collapsed 45 to 50%. So now you're going to borrow $50 and build at maybe $85 or $90 or a square feet, for 30%-40% leverage after the price of the land is taken into account. That mandates a certain amount of sustainability - because speculators can't borrow nearly as much as they used to.. to speculate off other people's money.
Urbanist. You're right that it will eventually come back. It's just a matter of where and when, as you just said. You've probably got more experience thinking big picture than I do, but the recession hasn't hit the mid-west in the way it has hit the coasts, so in terms of stability and temporary outlook, I'd guess it's easier to find work there than it is in NYC or LA.
And in terms of cost/sf, we are seeing a small uptick in prices, but we believe it's mainly because of the bloodbath that subcontractors have gone through. It's been really sad to watch it happen.
You're right, we don't care if it's $75/SF or $150/SF, but it does make a difference when financing is still really scarce, right? You've got to come up with more cash to borrow less money, and we're worried that if things sort've preemptively become more expensive, we'll see another choke-off.
Off of housing, what do you think about the slate of commercial leases that are starting to end? It feels to me like commercial real estate is still overbuilt and that things could get even rougher in that sector, at least in LA... And it sounds like Chicago is especially bad.
That's great news that you're seeing inventories draw down. You're right that there will continue to be some kind of growth and jobs in the future.
I guess.. learn how to design for tight budgets and learn how to give cilents value for money, would be the mantra for architects going forward. And I agree, housing is a lot more promising than commercial right now, in the Southland.. and will be for the foreseeable future, I'd think.
Maybe industrial, flex and tech space will start to look better by year-end too. I don't really have a rational argument to make for industrial/tech/flex except that there was less speculative activity there than in the office markets, and there is mini-manufacturing boom going on in GSD and the Inland Empire now that might get much better after the Chinese (inevitably) revalue their currency.
I wasn't aware that GSD was on par with the IE in terms of manufacturing. I'll have look more at San Diego. There's been speculation for awhile that the Bay Area will start to grow faster than LA... That greater LA has reached a critical mass and can't get much bigger.
To be clear, GSD refers to "greater San Diego" and not "Goleta Sanitary District," right? Just being sure, I've been reading up on water resources in Socal lately, so it's on my mind.
yep.. San Diego. Fairly big manufacturing center, along with Inland Empire and LA. Actually,the entire southland is a manufacturing mecca, believe it or not.
I live in the Industrial District of LA and head out to Riverside & Long Beach pretty frequently. I'm aware of it up here, but don't know much about San Diego. What's the mix down there? Boats, garmets, military?
intotheloop, lots of things. According to a friend of mine who runs economic development for Philly (SE PA is the single most important diversified manufacturing cluster in the country), San Diego is the one area nipping at their heels. Not the biggest mind you, but the most stable, value-added and prosperous. GSD has about 350,000 manufacturing jobs in everything from commercial tech foundries to home electronics assembly (Sony, HP, Gateway, the big TV players, etc) to transportation and aeronautical equipment (like subway token machines) to sporting goods (including, bizarrely, the largest concentration of golf club manufacturers anywhere) to OEM medical equipment to biotech/pharma. It's the metro area's last and best kept secret.
San Diego is strange in that it has horrifically expensive rents but lots of cheap, skilled and highly educate, non-union labor - an odd combination that translates into a lot of misery for the non-wealthy who live there but which also provides human feedstock for specialized, tech- and craft-focused manufacturers... that and the proximity to Tijuana and the huge maquiladoras plants, but that's another miserable story.
Have you considered abroad (at least on a temporary basis)?
While all I hear on archinect is doom and gloom in the US, plenty of architects and recent arch grads are chugging along in Europe (DK, Germany, Switzerland).
Closer to home, Canada might be an option as well. While Toronto and Vancouver are the obvious choices, I'd take a much longer look at the prarie/moutain cities of Edmonton and Calgary. The Alberta economy looks to be the most resillient, and there are still things being built.
they are gonna happen in a little town in Iowa at a baseball field built into a corn field and you will hear a little voice that says "if you build it, they will come"!
