New Plans for 2008

Some of you visiting this blog today no doubt found the link through Peninsula Publishing's Builder Bytes bi-weekly newsletter. That is because publisher Nick Slevin and I have been talking about working together on several fronts, the first of which will be a regular column I will write for Builder/Developer magazine starting with this month's issue.

I am very excited about this opportunity and welcome the chance to work with this great group of titles that Nick has created over the last 18 years (and thank you to guest editor Christine Rombouts for bringing me on board). Some of you may have been reading my regular feature articles for the CBIA magazine California Builder when I was with Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, but these columns for Builder/Developer will be shorter and focus more on issues that come up with various consulting assignments we do at MetroIntelligence Real Estate Advisors.

Consequently, your feedback will be critical. Please feel free to contact me or email me suggestions for future columns! I want to know what readers of the magazine and this blog think is important, whether it's in the form of statistics, analysis or simple commentary. Rather than simply bloviate about issues everyone else is covering, I want to unearth new ways to think about this extremely complex industry of real estate development, its numerous externalities (I think more than any other industry) and their ramifications.

I'm also putting on a consumer-oriented hat in 2008 to write about real estate-related issues for a more general audience, the first of which will be a book review on buying second homes in Central California for the Los Angeles Times scheduled to run on Sunday, January 13th (assuming there's room). I'm also working on another assignment for the Times on a mortgage-related topic that should run by the end of the month or in early February. My hope is to help bring my experience over the last 20 years in the building industry to potential home buyers and offer suggestions, directions and advice on the real estate and mortgage markets in a very confusing and stressful time.

Please feel free to contact me for column or story ideas or to discuss any consulting assignments you might have by email at pduffy@metrointel.com or by calling 888-82-DEVELOP (888-823-3835).

I look forward to seeing many of you at future events in 2008 as we all struggle through what will likely be a challenging year.