Sensible housing 'aint what it used to be

Thirty years ago, the smart move would have been to buy as many houses as you could, as cheap as you can, and hang on to them for ten years.

But thirty years ago, the world wasn’t changing that fast, and 1998 wasn’t that different from 1988 (from a property finance point of view).

But 2028 could look significantly different to 2018. In fact, we can be reasonably sure it’ll be significantly different. So what’s the smart move now?

I suspect, it’s actually the same as it has always been:

  • Connect with people.

  • Learn to live with less.

So instead of maxing out the mortgage to get premium capital gains, how about staying small and staying put? What about building new, better, and smaller. Or bigger, with more people.

Craft a life where if it all goes pear shaped in the market, the prospect of having to stay in one place for the next ten years isn’t just exciting, it is genuinely preferable.

What would a more generous property system look like?

If giving is the gift, how could we be more generous with our property system?

How about a simple example: Describe a more generous house sale….

  1. Fresh baked cookies at the open home.

  2. Opportunity for buyers to submit a short profile/essay or meet the seller.

  3. Priority given to local buyers.

  4. Capital gains tax *gasp*

Inertia - a less abstract version

Yesterday I wrote a rather abstract post drawing from my days learning physics. Here’s what I really meant.

If we want to change something big (like the property industry), we might find we’re better of working to change a little bit, and gather momentum than try and simply work against the system.

The risk of working directly against something is that 1) people start pushing back and 2) if you’re successful, everything usually comes to a grinding halt for a period of time. Whereas if you simply try to maintain speed but influence direction, everything keeps ticking along and eventually everyone changed.

Working directly against something results in a slow down before you get movement in the direction you want. Working alongside something to change the direction incrementally results in immediate change and eventual transformation.

Initial Inertia

Once something is moving, it’s hard to stop. And the heavier or faster it is, the harder it is to stop.

That’s called inertia.

If all you have is a very small force, and you want to radically change the direction of something with lots of inertia, you have essentially two options:

  1. Push directly against the object you want to change. It will keep heading in the same direction but will immediately begin to slow down and eventually it will stop, before starting to (very slowly) move in the opposite direction. Keep pushing, and it’ll eventually be moving in the opposite direction at the same speed it started at.

  2. Push at 90 degrees to the object you want to change. It won’t slow down, but it will immediately change direction. If you keep readjusting where you are pushing (so that you’re always pushing at 90 degrees), eventually it’ll be heading in the opposite direction.

Which option you choose, depends a lot on the object you’re pushing against (i.e. will it change in size as it moves/changes direction, making it easier or harder to move) and the environment around you (i.e. if it’s rolling down a hill there’s forces pushing it along, and you might not be able to slow it to a stop at all). Here’s some questions to ask:

  1. How will this object respond to me pushing it?

  2. Is it important to maintain speed?

  3. What else is pushing this object?

  4. Can I make it smaller?

  5. Can I get stronger?

  6. Will changing the direction of travel increase of decrease my ability to apply force?

In the context of property development, slowing down the construction industry to a halt before starting to move in a new direction is a horrendous future to contemplate. A far preferable process is to start moving, and work on increasing the force that you can apply as the direction changes.

*apologies for this post being extremely abstract, it makes sense in my head.

Alignment. Or: what the line meant.

Alignment is becoming a bit of a buzzword. Especially if you hang around young business-types or recent MBA grads.

I like to think of it as a-line-meant. Bring a bunch of things (points) onto a line, so that everything works the way you meant it to.

Did you know you need to have a least three things In order to bother aligning anything? If you only have two, there’s always a straight line connecting them both. They’re in alignment. So if you’r working on aligning two things, the first thing is to stop and figure out what the third thing is that you’re trying to align them with.

Trying to align the pieces of a property system is tricky. There seems to be so many moving parts of the system, let along determining the pieces that make up the goal or a more just, equitable society.

Or perhaps, we’re just making it complicated. At it’s most basic, we want every person to own and live in a stable, affordable, healthy, environmentally sustainable home.

Own a home: because ownership is more than property rights.

A home: Because nobody can be in two places at once.

Stable: Because mindset matters.

Healthy: Because.

Environmentally sustainable: If you don’t know why, you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog.

Who wants to live a spec life?

The average doesn’t exist in real life. There is no ‘normal’ person. No ‘standard’ homeowner. No ‘typical’ first home buyer.

So why is building spec homes, for average people, big business?

Probably because it is profitable.

