Mosaic Solar Crowdsourcing...Merging Investing and Energy

If you have never heard of Oakland, Ca. based Mosaic Solar, keep an eye out - they may be changing the way investors, individuals, small business and energy companies come together.

Mosaic is a crowdsourcing platform that allows individuals to invest in single solar panel projects on places like schools, churches, retirement homes, etc. The business requests the project be put on the Mosaic site and the cost is listed. Mosaic investors then can contribute from $25 minimums on up to as much as they would like at a return around 4.5% for most projects. The payout can be in 10-20 year terms and the business getting the solar can repay early if they choose.

This is an alternative to renting the solar panels from the solar companies like SolarCity which is a small upfront investment and then you rent the panels from the company. SolarCity reaps the benefits if and when your panels return enough energy to the grid to get a rebate. The consumer takes the lower energy bill and has stability against rising energy rates from the big utilities.

In Mosaic's case, the business is actually purchasing the solar panels. If you were to do this on the open market systems like this could cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is prohibitively expensive to most small businesses and there are relatively few companies that will do a loan or financing option. With the Mosaic route, you crowdsource the funds, get the panels immediately, and pay back a constant payment much like a mortgage for the life of the loan. Investors get steady cash returns, the business gets panels that drastically lower or eliminate their energy costs, the environment is saved one panel at a time as we burn less and less coal and natural gas producing our power.

So, does anybody want to do this?!?

Mosaic had fully funded their first offered crowdsourcing project in ten minutes. Most projects offered in their first year in California were fully funded within 6 days. It seems that investors LIKE having options to invest their money in sustainable environmentally friendly ways. This is a way to have a direct impact with as little as $25 invested and very low risk.

I love the idea. I hope it takes off and we can use this same system to fund other eco-friendly projects. Crowdsourcing is the way of the future and smart entrepreneurs are finding ways to tap into those funds for positive, game changing ways.

Click HERE to check out Mosaic's website and see if there is a project that is near and dear to heart or even on your street!

Cheers

TJ Franco
  

Regulating our Underground Aquifers

The year is 1886, the following important things happened:

• Jan 1 - The 1st ever Tournament of Roses is held in Pasadena, CA
• May 8 - The 1st ever Coca-Cola is sold in Atlanta, GA --- containing trace amounts of cocaine.
• Sept 4 - Apache Leader Geronimo surrenders to US troops in AZ, ending the last US-Indian War

On April 26th, 1886, the California Supreme Court decided the case of Lux v Haggin and made the last major decision on water rights in California. I don't know about you, but I think a few things have changed in CA in the last 125 years or so.

The court found that Riparian Rights to water held priority but that Appropriative Rights were secondary and binding. What the hell does that mean??

REALLY BASIC explanation - Riparian Rights says that if your land has water ON it, you get to use is how you want. Appropriation Rights say that the, "First in Time is the First in Right," basically stating that if called it first, you get. Like playing shotgun for the front seat of a car on a long road trip, except this has to do with the very lifeblood of our state and our people - water.

To be clear, all of this case law only applied to surface water and groundwater that was percolating up to the surface. There was NOTHING said about groundwater in underground aquifers. Meaning since the beginning of CA, if you owned land that had groundwater a couple hundred feet down, it belonged to you. Much like mineral rights, rights to any water contained under your land was yours to do with as you pleased as long as the usage was for Beneficial Purposes and by Reasonable Method of Use. Meaning farmers could use the water to grow their crops, but some asshole couldn't dig a well and use groundwater to spray into the air 24/7/365 just so he could run under it sometimes.

This probably wouldn't fly either.

Why are we talking about this?

Gov. Jerry Brown this week signed legislation for the first time in CA history giving government oversight and regulation to the use of groundwater. Making good use of our current horrendous drought that I have already well documented here and here, Gov Brown pushed Sacramento legislators to get in the game... and they have. The regulations come in 3 bills. The first demands local governmental agencies to develop a groundwater management plan. The second puts forth a timeline that the state can step in if the local regulators aren't doing their job to put their plans into action. The third plays to farmers, and postpones actions by the state in places where surface water has been depleted by groundwater pumping.

