Just wanted to check with my fellow peers on what the conditions are in other US Cities. We all know that the housing market is pretty much dead (except for some small pockets and really high end developments) However, things seem to be slowing down considerably. Many firms in Miami have gone through preliminary rounds of lay-offs with the hint of more to come. This is all part of the "cycle"...but are there glimmers of hope out there?
There seems to be some oportunities in the Healthcare and infrastructure sectors in South America, and Hospitality is continually strong in Asia and the Caribbean.
Any thoughts? (other than changing profession?)
we are still working on projects sold in 06 that keep our entire office busy. We sold 1 project in 07 that looks shakey. 08 is completely dead, not even a hint of new work. Sadly, election years tend to make matters worse as everyone slows to wait for the results.
College & university work is going strong... In my experience, in times of an economic turn down, universities will often invest in their campus to attract students/tuition, knowing that students & their parents are strapped for cash and will go for the best/nicest campus that they can afford.
High end residential may be experiencing a lull, but those that can afford such types of housing are also the sort that always have money to burn...
I think the recent news about Starbucks is very telling of our current economy - their CEO just stepped down and are shutting down under performing stores while slowing their growth. People would rather spend $4 on a gallon of gas than 16oz of double tall non fat no whip mocha...
Still booming at my firm... Large backlog of projects, and lots of new projects coming in. We're still hiring more people, and looking to move our office to a larger space.
Luckily we serve a very wide variety of market sectors, with a heavy emphasis on infrastructure, municipal, non-profit, and education work; we do very little housing or corporate work. Hopefully we'll be able to ride out this downturn with a minimum of bloodshed.
Our London office is looking to our offices in the Middle East for a lot of work, and to India, China, and other developing nations. We expect our work-load in the UK to move away from commercial/retail/resi to public sector works, schools, hospitals, infrastructure.
The same thing happened in the '70s, when the only money around was oil money.
We are also continuing our diversification into sustainability consulting and facilities management.
I remember a thread six months ago about how busy offices were ("rate your workload from A-E", or something like that). Every office booming. I pointed out then, and several times since, that the topping of the record for the world's tallest building is always a pre-cursor to large-scale financial collapse, and that the construction industry, while it operates with a slight lag to the financial markets (1-3 years depending on your position in the food chain), is in for a very rough ride.
not too bad as we have a huge contract coming in shortly and will most likely be hiring. A friend works in commercial constuction funding though and he is pretty slow, which isn't good.
noting better than living in a city (LA) that revolves around an industry (Hollywood) that has shut down. They are saying that not having the Golden Globes is costing the city over $80 million...and that is just one show on one night.
There was a big spread on Yale University in the NYT on Sunday. Seems like they are keeping New Haven Afloat. I did talk with
an architect who is working on the British Museum and I kinda wish
I was working in his firm instood of bashing around here in the wilderness of sole practioner. We do somehow manage to keep busy but no big vacation trips this year...
Vegas is getting slow. My firm is struggling to secure new work. I've heard that the firms doing school / institutional work in Las Vegas are run off their feet.
I've always heard that the hospitality industry does their big expansions during the down times. Any truth to that?
A lot of old timers have said that sole proprietors were big in the 70's downturn. Since firms weren't hiring you could always go out on your own. Not sure I see the same for today. Would place my bets on the larger and well diversified firms.
hospitality (from my vantage) is still going fairly strong.
while we don't have quite as many projects lined up for 2008 as we did for 2007 as this time last year, we've been saying no quite a bit more. a few of the current jobs are heavy production projects and should carry us through '08.
And also, you have to actualy get paid for it to count. Too many developers go belly up and dont pay if the project flatlines. Its better to be slow with no work than slow with a lot of work.
Mdler, I do acknowledge that "the Los Angeles economy is strongly affected by the entertainment industry's goings-on."
I guess my second comment was a reaction to the assumption by many that the LA economy EQUALS the entertainment industry economy. This is a diverse urban region, and "Hollywood" is a critical component. But it's not the only component.
aquapura Mental Hospitality jobs are on the table here ;)
and with this recession i see many more breakdowns on the way, al la Britney Spears, and it makes sense they are building new wings to hold/help them I guess?
New smaller Organic Grocers too in the retail sector, I don't see retail slowing at all as people will always pay for stuff even if they can't afford it it seems. We are hungry...