Jan 30, 10 9:26 pm ·
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When and Where are the openings going to be created?
I have completed my masters in architecture and urban planning and my husband has a masters degree in computer science. We are looking for opportunities but not sure which states should we focus on? Any advice/ suggestions would be helpful.
This is obviously a very tough thing to predict, and there are no sure bets right in terms of the recovery, but... you might look at Texas:
Analyst: Texas economy will be first to recover
The strong technology sector in the state might make your husband's job search easier than in other places. "Easier," being relative, of course, since it's bad all over. I have no idea what architecture firms in TX might be hiring though. But hopefully once business picks up for the technology and energy industries it will lead to work for local architects.
Anyone else have a state to recommend for first to recover?
i'd come out west. i just got my old job back. wyoming, idaho, and montana's economies seem to chug along, because they are big energy/tourism states. and yes, texas is probably a good suggestion. just don't go somewhere where they rely entirely on building houses for their economy. i would say this part of the country is already in recovery.
le bossman is right: going west is probably a good rule of thumb, and agree that areas w/ massively bloated housing stocks are to be avoided.
I had always heard that areas like Nebraska and the Dakotas never hit the lows that other areas of the country did, mainly because they weren't as affected by the housing bubble as other states.
I'd steer clear of states where they have crushing state debt and liabilities. They are sure to jack up taxes and regulations which in turn causes business to flee. The current issue of Forbes has a good article about public debt and highlights some states that are bright spots - Utah, Texas, Virginia, Nebraska.
The places to steer clear of are generally costal ~ West Coast, New England and places like Illinois and Michigan.
Mountain states are looking good now but your only realy big markets out there are Denver and Salt Lake City. Both fine towns but just one Houston or Dallas dwarfs those places in combined pop. Likewise prairie states like the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas aren't doing terrible but there really are no major metros that will employ a wide variety of professions.
I'd do a little research on commercial and residential inventories (the amount of buildings and housing units that remain vacant and unoccupied) in big cities. New construction tends to go to places where inventories are declining sharply. Thus San Fran and San Diego are better than LA and anything is better than Miami. Dallas is better than Houston, and Austin is better than Dallas. Las Vegas is awful but Denver is actually looking pretty good.
I agree that Texas and the mountain states are generally good bets. In terms of technology, Houston, Dallas, & Austin all have decent sized technology sectors and people keep moving there. Also some pretty cool residential architecture there and with the lack of regulation, it seems like you could do some pretty cool stuff.
If you're interested in living in a "failed state," there are still plenty of tech. jobs in California, both in the Bay Area and down here in LA.
Architecture & construction is pretty much finished for a long time. You can find work though in urban planning or become an "information architect" or work in the film industry as a set designer, all things I've seen people doing since the downturn.
I think that the reality is much more nuanced than just to say that entire regions are off-limits or, alternatively, hot. As I tried to point out above, inventories and market conditions vary significantly between cities in the same region. New large projects are creeping forward in parts of Southern Cailfornia, for example, and in some neighborhoods in New York City. Buffalo is rather hot for smaller developments now.
I mean I'd be very happy if all you potential competitors move to Texas and leave the rest of the country (where they don't engage in behaviors like mass executions and state-sponsored torture) to fewer of us on the coasts, but it would simply be incorrect to say that architectural activity is "dead" on the coasts for the foreseeable future. It really isn't. Either that or all my clients are lying to me.
I'd just like to point out the film industry is not the fail safe job option that many people have suggested. It's extremely difficult to get your foot in the door without proper connections and experience, most jobs are temporary and usually for a very specific task or skill and once production finishes, so do you. Also realize that despite making record box-office sales, the film industry is also looking for ways to trim the budget, which has often resulted in moving productions to states that provide the biggest task-incentives and milking inexpensive labor in a new market for all they can get. It's not all bad, but just be aware it's nothing like working in an office.
the film industry is tough to break in, unless you're in the right spot at the right time or your last name is coppala. The pay can be better or worse, especially in entry level production assistant spots and the no-budget world that is the bottom of the ladder.
Also, an architecture education isn't the same as knowing how to make film/tv/commercials/porn.