It should be noted that California is the LAST Western State with a "pump as you please" look at groundwater rights. Other Western states have, for years, regulated ground water pumping as they see groundwater as a scarce and valuable resource. In California, farmers have been in a costly race to dig the deepest wells to grab up all the available water - costing millions in depleted aquifers, destroyed roads and canals.

Many experts expect protracted legal battles challenging the new regulations even though insiders believe the new regulations may not take effect for close to a decade. The newly signed legislation gives local planners two years to submit their plans and five years after that to implement the plan. The state will be able to enforce the plans by metering water and issuing fines for noncooperation.

Gov Brown is taking advantage of everything he possibly can surrounding his enormous popularity and this drought. He is using it to push through his plan to dig gigantic tunnels under the Sacramento Delta to bring water to thirsty Angelenos and the rest of SoCal faster, he is trying to bully the courts into keeping our prisons massively overcrowded (more to come on that topic shortly), and he continues to push his bullet train with all its enormous challenges.

When the Governor is a shoe in for another term, when one party controls both houses of our State Congress, things get passed! Look on this as a positive or a negative, but things get passed!

Let me know what you think. I would love to revisit this in a few years and see where all these planners have gone and what the results look like... especially after a nice rain storm.

Cheers

TJ Franco

PS - At least plans like these will never cut the mustard with the new regulations.

LAX People Mover... a Reality?

In 2008, 68% of Los Angeles County voters approved a half cent sales tax increase via Measure R slated for transit infrastructure projects. This is one of a dozen of them...

When LAX was built in 1960, apparently no one thought to put a public transit system in place to take riders from the surrounding buses, directly in to LAX. Enter the LAX People Mover. Mayor Eric Garcetti is quoted as saying," I think it will fix a historic mistake of our past." Hopefully it will! Let's discuss.

Ok, so the funding has been stated. We all voted on it. Or at least the 12% of Los Angeles County residents that vote on this sort of thing voted on it, and passed it. So we have the dough.

How are we going to get there? The Metro Green Line, or Crenshaw Line, is currently under construction at a cost of approximately $330M. The station for the LAX people mover would be added to this expansion of the line and it would be located at Aviation & 96th. Currently the Green Line is 1.5 miles short of LAX and there is a shuttle bus that you have to catch to get into the airport. That is brutal and complete nonsense.

The people mover, which would be built by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) which runs LAX, would run on an elevated guideway, above traffic, directly to the airport. Detailed finalized plans for how many stops inside the LAX horseshoe are due in December 2014 but it is somewhere between 2-5 stops for the LAX terminals. LAWA would be responsible for covering the costs of the people mover itself, for all the construction, and for maintaining it. It could look something like this:

CONRAC refers to the consolidated Rent-a-Car Center

Artist Rendering of the People Mover Station

LA Metro is on the hook for the station (where our Measure R dollars go). Mayor Garcetti and others in City Government have asked that the Aviation/96th Station be state of the art and really worthy of the costs associated with the project. They want a fully encolsed station including: retail and convenience shops, WiFi, airline information boards, private vehicle drop off and taxi stands, ATM's, and even possibly currency exchange and luggage check in. All of this in LEED Silver Certified construction to make sure there is minimal environmental impact and that it is sustainably built.

Proposed dates for completion of construction at this point are, 2019 for the completion of the Aviation/96th Station, and 2020-2022 for the people mover to be completed and operational.

Is it worth it?

By 2022, LAWA estimates that 57% of travelers will arrive at LAX via private car, 33% by taxi, limo or shuttle, 8% by Flyaway, and 1-2% via buses and rail. Is is worth upwards of $1B to cater to 1-2% of all travelers at LAX? According to LAWA there were 66.6 million passengers that went through LAX in 2013. That means if that number doesn't change, a ridership of 660,000 - 1,330,000 for the people mover. Taking a million cars out of LAX every year seems pretty worth it to me!

So, in less than a decade we should correct a 60's era wrong. Garcetti likes it, do you?

