My Page: Emily Esterson

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Rocky Mountain Real Estate Grok

Just like other segments of real estate, the investment property market has slowed in the past year, reports Realty Times columnist Blanch Evans. But what may be even more surprising is this little factoid: Second home purchases set a new record. The combination of second home and investment property sales make up about 36 percent of overall real estate transactions, she writes, down from 40 percent in 2005. Here are the numbers: vacation-home sales rose 4.7 percent to a record 1.07 million in 2006 from 1.02 million in 2005.

Why the continued growth in the second home market, while other sectors flounder? Economic conditions have less impact on those making a household income of more than $100,000 a year. The baby boomers have come of age, and income: Realty Times notes there were 36.0 million people aged 50 to 59 in the United States, and the median age of vacation-home buyer was 52. An even larger group of people aged 40 to 49 in 2005 would be driving the market in the coming decade.
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Richardson Grok

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson seems to be making good on his promise to run a very grassroots campaign. After the recent debate, Richardson was hanging out with bloggers in California. The California Majority Report writes about the western shift from red to, well, purple in its politics, and Richardson's explanation of that shift: Richardson said Western "leave me alone" libertarians feel out of place in today's Republican party. And rising support for alternative energy and the environment have given rise to new grassroots activity.. The blog also noted Richardson's unpolished speaking style and, on a positive note, his focus on ideals rather than talking points, left a favorable impression on the ten or so young people in the meeting.

On a more mainstream note, Richardson still dreams of baseball, according to Fox News, reporting on an Associated Press interview which asked 14 presidential candidates from both parties to describe their alternate lives. Richardson hearkened back to his days as a right handed pitcher for Tufts University, where he was not recruited by the Kansas City A's in 1966. He did, however, play for the Cape Cod League's Cotuit (Mass.) Kettleers in the summer of 1967. [more]

Food and Farm

Occasionally I'll be casting around for something interesting to write and an odd sort of universe-aligning happens. In this case, it was three or four separate events that produced the theme for today.

Incident 1: An acquaintance who owns a local restaurant emailed looking for the name of a local produce grower.
Incident 2: I heard a "between the snooze button" story on the local National Public Radio affiliate about a workshop linking local restaurants with local producers.
Incident 3: I went to a meeting of community members where we fantasized about Albuquerque's South Valley becoming the city's very own bread (or honey, fruit, produce) basket.
Incident 4: I got another email from another acquaintance about thetrend toward local eating.
Incident 5: I read a story in the New York Times about this phenomenon called "locavores."

If you read an early post about my edible landscape, you'd know that I'm big into growing what I can eat, and eating what I grow. This is a new trend for me, and I've now got three different former rose beds devoted to herbs, vegetables and corn. I don't see myself going quite as far as the locavores featured in the Times, but it sure is fun to think about it. [more]

Rocky Mountain Real Estate Grok

If you build a train, will they come? Apparently so, according to an article in the Sunday New York Times. In Murray City, Utah, a 30-acre, $140 million mixed use development is slated for a spot right next to the Salt Lake area light rail line, called TRAX. The development is the first in a series of transit-oriented projects in the Salt Lake suburb. The town has established a 97-acre development area around the Murray North station to serve those who wish to work in town but live in a quieter area. The Times writes that a host of other cities have similar plans, including Denver, Phoenix and Portland to name a few.

Albuquerque's transit plan continues to evolve, as the city opened opened the next stop on its fledgling commuter rail line on Friday. The South Valley station serves the Albuquerque Sunport as well as the neighborhoods of Mountain View and the West Side valley communities. County Commissioners and Legislators hailed the opening, saying they hoped it would bring healthy mixed-use economic development to an area plagued with junkyards and industrial sites. [more]

Richardson Grok

Bill Richardson's stock is going up, according to Cokie Roberts and Stephen Roberts, writing in the Billings Gazette. The two noted that, from a fund raising perspective, both Arizona's John McCain and New Mexico's Richardson were neck and neck. But in a "glass-half-full" or "glass-half-empty" analysis, Richardson's $5 million was seen as a positive surprise, while McCain's fund raising was seen as a disappointment. The Roberts' also note that the straw poll conducted by grassroots organization moveon.org showed Richardson in second place behind John Edwards (don't forget, however, that Moveon.org was strongly supportive of Howard Dean, as well).

Or maybe Richardson's stock is going down...Leave it to small town vitriol to cast doubt on the candidate, as if everyone out there is reading the Alamogordo News. In it, Harold Teeter waxes about the current democratic candidate list, and how unfit Richardson is to run the country.

Either way, he's getting play in New Hampshire and Iowa. Richardson is the first democratic candidate to begin his/her television advertising campaign. The 30- and 60-second spots were produced by Murphy Putnam Media writes the Washington Post. They launch this week in the two states. [more]

Advertising the Land Of Enchantment

We just can't let go of our little green Roswell alien. Only now we have a newer, pointy-headed version with a long tail and springy feet. Is this the alien a la Bill Richardson, who's dying to let the world know that we're all about space here in New Mexico?