If you truly love designing architecture and building real stuff, the world of hollywood will ultimately be unfulfilling. if you like creating stuff inside a computer, then go into video games, not film production.
-bl (refugee from hollywood c. 2001)
I'm really getting jumped on for suggesting the film industry. I only brought it up because most of my friends here in LA do work in the film industry, two of them with architecture backgrounds, and do really well for themselves. A couple are also totally f'd and living on food stamps. It's a long road to hoe, but is possible to do something there; I'd be interested to know which industry appears more bleak right now, film or architecture? The video game industry isn't all fun and games either...
Urbanist, I'd really be interested to hear what large projects you're talking about in California. Yes, there's still some massive high rise projects underway in and on the books in San Francisco, and people I talk to in the industry up there are hopeful that some will go through. However, most of these are already or have been in DDs or CDs for awhile. I don't hear about too much about brand spanking new development proposals in the Bay Area. Hard when you've got resolutions going through city council every year to literally ban all new construction in San Francisco. Not that I'm all for the big developments up there, I'm just sayin...
There's the high-speed rail project between the City & LA, but it will be interesting to see where the dollars come from, since the bond is hardly enough to get the project off the ground. Will Obama's new 2 billion or so stimulus money really help the project get off the ground? I'm not so hopeful. Maybe I'm wrong.
Are you talking about the large airport remodels? John Wayne, LAX? Or the completion of the metrolink out to the Westside? These things can all, in time, bring LA back from the abyss, but I think we're looking at a really long trajectory before we see them really help out the economy. Fighting through NIMYism and labyrinthine regulations makes large infrastructure projects in California take decades to complete and billions of extra dollars...
The last four developers I've talked to think the San Diego real estate market will continue to be weak for a long time. Foreclosures are still really high down there... Yes mortgage defaults have dropped, but these are dropping from really high levels, plus it's just a sign that banks are working to stem the tide of defaults... Condos and homes in SD continue to sell for rock bottom prices. I haven't heard of any signs of an uptick. Maybe I'm a couple weeks behind the times... What large infrastructure is going on down there? Am I totally out of the loop?
Also, speaking about nuance, you just painted 24 million people as mass executioners and pro-torture activities. Yeah, a lot of them are. There are also some really cool people that live in Texas that aren't on that.
I hate to be a pessimist. I think, or rather believe or hope that California will come back in the next couple decades and I plan to be here to see it happen and work towards it. And I'm sympathetic to a lot of the regulations and environmentalism here. I get it. At the same time, it makes it really hard to get anything done. Hopefully we can muddle through...
I just see the mid-western states and Texas as having a lot of potential in the short and long-term. I think the coast has had a good run and it will be awhile before things bounce back. Just my two cents.
"Am I totally out of the loop?"
I don't think you're out of the loop - don't get wrong, things are glum. But there are several large projects I'm aware of with 2-3 year entitlement horizons are moving forward in North County. Prices per square feet are up month-on-month for the last three months. GSD is an example of a city with fairly tight inventories (and, no, I am not talking about the massive glut in Centre City condos). Price per square foot has fallen about 45% across the county beginning precipitously in 2007.. so no production stopped a long while ago. Now inventories are getting worked through, and developers are coming out of the woodworks, knowing that they face 2 year+ entitlement cycles.
LA is still in free fall though.
Didn't mean for the film industry response as an attack. I'm just trying to point out that many of the "alternative" avenues for architects are having just as hard of a time as we are. As nice as the idea is that architects can just slide in and out of other design related professions, the fact remains that in a struggling economy your not going to be able to just saunter into a job in the ( film industry, graphic design, gaming).
As happy as I am for the few who have managed to make the transition from architect to something else, I'm kinda tired of it being used as an example of how people just need to "think outside the box" to make it in today's market (example, that NYT article). I generally find those people were not really all that enterprising anyway, they just have friends in the right places.
the openings are gonna come from an imaginary world inside of Obama's mind
Del Toro will probably make a Pan's Labyrinth film about the delusions of Obama
Look. There is a light at the end of this tunnel. There WILL be a recovery in new projects and probably fairly soon. This isn't really a debatable point, unless the recession double-dips, and even then... About 3-4% of the nation's building stock HAS to be replaced each year, or at least 7.5 billion square feet, plus whatever has to be produced to provide for our country's 0.8% per annum in new population growth.