Always create a reality TV show based on how the slow down in hollywood (writers strike )has affected the Architecture profession. Some what poetic isn't considering that the last writers strike started "Reality TV"
* 20-city index -7.7% yy (-7.1% expected) after -6.1% in Oct
* What's frightening about the report is that the monthly declines are
accelerating: -2.1% in Nov after -1.4% in Oct, and before that a long
string of smaller declines
* ALL 20 CITIES SHOWING MONTHLY DECLINES
* 10-city index even worse, -8.4% yy
* Miami -15%yy, Detroit -13%yy, Las Vegas -13%, Phoenix -13%, San Diego-13%, Tampa -13%.
* NY -5%yy, DC -8%, Boston -3%, Chicago -4%
* Falling stocks and house prices should result in a severe consumption downturn, in theory.
This would be good news for me if I were in a position to buy a condo here in NYC. Unfortunately, this will probably just put even more pressure on the rental market.
Just out of curiousity, can a normal non-trust fund single person buy a condo in Manhattan? True, you make more but I can't imagine someone my age (24), with my experience (probably making in the 48-52k range in NYC) being able to afford a studio that cost 600k, property taxes, insurance, and the lovely HOA fee of $400+ a month.
My knowledge of NYC real estate is this: finding a place to rent is a bitch, usually you have to pay a ridiculous broker fee, and buying is basically out of the question for anyone who doesn't make at least 150k a year. How true is that?
very true. at 48-52k you'd probably only qualify for a mortgage up to 225k assuming good credit and no other debt. maybe under some of the creative financing schemes of a few years ago you could have gotten more, but they have all but dried up now.
i think in manhattan you pretty much have to plan on renting and living with roommates unless you make six figures.
Yeah - My brother was working for over six figures at Merril Lynch 4 years ago and still had to have a roomate. I believe their apt., which was maybe 850 sq.ft. was $4200 / mo. 2 bd. But it did have a view of the hudson river, which is really cool.
It depends on what part of Manhattan you're looking at. If you absolutely need to live in the Village or on the Upper West Side, than yes, you pretty much need to be making six figures or living with roommates. However, there are some decent pockets of Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood that are still comparable to the other boroughs in terms of prices.
Also, note that actual condominiums -- although becoming more common -- are still fairly rare in NYC compared to co-ops. When normal people (i.e., non-millionaires) speak of buying an apartment in NYC, it's usually in the form of buying shares in a co-op. The vast majority of pre-war buildings in the city are either rental or co-op; post-war buildings and new construction tend to be condo.
In a condo, you have a deed to the actual apartment, and pay a monthly assessment to the condo association. You're also responsible for paying your own property taxes, and you have no say in who else moves into the building. Qualifying for a mortgage is strictly between you and the lender.
In a co-op, the building itself (or complex of buildings) is owned by a corporation made up of the residents of that building, and as a resident, you own shares in that corporation and vote for its officers. In addition to getting approved by your mortgage lender, and must also be approved by the co-op board*. The purchase price of a co-op is usually less than that of a comparable condo, but the monthly maintenance fee is usually higher. The upside, though, is that your property taxes are included in the maintenance fee, and that you have some degree of control over who else moves into the building.
Most co-ops require a minimum 20% down payment and very clean credit, because it's in the financial interest of the co-op for its shareholders to all be financially stable. If one co-op member goes bankrupt, it has the potential to drag down the finances of the entire co-op. If the co-op itself goes bankrupt, the building reverts to a rental property and all the shareholders lose their investment. That doesn't happen often, but is a very bad thing when it does.
* Unless you're buying a sponsor unit, which is an apartment being offered for sale by the original landlord of the building, as part of the process of converting from rental to co-op. Sponsor units tend to be less expensive, and don't require approval by the co-op board. The best deals go to existing rental tenants in the building.
If you're looking to own real estate in NYC and aren't a millionaire, your best bets would be to look in upper Manhattan or the other boroughs, and/or lease a rent-stabilized apartment in a building that ends up being converted to a co-op.
Oh, and since co-ops make up so much of the real estate market here and because they generally require big down payments and impeccable financials (as opposed to lenders who were giving mortgages to anybody with a pulse), there's speculation that NYC won't be hit with the wave of foreclosures that have swept through the rest of the nation. We'll see.
My friend was trying to buy a co-op in the East Village a few months ago. He said that the majority of the co-ops he found were asking for a HOA fee ranging from 400-900 a month. Goodness.