And because it’s possible to employ a marketing team, in an ad-saturated society, to sell it to us.

Why should the homes we get to live in be dictated by what’s profitable to build?

There are many possible alternative bottom lines. Here’s a few:

  • Connection: Homes designed to encourage connection with people and promote better mental health.

  • Environmental Impact: Homes designed with a low carbon footprint over the entire lifecycle so that the next generation can enjoy the planet.

  • Anti-Consumerism: Homes designed to make it easier to buy less stuff by being small and efficient.

  • Low-energy: Or overall low-consumption (i.e. water, energy).

  • Sufficiency: Homes that prioritise the ability to grow food.

  • Proximity: Homes designed to encourage a low-commute, village-style day-to-day

Sidenote: Something weird happened today

Today I was listening to the seeds podcast, an inspiring collection of interviews with people sharing about their lives and how they find meaning. And I heard my name.

It’s very strange to hear your name spoken in media you consume.

It’s very strange to hear people talk about you while you’re not in the room.

It’s some of the very best feedback.

It’s here if you want to listen.

Planning to think, or thinking to plan?

Planning can become a stand-in for doing the actual work.

That work we’re avoiding might be active: We spend all day writing a list of things to take on holiday instead of actually packing our bags.

But a more likely scenario is that we’re using the process of planning to give (ourselves) the illusion of thinking. Using the example of list-writing in lieu of bag-packing: We're avoiding the work of thinking about what we really need to take on holiday and replacing it with the (apparently) productive process of writing a list of everything we think we could need.

Planning is a familiar word in the property industry.* Development plan. City plan. Resource plan. Project plan. Construction plan.

When we prepare these plans, how often are we simply following a pre-determined process deemed appropriate, correct or efficient, instead of doing the hard work of thinking things through and determining the best course of action?

It isn’t that planning isn’t valuable. Written down, actionable plans are needed to deliver a project. Rather, it’s more that experts in planning processes should support the development and implementation of creative ideas, rather than hold court over the process that takes an idea into action steps.

*You could also easily replace ‘planning’ with ‘design’ here and throughout this post, but my feeling is that designers enjoy the creative thinking process to much to defer to a pre-determined planning process.

Who's it for? (or, who's missing out)

Who is an ethical, alternative, co-operative property system for?

Obviously it’s for all of us.

But the real question is, who is it most for. Who does the design bias towards. Who’s interests take priority, because there are always going to be competing interests, even (or perhaps especially) in an equitable system.

Here’s my proposal: It is biased towards the people not at the table.

Focus on the people furthest from the centre. Those most often left most disadvantaged. Create something that is generous towards these people, and it will work for all of us.

Some folks figured this out when designing homes for elderly, and people with disabilities. It turn’s out, these homes work really well for everyone.*

This is hard to do. It’s challenging to respond to people’s situations that aren’t mainstream. It’s especially difficult when they aren’t there to speak for themselves. And we make it harder still if we don’t know how to listen and learn.

But we want something truly equitable, something truly ethical, and entirely co-operative. To get there, we need to start at the margins.

*If you’re interested in the concept of designing in a way that is generous towards people at the fringes, you might like to look at Universal Design.

How to learn

I’ve heard a lot about learning from failure recently. And I’ve been thinking:

Have we learnt anything from the failure of our property system? Or is there so much to lose that we have instead passed the point of no return in our willingness to respond?

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

It helps to brings things back to basics. Set aside the spreadsheets, legal structure, economic models and fundamental philosophies and have a crack at writing down what you mean, in as few words as possible.

When it comes to writing, short and simple is usually harder than complex. It much easier to waffle and submerge the meaning underneath fluff.

Here's a first attempt at applying the KISS principle to property:

Everyone should own a Good Home.

Local capital

A property market that shuts out most people, and delivers poor quality living environments for many isn’t necessarily evidence that capitalism doesn’t work.

The issue is scale. Distance. Connection. It turns out, location matters.

When the owners live in another community from where their wealth is located, they’re less likely to care about the social capital that comes about from being seen to be generous in their community. They become more focused on maximising returns on their wealth.

The most obvious example of this is publicly listed companies. Most shareholders are less concerned about the salary of the lowest paid staff member than they are on their quarterly returns and capital gains.

An owner who is part of the same community they use to generate the return on their capital (not much happens without people!), they are more inclined to share their gains with the community, Because, lets face it, who doesn’t want to be known as a generous, helpful person.