The financial collapse and bubble cause this process to be deferred by a couple of years but not longer than that. At some point, inventories dry up enough that new activity moves in to replace these draw downs. Some evidence suggets that nationally we had as much as 30 billion square feet in excess inventory to work through since 2007 (due to the bubble), but as you can see that's 4 years worth and its now 2010, or more than 3 years into the draw downs, and some of those draw downs have been huge. The light at the end of the tunnel is now visible, although still a little ways away. That's just how the real estate industry works.
It's an open question at what price per square foot that new production will come in it - in some markets it's going to be 50% lower than peak prices, with a lot less leverage, but developers will just have to deal.. and we will too - by designing for a cheaper and more cost effective product, with less of the frills and a lot more focus on value. But it will come.. and architects will be needed to design it.
Put another way do you really care if your clients have to build to $75 per square feet as opposed to $150 per square feet in hard costs, because they can only get half as much leverage as they could pre-crisis? Probably not.. a commission is a commission.
The world to come will be cheaper, less opulent, more sustainable.. but it's not going to be a world without new developmnt.
To be clear, I meant to say above that there will an inevitable and imminent recovery in architectural and urban commissions. I am far less optimistic there will be a recovery in our country's grim political and economic prospects, overall. We're still fracked as a nation. But we WILL be employed.
._._ I do agree with you and I should've voiced a bit more skepticism about the "alternative" route, especially in the film industry. I think we all agree that the NYTs article about alternative careers was pretty ridiculous.
It does largely come down to who you know. Things are just really terrible everywhere, with the exception of certain fields in programming, engineering, medical... There are ways to leverage that architecture skill though and work your way into a different industry. It's a matter of luck, kissing the right asses, and having a modicum of skill.
Urbanist. You're right that the freefall has already happened. There is a lot of activity, even here in LA, but a lot of it is just conceptual stuff that has been on the board for a couple years and most of it feels like we're just going through the motions, rather than really moving forward and getting things built. We are starting to see some life with small 30-40 unit developments in East LA, Alhambra, etc.
It does worry me that, if things sort've got better too quick, you could see this large take-off of multi-family stuff that's been on the board for years and then you end up with another bubble driven by the "get-rich-quick" mentality. I think, in a way, and maybe I'm being really selfish here, it will be good for things to stay down for awhile longer. When growth resumes, hopefully it can be more sustainable.
I'm worried about the negative growth rate in California and the amount of time and money it takes for the large infrastructure projects to be completed. These things are so important to the growth of this part of the country.
On a related note, more sort've "networked" infrastructure, a la Vernelis, like free wi-fi hotspots, or encouragement from cities to let employees work from home, bus tracking so you know when the bus is arriving, could be helpful. At USC, they talk a lot about reinitiating fees on the freeway system to pay for more public services, road upkeep, new infrastructure. I think that could be really helpful. Also, I thought that UCLA proposal to green San Francisco was interesting. I was recently talking to a friend about a project to create "moped / motorcycle" only lanes throughout LA, like a secondary "freeway" for alternative individual transport.
Sorry, I've really gotten off topic here.
intotheloop, I think it will be a little more sustainable just because of the math. Before, you were willing to pay $150 a square feet in hard costs, against which you could borrow 90% or $135 (probably for 70-80% total leverage, given the price of the land). Now you might be able to to borrow $50 if you're lucky, and selling price per square eet in the Southland have collapsed 45 to 50%. So now you're going to borrow $50 and build at maybe $85 or $90 or a square feet, for 30%-40% leverage after the price of the land is taken into account. That mandates a certain amount of sustainability - because speculators can't borrow nearly as much as they used to.. to speculate off other people's money.
Urbanist. You're right that it will eventually come back. It's just a matter of where and when, as you just said. You've probably got more experience thinking big picture than I do, but the recession hasn't hit the mid-west in the way it has hit the coasts, so in terms of stability and temporary outlook, I'd guess it's easier to find work there than it is in NYC or LA.