My ideal living situation would be a modest 2-bedroom co-op in one of the beautiful art deco buildings in the Hudson Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. If I were to buy one today, such an apartment would probably cost me around $400-500k and have roughly an $800 monthly maintenance fee. It would almost be doable if I married somebody who made roughly the same salary I do, and we had at least $120,000 in savings.
Barring that, I need to either win the lottery, successfully sue somebody for lots of money, patent an incredible new invention, and/or wait and see if the NYC real estate market ever goes completely down the shitter.
. 2 bedroom 1 bath, 1050 sf. Offered at $479,000, and $796.97 maintenance.
This particular co-op at 720-730 Ft. Washington Avenue is my gold standard (quiet end of the hood, surrounded by woods on two sides, incredible views, and only steps from the subway), but you pay for what you get.
It's all relative.... I took almost a $20k salary increase by moving here, and I'm no longer paying $400/month to own a car. If I end up doing my M.Arch. at City College, my student loan payments will be negligible. In terms of cost of living as a percentage of my income, I'm actually doing much better than I did in Chicago.
The aspect ratios of the photos on the second link are distorted. I've been inside a few of those apartments, and they're huge by New York standards. The typical living room size is about 12x19, master bedrooms are usually about 12x14, and additional bedrooms are around 10x12. Kitchens and bathrooms tend to be on the small side by today's standards, but how big of a kitchen and bathroom do two full-time professionals really need?
General Market Slow Down
Just wanted to check with my fellow peers on what the conditions are in other US Cities. We all know that the housing market is pretty much dead (except for some small pockets and really high end developments) However, things seem to be slowing down considerably. Many firms in Miami have gone through preliminary rounds of lay-offs with the hint of more to come. This is all part of the "cycle"...but are there glimmers of hope out there?
There seems to be some oportunities in the Healthcare and infrastructure sectors in South America, and Hospitality is continually strong in Asia and the Caribbean.
Any thoughts? (other than changing profession?)
we are still working on projects sold in 06 that keep our entire office busy. We sold 1 project in 07 that looks shakey. 08 is completely dead, not even a hint of new work. Sadly, election years tend to make matters worse as everyone slows to wait for the results.
College & university work is going strong... In my experience, in times of an economic turn down, universities will often invest in their campus to attract students/tuition, knowing that students & their parents are strapped for cash and will go for the best/nicest campus that they can afford.
High end residential may be experiencing a lull, but those that can afford such types of housing are also the sort that always have money to burn...
I think the recent news about Starbucks is very telling of our current economy - their CEO just stepped down and are shutting down under performing stores while slowing their growth. People would rather spend $4 on a gallon of gas than 16oz of double tall non fat no whip mocha...
Still booming at my firm... Large backlog of projects, and lots of new projects coming in. We're still hiring more people, and looking to move our office to a larger space.
Luckily we serve a very wide variety of market sectors, with a heavy emphasis on infrastructure, municipal, non-profit, and education work; we do very little housing or corporate work. Hopefully we'll be able to ride out this downturn with a minimum of bloodshed.
Our London office is looking to our offices in the Middle East for a lot of work, and to India, China, and other developing nations. We expect our work-load in the UK to move away from commercial/retail/resi to public sector works, schools, hospitals, infrastructure.
The same thing happened in the '70s, when the only money around was oil money.
We are also continuing our diversification into sustainability consulting and facilities management.
I remember a thread six months ago about how busy offices were ("rate your workload from A-E", or something like that). Every office booming. I pointed out then, and several times since, that the topping of the record for the world's tallest building is always a pre-cursor to large-scale financial collapse, and that the construction industry, while it operates with a slight lag to the financial markets (1-3 years depending on your position in the food chain), is in for a very rough ride.
Hang tough now.
not too bad as we have a huge contract coming in shortly and will most likely be hiring. A friend works in commercial constuction funding though and he is pretty slow, which isn't good.
noting better than living in a city (LA) that revolves around an industry (Hollywood) that has shut down. They are saying that not having the Golden Globes is costing the city over $80 million...and that is just one show on one night.
There was a big spread on Yale University in the NYT on Sunday. Seems like they are keeping New Haven Afloat. I did talk with
an architect who is working on the British Museum and I kinda wish
I was working in his firm instood of bashing around here in the wilderness of sole practioner. We do somehow manage to keep busy but no big vacation trips this year...