Cheers,

TJ

PS - All of this movement to the airport is coupled with the MUCH NEEDED updates that are happening to the terminals themselves. Last year LAWA completed a $2.1 Billion update to the Tom Bradley International Terminal, LAX's busiest and most profitable terminal. Currently underway are updates as follows:
Terminal 1 - $508,000,000 - Southwest
Terminal 2 - $300,000,000
Terminal 3 - already partially done by Virgin America and Virgin Australia
Terminal 5 - $250,000,000 - Delta
Terminal 6 - Alaska has updated its part and United is in the process of updating its section
Terminals 7-8 - $400,000,000 - United

LAX is (hopefully) getting better and more efficient!

Urban TxT - I can Only Imagine...

Imagine the possibility if we could get inner city kids, the ones we all know have the toughest road to success and to get out of the terrible cycle of poverty, to get interested and involved in technology. In developing tech, not just using FB and Instagram for selfies. Imagine the run up if inner city kids starting pouring into technical college to become programmers, computer engineers, software developers, and technological entrepreneurs. Imagine what could be accomplish if the pent up aggression, angst, disparity and frustration of a cycle of poverty were broken and those that had been trapped starting using that potential from Silicon Valley and Silicon Beach. Inner city kids look to rappers and athletes and say," That is the way I am getting out of here." What a minuscule portion of them can actually be elite athletes or make a living selling records. But how many could make a legitimate career out of programming, coding, computing? Life changing things could happen. A resurgence of the true middle class that is all but gone in America today, especially in large cities like Los Angeles.

That dream, that possibility, is being explored by Oscar Menjivar. Born and raised in Watts in South Central Los Angeles, Oscar was given a chance to succeed at an early age, and he took advantage. After earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in Information Technology and starting a successful consulting firm, he decided to give back to his community. Oscar is one of the few people that sees potential built up in the inner city, especially here in the lowest income portion of Los Angeles.

With no funding, Oscar started his Technology Summer Program called Urban TxT, Teens Exploring Technology. Originally the would meet at Starbucks or on the campus of USC in range of free WiFi since they had no funding the rent a space. Now a few years on, they rent a small work space they call the "Cube" in South LA.

Oscar and his team of dedicated mentors and teachers encourage the students to develop something person that will help solve a need in their local community. Find a local problem, and find a way technology can solve it. With the credo in mind, the students set out to change everything from safe running paths through unsafe neighborhoods, to apps that match up a students interests with a non-profit that they can team with to complete school mandated community service hours. These are small problems with small solutions, but the value of the education in learning how to find a need and come up with a way to solve it cannot be understated. This is exactly what entrepreneurship is, finding solutions to problems that no one else has come up with yet.

In a world constantly embittered by the shrinking middle class, the lack of resources or the waste of given resources to the most underserved, the government struggles with compromise and leadership, and an ever growing fear that the next generation of Americans will not be as well off as the last... I am glad Oscar has found a niche to help. Found a place where he can get his hands dirty and really watch as he shapes young lives in unexpected ways. I can only imagine the possibilities that are in store if this movement really takes off. If the kids buy into it and more kids start signing up. If we can get a couple great success stories that become a catalyst for change. I love Los Anegeles, and if we can get our most impoverished communities to start utilizing tools being given them while having the rest of the tech world really embrace and empower this movement, we are in for a bright future in the Southland. I can only imagine...

Cheers

TJ Franco

To see Oscar explain his story in his own words... watch this TEDx talk.

Much Ado about Water

Pick up ANYTHING written about California these days, and inevitably something will be mentioned about the drought and the current crisis of water in our State.

Make no mistake, we brought this on ourselves! We in Southern California have grown a vast empire of citizens in a barren desert. Those farmers mid-state who love to blame all our water issues on the Real Lawns of LA are just as much to blame, planting water thirsty crops in an area that does not have the annual average precipitation to sustain them.

Breaking News - we have no water. So what are we going to do about it?

I previously posted here and here about the major initiatives California is trying to push through in this time of vast uneasiness about the future of water in our state. CA Assemblyman Roger Dickinson was recently quoted by the LA Times saying," This falls under the category of: Never let a crisis go to waste." We are finally getting major agricultural interests together with Sacramento policymakers, local utilities, and environmentalists to push through, or at the VERY LEAST negotiate and brainstorm ideas that can improve our water situation.