And in terms of cost/sf, we are seeing a small uptick in prices, but we believe it's mainly because of the bloodbath that subcontractors have gone through. It's been really sad to watch it happen.
You're right, we don't care if it's $75/SF or $150/SF, but it does make a difference when financing is still really scarce, right? You've got to come up with more cash to borrow less money, and we're worried that if things sort've preemptively become more expensive, we'll see another choke-off.
Off of housing, what do you think about the slate of commercial leases that are starting to end? It feels to me like commercial real estate is still overbuilt and that things could get even rougher in that sector, at least in LA... And it sounds like Chicago is especially bad.
That's great news that you're seeing inventories draw down. You're right that there will continue to be some kind of growth and jobs in the future.
U just answered my question while I was typing. thanks!
I guess.. learn how to design for tight budgets and learn how to give cilents value for money, would be the mantra for architects going forward. And I agree, housing is a lot more promising than commercial right now, in the Southland.. and will be for the foreseeable future, I'd think.
Maybe industrial, flex and tech space will start to look better by year-end too. I don't really have a rational argument to make for industrial/tech/flex except that there was less speculative activity there than in the office markets, and there is mini-manufacturing boom going on in GSD and the Inland Empire now that might get much better after the Chinese (inevitably) revalue their currency.
I wasn't aware that GSD was on par with the IE in terms of manufacturing. I'll have look more at San Diego. There's been speculation for awhile that the Bay Area will start to grow faster than LA... That greater LA has reached a critical mass and can't get much bigger.
To be clear, GSD refers to "greater San Diego" and not "Goleta Sanitary District," right? Just being sure, I've been reading up on water resources in Socal lately, so it's on my mind.
yep.. San Diego. Fairly big manufacturing center, along with Inland Empire and LA. Actually,the entire southland is a manufacturing mecca, believe it or not.
[thread derail]
Yay, bossman, that's good news!
[carry on]
I live in the Industrial District of LA and head out to Riverside & Long Beach pretty frequently. I'm aware of it up here, but don't know much about San Diego. What's the mix down there? Boats, garmets, military?
ha ha. yeah, i'm not leaving again until i have something to go to.
intotheloop, lots of things. According to a friend of mine who runs economic development for Philly (SE PA is the single most important diversified manufacturing cluster in the country), San Diego is the one area nipping at their heels. Not the biggest mind you, but the most stable, value-added and prosperous. GSD has about 350,000 manufacturing jobs in everything from commercial tech foundries to home electronics assembly (Sony, HP, Gateway, the big TV players, etc) to transportation and aeronautical equipment (like subway token machines) to sporting goods (including, bizarrely, the largest concentration of golf club manufacturers anywhere) to OEM medical equipment to biotech/pharma. It's the metro area's last and best kept secret.
San Diego is strange in that it has horrifically expensive rents but lots of cheap, skilled and highly educate, non-union labor - an odd combination that translates into a lot of misery for the non-wealthy who live there but which also provides human feedstock for specialized, tech- and craft-focused manufacturers... that and the proximity to Tijuana and the huge maquiladoras plants, but that's another miserable story.
oh.. and weapons. I forgot about the high tech killing gear...
Manufacturing's actually the largest sector in the metro area after the military, I think. Much larger in gross output than the tourism sector...
- I thought this was a question about fenestration
Have you considered abroad (at least on a temporary basis)?
While all I hear on archinect is doom and gloom in the US, plenty of architects and recent arch grads are chugging along in Europe (DK, Germany, Switzerland).
Closer to home, Canada might be an option as well. While Toronto and Vancouver are the obvious choices, I'd take a much longer look at the prarie/moutain cities of Edmonton and Calgary. The Alberta economy looks to be the most resillient, and there are still things being built.
Texas taxes the daylights out of the oil industry and has substantial royalties.
They do very well because of it. Without those revenues, they would be screwed like everyone else.
they are gonna happen in a little town in Iowa at a baseball field built into a corn field and you will hear a little voice that says "if you build it, they will come"!
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