Is "The Best Place in the Universe, New Mexico, Earth?" Saatchi Advertising and the State of New Mexico Tourism Department want you to think so, but they show you only one small photograph of a mountain with some green (??) in the foreground in the newest state tourism campaign. Check out the video below.



The campaign launched on April 14 in the Southwest, San Diego and Minneapolis. The TV spot campaign actually looks like a cross between the the movies "Office Space" and "2001 Space Odyssey," with its old-style "computery" typeface and its B-movie sci-fi aliens. We don't see the state, we don't see anything about New Mexico that makes it unique. We don't even see the Spaceport (and good thing, too, since it's a strip of asphalt in the desert. Now that's impressive. [more]

Literary Life

He's so reclusive, most people don't even know Cormac McCarthy lives in Santa Fe, although if you hang around the Santa Fe Institute, you'll undoubtedly run into him. Yesterday, the Pulitzer Prize committee announced that McCarthy's The Road received this year's prize for fiction. McCarthy's won popular acclaim lately, too. Oprah chose The Road for her book club in late March.

My taste for fiction has waned over the years--there's too much telling and not enough showing, to use the old writing teacher's mantra. I always try to finish a book, but lately I'm bored with most of the fiction I read--the stories don't engage me enough, or the writer will suddenly break from the story line to explain the context, sometimes using a transparent writerly gimmick to do so (flashback, etc.). McCarthy' prose is so detailed, yet spare. There's not a single extraneous detail. He bends and breaks words, he leaves the sentences to flow free of punctuation (oh, the freedom from commas!). The Spanish is untranslated; the background unexplained; the scenes harsh and sad and sometimes horrifying. [more]

Rocky Mountain Real Estate Grok

Housing starts rose unexpectedly in March, according to Bloomberg News, an encouraging sign that the housing slump may be abating. Builders broke ground on new homes at an annual rate of 1.518 million last month, an increase of 0.8 percent from February. But in the West, which has perhaps been one of the hardest hit areas, housing starts continued a month-to-month decline. The increase in housing starts was led by a 45 percent jump in the Midwest. Starts fell 7.7 percent in the West, 6.1 percent in the Northeast and 2.7 percent in the South, reports the news service. New homebuilders were discouraged, saying the spring building-and-buying season had not gotten off to a strong start, despite the increases. In February, new home sales hit their lowest level in seven years, declining 3.9 percent, the Commerce Department reported on March 26. The median price of a new home fell 0.3 percent from a year earlier to $250,000. [more]

Richardson Grok

Okay, so Bill Richardson may have convinced the North Koreans to shutter their nuke operations but one of Richardson's biggest political accomplishment to date could be the off-loading of former state senator Manny Aragon from state government. Aragon, who is under investigation for allegedly getting kickbacks in the building of the Metropolitan Court building in Downtown Albuquerque, lorded over the Legislature for three decades (many of which he served as Senate President Pro Tem) before Richardson placed some friends on the board of regents for New Mexico Highlands University; the regents selected Aragon as president of the beleaguered and broke school in the north, despite the faculty senate's recommendation of another candidate. Could Richardson know he needed Aragon out of the way to accomplish his ambitious agenda for the state, which he could then tout to the nation as campaign fodder? As president of NMHU, Aragon began a slow political implosion, when the school fired and/or denied tenure to several white faculty members, Aragon was ousted (the school settled the discrimination lawsuit for $250,000) and now he's allegedly deep in the Metro Court corruption case. Writes the Albuquerque Tribune in a recent story about the governor returning campaign contributions from the indictees:

The governor did sign legislation into law in 2003 to allocate $3.9 million to help pay for cost overruns on the [Metro Court] building and he signed a measure in 2004 that extended the time previously appropriated money could be spent on the project.The 2003 bill was sponsored by then-Senate Majority Leader Manny Aragon, who authorities say received $700,000 in payoffs as part of a conspiracy with others to inflate construction contracts on the courthouse. Aragon was charged with 14 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering. He has not publicly commented since the indictment was announced Thursday and has yet to make an initial appearance in federal court. [more]

On the Road

Over the past year or so, I've had the good fortune to travel to Europe three times--twice for business and once for pleasure. Such trips are useful for appreciating what you have (and as I've written here before, I think Albuquerque's two concourse, southwestern airport ROCKS and I'm not kidding), as well as feeling keenly what you don't.

Germany's airports are pristine and efficient, full of good shops and better food. Want to grab a Gucci before your trip to Paris? It's easy. Better yet, grab a sandwich on a baguette made with fresh ingredients, and a beer. In fact, in Europe the only place you get a bad meal is McDonalds. The food seems all fresh, all recently prepared. Even in the train station (see above, pristine and efficient).

At immigration we are funneled into orderly lines for passport control, that move quickly and efficiently and spill us out into the main terminal.

Contrast to, say, Dulles, where arriving International passengers are squeezed down a narrow hallway, Xeroxed arrows pointing the way, down an escalator, into a heap at the bottom, and then jammed into a small room where we wait too long for our passport stamps.


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