One topic on the table today is groundwater management and regulation. Since the Gold Rush days of California, groundwater has been a right of the property owner. This means big agricultural interests mid-state can dig wells on their acres of farmland and use it to their desire to supplement the surface water they are getting from the aqueduct and, of course, rain. This becomes a problem when a drought such as this comes along and groundwater becomes the major source of fresh water for people. We have done a horrendous job at recapturing rain water for use. We have so many non-permeable surfaces in SoCal that the water goes into the gutter and out to sea, never to be used by our population or retained back into our groundwater reserves. Bad news!

Ok, local focus. What can we do? Obviously the homeowner's among us can cut back on landscape water. We can do all the little normal things that really do add up - turn the water off while brushing your teeth and shaving, take shorter showers, load the dishwasher and clothes washer to max fill before cycling, install low flow or dual flush toilets for maximum efficiency.

Ok, a step further. Install gutters if you don't have them, and make sure the downspouts end in rain barrels or rain gardens where the water is either used by you later in your garden or can be soaked back into the earth replenishing our groundwater supplies. If the water goes to the gutter, it is lost forever.

Take out the grass. It is as simple as that. Personally I LOVE the look of a green lawn but I cannot stomach the sight of my sprinklers on anymore. It literally hurts to watch. So I made a compromise with myself, I will replace my backyard with natural landscaping and permeable surfaces and use the rain barrels to collect the water to use in the front yard. Obviously I won't collect enough to water the lawn, but it should be enough to water the local plants I have used around the edges, and those small compromises (which in my case should cut back approx 60% of my total water usage and more than 85% of my outdoor water usage) made by all of us WILL have an impact. I am going with all permeable stone and surface area in the replacement backyard so that I can capture as much of our minuscule rainfall as possible.

Not actual photos of my yard, but aren't they pretty?!? You get the idea...

People of Los Angeles and California in general, we are looking at another warm dry winter. Great for tourism, TERRIBLE for us residents who will live here through the worst drought our state has seen in recorded history. We all need to pitch in, we all need to help. LADWP announced they are going to start warning and then fining water wasters $500/citation for watering on non-designated days, for washing your car in your driveway, for having sprinklers that point to the street instead of planters, and any other wasteful uses of water. This is serious stuff and we all need to do our part.

Would love your ideas and your thoughts on the best way to conserve, store, save, and recycle water in this time of need!

Cheers

TJ Franco

Tesla Gigafactory... the Future of the Battery

The Tesla Gigafactory, have you heard of it? If you haven't, odds are by the end of this week, you will!

Tesla CEO and genius, Elon Musk, is at it again - this time aiming to revolutionize the energy utility sector of this country and possibly the world. Musk has, for years, been turning industries on their heads. 

As creator of PayPal (where he earned his fortune) he changed the way online buying and selling was done. No longer needed were credit cards or ACH transfers, this was a fast, easy, safe way to transfer money online for goods purchased initially on eBay and now essentially everywhere on the internet.

He also turned his sights on the newly privatized space industry. As NASA closed its doors, someone needed to fill the gap. Musk and SpaceX have stepped up nicely. After years of development and testing, SpaceX recently became the first private space company to successfully dock with the International Space Station. They will be delivering supplies and tools to the ISS while the Russians continue to use their rockets to transport the astronauts. 

So after Musk has transformed Outer Space and CyberSpace,  he is turning his attentions to... Battery Space? Enter the Gigafactory. A joint venture spearheaded by Musk and Tesla Motors, his electric car company, Tesla Gigafactory will look to revolutionize the Lithium-Ion battery space globally. Gigafactory is reportedly looking to produce upwards of 30 gigawatts of batteries per year when fully operational. Those batteries would be used to power all of Tesla's motor vehicles along with a new product line aimed at Residential (and soon to be small commercial) properties for storage of Solar Power. Once up and running, and assuming they actually achieve the 30 gigawatts per year worth of batteries they claim they can produce, according to Musk,“We are talking about something that is comparable to all of the lithium-ion battery production in the world in one factory."