Phoenix is still strong, Vegas did pass it and Vegas growth is at a 10 year low...
food costs going up is no fun
Vegas is getting slow. My firm is struggling to secure new work. I've heard that the firms doing school / institutional work in Las Vegas are run off their feet.
Though the Los Angeles economy is strongly affected by the entertainment industry's goings-on, we're hardly in a crisis due to the writers' strike.
Personally, I'm all for one fewer awards show / clusterf***
citizen
what about the 1000 people at Warner Bros who are getting canned???
the effects of this are going to trickle down
I've always heard that the hospitality industry does their big expansions during the down times. Any truth to that?
A lot of old timers have said that sole proprietors were big in the 70's downturn. Since firms weren't hiring you could always go out on your own. Not sure I see the same for today. Would place my bets on the larger and well diversified firms.
hospitality (from my vantage) is still going fairly strong.
while we don't have quite as many projects lined up for 2008 as we did for 2007 as this time last year, we've been saying no quite a bit more. a few of the current jobs are heavy production projects and should carry us through '08.
we'll see.
We are very close to doing a 20 story hotel in near north of Chicago, but as the saying goes, "not until the ink is dry".
And also, you have to actualy get paid for it to count. Too many developers go belly up and dont pay if the project flatlines. Its better to be slow with no work than slow with a lot of work.
Mdler, I do acknowledge that "the Los Angeles economy is strongly affected by the entertainment industry's goings-on."
I guess my second comment was a reaction to the assumption by many that the LA economy EQUALS the entertainment industry economy. This is a diverse urban region, and "Hollywood" is a critical component. But it's not the only component.
That's all I was trying to say.
aquapura Mental Hospitality jobs are on the table here ;)
and with this recession i see many more breakdowns on the way, al la Britney Spears, and it makes sense they are building new wings to hold/help them I guess?
New smaller Organic Grocers too in the retail sector, I don't see retail slowing at all as people will always pay for stuff even if they can't afford it it seems. We are hungry...
Always create a reality TV show based on how the slow down in hollywood (writers strike )has affected the Architecture profession. Some what poetic isn't considering that the last writers strike started "Reality TV"
New York is completely immune to the housing situation, ya'll can come look for work up here.
bump ....
anybody seeing any significant changes taking place out there ?
if anything, we've only gotten busier.
maybe some of the nasty condos & spec projects have slowed (hopefully)
For what it is worth.
AIA Forecast
ya i read that this morning in my e-mail
i like the unhappy Washington pic
US NOV S&P CASE-SHILLER HOME PRICE - HORRIBLE
* 20-city index -7.7% yy (-7.1% expected) after -6.1% in Oct
* What's frightening about the report is that the monthly declines are
accelerating: -2.1% in Nov after -1.4% in Oct, and before that a long
string of smaller declines
* ALL 20 CITIES SHOWING MONTHLY DECLINES
* 10-city index even worse, -8.4% yy
* Miami -15%yy, Detroit -13%yy, Las Vegas -13%, Phoenix -13%, San Diego-13%, Tampa -13%.
* NY -5%yy, DC -8%, Boston -3%, Chicago -4%
* Falling stocks and house prices should result in a severe consumption downturn, in theory.
This would be good news for me if I were in a position to buy a condo here in NYC. Unfortunately, this will probably just put even more pressure on the rental market.
Just out of curiousity, can a normal non-trust fund single person buy a condo in Manhattan? True, you make more but I can't imagine someone my age (24), with my experience (probably making in the 48-52k range in NYC) being able to afford a studio that cost 600k, property taxes, insurance, and the lovely HOA fee of $400+ a month.
My knowledge of NYC real estate is this: finding a place to rent is a bitch, usually you have to pay a ridiculous broker fee, and buying is basically out of the question for anyone who doesn't make at least 150k a year. How true is that?
very true. at 48-52k you'd probably only qualify for a mortgage up to 225k assuming good credit and no other debt. maybe under some of the creative financing schemes of a few years ago you could have gotten more, but they have all but dried up now.
i think in manhattan you pretty much have to plan on renting and living with roommates unless you make six figures.
Yeah - My brother was working for over six figures at Merril Lynch 4 years ago and still had to have a roomate. I believe their apt., which was maybe 850 sq.ft. was $4200 / mo. 2 bd. But it did have a view of the hudson river, which is really cool.
