Driving The Point Home

I slept with my bedroom window open last night, and woke this morning to the sound of the Grand Prix emanating from downtown San Jose.

My whole focus on being Green stems from an opinion I have on cars, so you might think I have negative things to say about the Grand Prix today. I don’t really. If we are going to use petroleum for vehicles, using it for a high performance sport that brings crowds of people together makes more sense to me than… Well, I should back up here.

I have been avoiding the subject of Green cars on this blog because it has little to do with the housing market I am trying to focus on here. Hybrids, biofuels, EV’s… I have opinions on all of them, but they stray from the main point of this blog: Your home. However, how much time do we spend living in our cars as opposed to our homes?

This aspect of cars has everything to do with the housing market. You have heard me talk before about zoning laws disallowing places we live to be nearby places we work, and neither is zoned to be a place we go shopping. For every activity in our daily lives, we must hop in a car and travel.

It is for this reason that I started down my path of weird hippie ideas of living. I hate driving. I just am not good at it. I get distracted too easily, and am a danger to myself, my family, and everyone else on the road. I tried using public transportation for a while, but buses are all that is available, and the confounded routes going in circles take longer than it would to walk to a destination. Walking is not safe! Too many streets are designed for the convenience of cars, not people.

I never have had a problem with people who enjoy their cars, and enjoy driving them. In all honesty, I have no problem with you driving an inefficient car if you love it. If public transportation from walking, riding bikes, buses to trains were designed well, those of us who do not love driving would be able to get off the road and enable you to have less traffic to enjoy your driving more. Let’s face it. Those of you who enjoy driving have wished drivers like me off the road all along.

If the money spent on repairing and building new roads were spent on making alternative forms of transportation easier, there would be less of us on the road to make repairs and new road necessary to begin with. I do drive a hybrid, but I do not think alternative energy efficient cars are the answer. We do not need to change our cars. We need to change our means of transportation. This means changing the zoning laws so that we can ride a bike to work, and walk to get some milk at the store. This means spending our tax dollars on making such forms of transportation safe and convenient instead of spending it all on perpetuating our car dependent form of transportation.

Oops! Where did that soapbox come from? After last week, I promised myself I would not be so preachy. Oh well. Next week I will give out advice instead of trying to sway opinion. In the meantime, lets tie all these ideas into the housing market, shall we?

When purchasing your next home, consider how you will leave your home before you buy. Can you easily walk to the store if you want to? Is a light rail station nearby? (I’ve given up on buses.) Is it safe to send the kids out to walk the dog, or is the traffic to close to the sidewalk? Placing such priorities on your purchase of a home has much more influence on our society than voting at the polls. If there is a high demand to spend money on well thought out communities, well thought out communities are more likely to be built. If you demand a more convenient house more than you demand a bigger house, communities will be rezoned to supply your demands.

A movement has sprung up that has many of the same ideals as Green building that addresses creating more sustainable communities. It is called New Urbanism. National Geographic has a terrific interactive flash demonstration of New Urbanism. Please go play there and daydream of your new community -- either the new community you move to or the one you help create right where you are now. I am watching the New Urbanist community for local events and will be reporting them here.

In the meantime, go and enjoy the Grand Prix without guilt. Changing our everyday communities will have much more of an effect on making our world more Green than changing our communal celebrations. Better yet, try using light rail to get there instead of waiting in traffic to find a parking spot.

Portrayal of Wasteful Realtors in Movies

My daughter learned to ride her bike without training wheels, and promptly broke her arm. Just in time for summer when she wants to spend her time in vigorous activity and swimming! To compensate for her frustrations, we have taken her to the movie theater frequently. Twice now, there have been Realtors portrayed as bad characters.

The first one was in Nancy Drew. I almost died laughing when the Realtor identified herself as "Barbara". The way she says "Barbara of Barbara Barbara Realty" is almost exactly how we say "www.barbaragrealtor.com". I was looking for a movie picture of the character to put here. I thought I had finally found one, when I double checked, and it was a real Realtor. Overdressed just like the character.

The second one was last night in Evan Almighty and this time it was not simply the overdressed opulence being portrayed. This Realtor was excited to sell ridiculously over sized houses on land that used to be a pristine wilderness. The theme of the movie was green, and I thought fit perfectly with a point I want to make here.

Portrayal of Realtors as the bad guys is not entirely unfounded. These characters are funny because they hit a chord of truth. They are only interested in the hero of the story when they are buying or selling a house. If the hero is not buying or selling a house, the character is trying to talk them into buying or selling a house. The hero doing something financially unsound is cause for celebration with champagne for the Realtor.

Already I have been to meetings for Realtors counseling us to be pushy. On one level it makes sense because the industry is set up to only reward the Realtor for sales. I have been told many horror stories of Realtors investing a ton of money, time, and energy on someone who uses all their hard work only to turn around and give their friend's cousin the commission. Experienced agents learn not to invest their emotions in anyone until they are certain that person is committed to bring them money in the end.

Both Realtors portray the attitude of "consume, consume consume" instead of "location, location, location". We laugh as the characters encourage the purchase of something the heroes don't need. Then they try to sell more of it. Run out of room? Tear down all the trees and make more so they can sell some more!

There is definitely a housing shortage in the Silicon Valley. All the orchards and farmland have gone for great big boxes with no yards. Everyone loves to blame the builders for these monstrosities, but they wouldn't build if it were not constantly being bought. There is a demand for housing near all these jobs, and that demand needs to be met. Realtors have clients in need of a home, and they want a big home. Tear down and build so we can sell them!

The rental market here is ridiculous. The cost of maintaining an apartment complex is more expensive than any rent income by tens of thousands of dollars each year. The only money to be made as a landlord is to purchase a complex, and sell it years latter at such a higher cost it makes up for all the losses while they owned it. So how do we as Realtors advise someone to make money in rental properties? Consume, consume, consume!

This can all be done sensibly though. The National Association of Realtors is the largest political action committee in the United States. The purpose of a PAC is to influence laws and lawmakers. Right now we influence real estate laws to be like that of a multi level marketing scheme. Simple changes in the structure we espouse, would mean less money for the top of the pyramid, but a healthier relationship with our clients. Realtors should be independent contractors, or salaried employees of the broker. Not an unbalanced combination of the two with legal ramifications for being too independent or too organized.

City ordinances disallow places to live to be combined with places to work. There is no such thing as an apartment above the bakery shop. The lady handing you your cruller had to commute from Los Banos.

It is also illegal to rent out a room in your house. Granny units are highly regulated. An apartment above a garage is unheard of here. Wouldn't it be nice if an elderly couple could charge rent that a school teacher could afford? This would prevent them from commuting to work to supplement their pension.

Most importantly, we need to demand smaller houses. I am not saying you need to give up the "American Dream", although for some people a small ecological footprint is the dream. If the space in our homes were used as efficiently as possible to maximize the use of the resources available, many homes could have the look and feel of the huge monstrosities on the inside without the imposition of real estate on the outside. We do not need to reinvent the wheel here. Other countries have glamorized living small for centuries.

These are all sweeping general policy ideas that have very little to do with your personal efforts of making the home you have more green. I do not ask you to start any crusades for these causes unless you want to. I do ask that you keep these ideas in the back of your mind as you make purchasing decisions that influence public policy. When dreaming about your dream home, look for smaller inspirations. If housing polices are being examined in your area, speak up for allowing home businesses, granny units, and blended zoning.

When you run into a Realtor that fits those movie stereotypes, give them some understanding for their circumstances. Try to keep in mind that we are not all like that. Some of us are even actively trying to fight such behavior.