So how does this change everything? Utility companies around the world battle spikes in power usage, most often in evening between 4-7pm when people arrive home from work and put all of their systems to work. That also happens to be when the sun is going down and the solar panels on the roofs of these homes are no longer producing energy. Power produced during the day had been fed back into the grid, but now the house is drawing all the power and then some back. With this surge in usage, the systems of the power companies are always strained. Enter the Tesla Home Battery (my name, not theirs). With a Home Battery connected to your solar panels, it would charge itself with all the power the panels draw in throughout the day and store that energy until it is needed in the evening. Homes would still be connected to the grid for excess power needs but the batteries could be programmed to use all their power during the most expensive time periods effectively bringing down the drain from utilities and also ensuring any power taken from the grid is purchased at the lowest price point.

Long term, if Musk's predictions are correct, the Gigafactory and the 2-3 more he intends to build in the US will effectively dive bomb the price of Lithium-Ion batteries and make the Residential Home Battery so effective, people could use them to collect enough solar energy to completely run their home and also store power in case of emergency black outs, as the power would come from the panels on the roof, not from a main grid system that could fail and go offline.

Currently, the Gigafactory's location is TBD. But people in the know, people following developments closely, have predicted the announcement will come this Thursday, July, 31st, as Tesla announces its earnings to Wall Street. There has been rumor that this ground breaking in Reno is the first site that has been chosen as Gigafactory 1. There are also plans being put together for a location in Stockton, Ca and Phoenix, Az. Musk has said that he would go as far as breaking ground on up to 3 locations in order to take precautions against any local or construction problems at any one site.

Gigafactory will also produce all its own power onsite with newly built solar panels & wind turbines. A Net Zero factory.

I am going to revisit this topic after Thursday's announcements, if any. But I think this is going to be an ongoing fascinating development in our region, in our country and in our world as we see a massive shift from fossil fuels to a cleaner future of energy production.

Cheers

TJ

Solar Farms, harnessing our most powerful and abundant natural resource

Here in the lovely Southwest United States there is one thing we have an abundance of - sunshine. While we are already leading the nation in utilizing Solar Power, there is still so much we can do.

Recently I learned of a government initiative in Singapore, an entire country smaller than New York City. With a population of almost 5.5 million people on a small set of islands in SE Asia, space is at a premium and like everywhere else, its residents need power. In order to provide this power, the government of Singapore is looking toward a new technology - floating solar fields.

There is technology that has been developed in Southern France and is currently being tested that would allow for large solar farms to be constructed and placed in reservoirs and other fresh water areas inlets to provide power for nearby municipalities. This has benefits both for the power and water elements. The Solar panels will be able to move thereby always having optimal positioning for solar collection. The panels as well as the cables carrying the collected power will be kept cool by the water, thereby losing minimal power to thermal loss. Also for future adaptations of this solar array, the platforms themselves could be modified to collect wave current power if the fields were put into the ocean or protected bays.

For the water, the solar panels protect the surface of the water from the sun. This vastly lowers water loss to evaporation which will be crucial moving forward specifically here in the arid SW. What little water we do get, we cannot afford to lose to those 100 degree afternoons throughout our endless summers.

Imagine, if you will, something like what is pictured below floating around a couple of coves in Lake Mead, Lake Powell, the LA Reservoir, and countless other water collection facilities in SW. Image the power that could be pulled in year round for our cities in Inland CA, AZ, NV.

Creative solutions like these need to be presented to our newly minted DWP Board, Mayor Garcetti, Gov Brown and all the other officials of our great state that are constantly looking for ways to bring power to our Green State without burning more fossil fuels. We have the solar technology, why not put it to work??

Thanks for listening - Email, Tweet, Facebook message your local Energy/Water supplier and tell them we are in need and there are solutions out there yet to be explored.

Cheers

TJ

OC Fair Musical Acts

No rantings and ravings today. I love going down to the OC Fair each year to watch one of my favorite country acts at the Pacific Amphitheater after indulging on some terrific (terrible) Fair Fare!

Check out the link below for the full list of OC Fair musical guests and if you need something to do and have a couple hours to drive to OC, its always a great time!

OC Fair Musical Lineup

Cheers

TJ Franco

Why America should strive to be like China

Yes, you read that title correctly. And no, I am not high. It isn't exactly as broad as the title may imply, but in this one particular instance, I am so thrilled with what China is trying to do, that I couldn't help myself.