Un real that island is
It depends on what part of Manhattan you're looking at. If you absolutely need to live in the Village or on the Upper West Side, than yes, you pretty much need to be making six figures or living with roommates. However, there are some decent pockets of Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood that are still comparable to the other boroughs in terms of prices.
Also, note that actual condominiums -- although becoming more common -- are still fairly rare in NYC compared to co-ops. When normal people (i.e., non-millionaires) speak of buying an apartment in NYC, it's usually in the form of buying shares in a co-op. The vast majority of pre-war buildings in the city are either rental or co-op; post-war buildings and new construction tend to be condo.
In a condo, you have a deed to the actual apartment, and pay a monthly assessment to the condo association. You're also responsible for paying your own property taxes, and you have no say in who else moves into the building. Qualifying for a mortgage is strictly between you and the lender.
In a co-op, the building itself (or complex of buildings) is owned by a corporation made up of the residents of that building, and as a resident, you own shares in that corporation and vote for its officers. In addition to getting approved by your mortgage lender, and must also be approved by the co-op board*. The purchase price of a co-op is usually less than that of a comparable condo, but the monthly maintenance fee is usually higher. The upside, though, is that your property taxes are included in the maintenance fee, and that you have some degree of control over who else moves into the building.
Most co-ops require a minimum 20% down payment and very clean credit, because it's in the financial interest of the co-op for its shareholders to all be financially stable. If one co-op member goes bankrupt, it has the potential to drag down the finances of the entire co-op. If the co-op itself goes bankrupt, the building reverts to a rental property and all the shareholders lose their investment. That doesn't happen often, but is a very bad thing when it does.
* Unless you're buying a sponsor unit, which is an apartment being offered for sale by the original landlord of the building, as part of the process of converting from rental to co-op. Sponsor units tend to be less expensive, and don't require approval by the co-op board. The best deals go to existing rental tenants in the building.
If you're looking to own real estate in NYC and aren't a millionaire, your best bets would be to look in upper Manhattan or the other boroughs, and/or lease a rent-stabilized apartment in a building that ends up being converted to a co-op.
Oh, and since co-ops make up so much of the real estate market here and because they generally require big down payments and impeccable financials (as opposed to lenders who were giving mortgages to anybody with a pulse), there's speculation that NYC won't be hit with the wave of foreclosures that have swept through the rest of the nation. We'll see.
My friend was trying to buy a co-op in the East Village a few months ago. He said that the majority of the co-ops he found were asking for a HOA fee ranging from 400-900 a month. Goodness.
My ideal living situation would be a modest 2-bedroom co-op in one of the beautiful art deco buildings in the Hudson Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. If I were to buy one today, such an apartment would probably cost me around $400-500k and have roughly an $800 monthly maintenance fee. It would almost be doable if I married somebody who made roughly the same salary I do, and we had at least $120,000 in savings.
Barring that, I need to either win the lottery, successfully sue somebody for lots of money, patent an incredible new invention, and/or wait and see if the NYC real estate market ever goes completely down the shitter.
. 2 bedroom 1 bath, 1050 sf. Offered at $479,000, and $796.97 maintenance.
This particular co-op at 720-730 Ft. Washington Avenue is my gold standard (quiet end of the hood, surrounded by woods on two sides, incredible views, and only steps from the subway), but you pay for what you get.
LIG,
That's why I stayed in Chicago. I cannot afford NY or SF. "Modest" is a relative word. ;-)
What about the Hudson River Valley? It's a beautiful place and then there's commuting.
It's all relative.... I took almost a $20k salary increase by moving here, and I'm no longer paying $400/month to own a car. If I end up doing my M.Arch. at City College, my student loan payments will be negligible. In terms of cost of living as a percentage of my income, I'm actually doing much better than I did in Chicago.
LIG
you cant even open the oven door in that one apartment
The aspect ratios of the photos on the second link are distorted. I've been inside a few of those apartments, and they're huge by New York standards. The typical living room size is about 12x19, master bedrooms are usually about 12x14, and additional bedrooms are around 10x12. Kitchens and bathrooms tend to be on the small side by today's standards, but how big of a kitchen and bathroom do two full-time professionals really need?
Oh, the oven door. Yeah, somebody did a hack job on that kitchen renovation. The original kitchen probably only had a counter on one side.
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