There’s two pieces to this picture: Proximity, and presence. The owner, the capital holder, needs to be close to their community, and have relationships with the people in their community in order to be generous, and be seen to be generous.

Have we amplified the commodification of property simply by seeking upward mobility and individualism?

Creative solutions to re-creation challenges

Brownfield developments are different to Greenfield developments. There’s complexities inherent in the act of re-creating something old into something new that aren’t present if you’re starting with a blank slate.

It’s a similar situations trying to create something new that comes from within an old broken entity.

For example: Trying to address the affordability issues in our current property market.

This issue, or rather, one of many, is this:

How do you create affordable homes within a system characterised my massive wealth inequality?

When we’re buying (or building) in the existing environment, the money needs to come from somewhere. Extensive philanthropic funding is a) difficult to come by and b) not a sustainable alternative.

Perhaps we need to back up a little and ask a few questions like:"

  • Is there a way to go outside the system?

  • Is there an alternative way to get from point A to point B. More specifically, how to go from no house, to a home purchased at an affordable price.

Re-creation challenges require creative solutions. But the outcomes are worth it, whether its an affordable home, and alternative system of a brownfield ethical development.

Beta tester or test pilot?

One works on something prior to publication and discovers issues.

The other works at the initial collision between an idea and a person, pushing into the unknown and discovering something new.

For property, many people are trying to fix bugs in the system. Co-housing. Community-led property development. Ethical financing. Open-source housing. Low-energy design. Life-cycle product analysis.

There aren’t many test pilots. People willing to take something cobbled together from the best of the experts and take it for a spin. To take a risk and put their skin in the game for the sake of discovering something new.

Co-oper-tition for change

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Here’s a curious notion worth pondering: Co-oper-tition.

Not full cooperation, but not full competition either.

It applies where you and I are compete within a market, but where our market is in competition with another.

For example, the makers selling their goods on felt.co.nz technically compete. They’re competing for the consumer dollar. However, they could also cooperate, because they’re trying to establish a marketplace which is in competition with say, Kmart. Or the Warehouse. Or any other warehouse-based consumer goods reseller.

If you and I are property developers working to put wheels on a more ethical, sustainable and just property system, we might be competing. We compete for projects opportunities, property owners, media attention and finance. But as we strive to establish a market that competes with a prejudiced, unsustainable and unjust incumbent environment, we can cooperate. Your success is my success. Your successful projects adds leverage to my claim that different is possible. Your connections can help to align finance for my project.

Because ultimately, the outcome we’re seeking is change. For the better.

*Credit to Jason for coining the term “Coopertition”. Check out more of Jason’s work and thinking here.

Shared incentive ethical property development

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Ethical property development. Alternative property development. Property projects focussed on people and planet instead of profit.

Call it what you will, we’d like to see more of it. One of the challenges is how to weave in the practical reality that money is involved, cash is necessary, and people need to get paid.

How do we recognise and respect the commercial and financial practicalities of all parties involved without focusing on the bottom line?

Firstly, we can question the stories we’re told about commercial realities, and the ways that we approach our commerce. Our business-as-usual environment is combative and competitive, not collaborative, and our business models tend to reflect that. Greater transparency around where the money is flowing to is required in order to genuinely collaborate.

Secondly, we’ll need shared incentives that start with a dollar sign. For example: If all parties were involved in the design from the beginning (i.e. builder, architect, engineer, planner, developer, future owner) could they also all share in the financial risks and rewards? Perhaps, for example, set a fixed budget for the project, and share any under-run between everyone? There’s many details to work through here of course, but the fundamental principle that we all aim to reduce cost however we are able to (within our scope of involvement) because we all win financially has to be worth considering.

Finally, this isn’t theory, this is actually happening.

Storytelling and staying calm.

A potentially terrified toddler travels much better when prepared for a plane ride through sensational story.

It turns out, when you’ve told a child what to expect, they’re more likely to react the way you'd like them to in the moment. Combined with cueing off the adults they trust, a toddler can navigate new situations extremely well.

Of course, starting with a 14-hour long-haul flight might not be wise.

How prepared are new home buyers for the roles and responsibilities that come with their newfound purchase? What are the stories that influence them? What are we modelling when they’re in times of stress?

Share an Idea (about property)

Once upon a time, there was an initiative to encourage and uncover grassroots dreams for the future of our city. It was called Share and Idea, and it was a massively successful campaign, by all accounts.

If we asked our community what they saw as the future of property and accomodation, I wonder what they would say?