China does so so many things wrong. Human rights, child labor, antiquated reproductive policy, questionable banking practices... the list goes on and on. But there is one thing they do better than any country on earth thanks to their quasi-pseudo-Deomcratic-Capitalistic-Communism --- Infrastructure. Nowhere on planet earth can you get a massive infrastructure project built faster and with less red tape than in China.

The current project I want to talk about is called the Phoenix Towers in the provincial capital of Wuhan.

That is not a sci-fi scene from a movie. That is the architects rendering of the Phoenix Towers upon completion. The taller of the two will be the new tallest building on earth at approx 1 kilometer high (3,281ft). That is impressive, but not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about are the ingenious amount of sustainable and environmentally friendly aspects to these buildings.

Sitting on their own island, the pair of towers will be home to photovoltaic panels and air pollution scrubbing filters on its exterior. They will have biomass boilers located at their base to turn waste back into power. There will be wind turbine near the top of the taller tower. There is rainwater harvesting, evaporative cooling for building temperature control as well as water filtration that will sustain both towers using nearly 100% recycled water. They will have hydroponic gardens grown in "green walls", located inside the exterior glass of the structure, these living walls will feed the spherical restaurants made to look like planets orbiting the towers, as well as keep the building cool by filtering the sunlight. There is a thermal chimney at the taller buildings center which harnesses the warmth of the earth and the biomass boiler to warm the building in the winter. Architects hope the building will be 100% Net Zero, they will produce all of the power they need, as well as extra power for the surrounding area.

At the base the towers will host different streets meant to mimic other countries around the world. Japan Street. France Street. These will be home to restaurants and other retail establishments. The towers will undoubtedly have a mix of commercial, residential and hotel units within.

If all goes according to plan, the towers are slated for completion in 2018. At that point they will be the tallest buildings on earth, but with such a focus on sustainability that hopefully the world community will celebrate this type of architecture and it will become the new normal for all buildings going up. There is no reason not to incorporate this into building design of the future.

These are just cool:

Cheers

TJ

Can Millenials afford a Home?

The Millenial Generation, defined as anyone born from 1980-2000, has an uphill battle to climb. I know everyone thinks that they have a particular challenge to face that no generation in history has ever had, and I am sure in their own unique way, everyone has a point. Since I am a Millenial myself, I am going to run with it!

Today I am going to focus on one aspect of the Millenials life and see how it is really effecting everyone, of all ages - Housing.

Millenials really came of age in the beginning and then in the height of the Great Recession. While we are technically now out of recession for more than 4 years, it has been a SLOW recovery - the slowest of all time after any sizable recession. The US recovered from the Great Depression faster than we are recovering from the Great Recession.

That is not good news when you are in your early 20's, fresh out of college, looking for a job, a spouse, and a home. That was the norm for the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers, both our predecessors. If they did go to college, which many didn't, they finished, got married and started a family in their first little slice of the American dream. They then spent the rest of their life paying into that piggy bank we call equity, in the largest investment the majority of people ever make in their life. You pay the mortgage each month, you own a bit more of the house. You want a bigger house, you use the equity from the sale of your smaller house to get the bigger one. If you are smart, once your kids are grown and gone and you want to retire, you use all that equity over the years, downsize to a smaller and easier to maintain home and take that chunk you made from paying down your houses as a nest egg for retirement.

So where do Millenials stand? We emerged from college, which is now nearly mandatory in the entry level job market, with tens of thousands of dollars of debt to find no gainful employment. Our country was laying people off. Public spending ground to halt. Government at the local, state and federal levels were all shrinking. No jobs! Many Millenials became boomerang kids, moving back in with their parents after graduating from school. Some went on to get Master's degrees because what else could they do? They knew how to go to school, there were no jobs, why not go to school a couple more years and ride it out?

Now Millenials are starting their lives and starting their careers in close to six figures of debt, automatically disqualifying them from obtaining a home loan based on limited income (entry level job) and overwhelming monthly debt (student loans). Add to that the cultural shift in marriage to a later age and the delay of starting a family, and no one is buying homes!

Ok, so Millenials can't buy a home, why is that a big deal? There are a number of reasons:

1. Building new homes creates jobs. Construction jobs. Architecture jobs. Insurance jobs. All the blue collar trades (plumbing, HVAC, painting, etc), plus the planning, design, marketing, raw materials, and banking jobs that go along with a new home and what it takes to get it made and sold. It is said that building one average single family home creates 3 jobs that didn't previously exist.

2. Boomers have no one to sell to. If the Boomers are being responsible, and moving out when their kids have left the nest and started families of their own, they will sell their 3-5 bedroom house and downsize to something easier the maintain and cheaper to afford while they move into their hard earned retirement years. Can't happen if the boomerang kids are still in their childhood rooms. Can't happen if there are no buyers on the market to purchase the homes because they cannot obtain a home loan.

3. Building that Equity. The equity position in your home is like a huge piggy bank that you are forced to pay into the first of every month. You pay your mortgage and in doing so, you own a larger and larger piece of your home. Want to make improvements 5 years in? Great. Refinance, take out some equity and put it directly into updating a kitchen or bathroom. Makes your home worth even more, you didn't have to pay anything out of pocket, and now if/when you are ready to sell, your home is in a better position to sell quickly. No home for Millenials means that savings account starts much much later. Anyone who has ever talked to a banker or read an article on savings knows, in every possible case under the sun, the earlier you start, the easier it is. Period.

Covering the plight of the Millenial will probably be something I come back to time and again.  Since I myself am a Millenial, it isn't hard to find data, personal stories, friends that are going through this themselves. Among all the other problems that Millenials face, this one could be the most personal to each and every one.

Cheers

TJ

Happy Birthday, America!

Happy Birthday, America! You look great for 238!

On July 4, 1776 a declaration was sent from Philadelphia, PA, the then capitol of the fledgling 13 colonies. It was sent to King George III in jolly old England and it was on. From that moment for the next seven years, Americans fought perilously for independence and sovereignty from Britain. We won.

Thanks to General George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and so many others, we live here today in still the greatest free nation on planet Earth. We are far from perfect, but it is that imperfection that we continue to struggle with today, together as Americans, defending the inalienable rights that our Forefathers fought and died for, that continues to make this country great today.

Today, more than any other, I am proud to be an American. Have a great, happy, and SAFE Fourth of July!

Cheers

TJ

PS - For a complete list of GREAT celebrations and fireworks - Click Here & Enjoy!

Being WaterWise LA - Part Deux

Ok so I got on a bit of a roll earlier in the week when I was talking about the current state of water, or lack thereof, in CA. Farmers are being forced to grow less and less. Reservoirs are depleted nearing all time lows - WE ARE IN TROUBLE.

Since that has not quite hit home with us everyday consumers yet, no one has really taken note. I mean it is impossible to read anything in the LA Times, MSN, CNN, anywhere really... without hearing something about the drought, and usually about the extreme drought here in the West.

So what are we going to do about it?!? Are there any programs put in place to help us navigate a sticky situation like this? Anybody telling us what we can do to help?

Let me start on a State level. Gov. Jerry Brown is using this opportunity to push his agenda to build two gigantic tunnels from the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta in NorCal all the way down here to us thirsty desert dwellers. The plan is slated to cost $15 billion and each tunnel is going to be about as wide as a two-lane highway. Proponents say it will stabilize the flow of water from the north to the fertile farm lands of central California all the way to us hot and thirsty SoCal'ers.

Opposition for this plan, and its overarching project - the Bay Delta Conservation Plan - comes mostly from northern California residents who think most of the water goes to this:

Instead of this:

California depends on its water for nearly $45 Billion in agricultural output each year.

So good ole' Gov. Brown is trying to dig some big ass tunnels down the middle of the state (probably directly under the tracks for his ridiculous bullet train) to bring water to SoCal. But what can we SoCal'ers that give a damn do down here right now to save water?

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) offers a few incentive programs to lower our water consumption as residential consumers. Install low flow toilets, water saving washing machines, moisture sensing sprinkler systems, rain barrels for water collection? Here's your rebate.

Want to go a step further and take the lawn out completely?? DWP is offering $2.00/square foot of turf removed. Get money back and put in a beautiful hardscape instead:

The point is, there are abundant opportunities to save water. Wash a full load of clothes or dishes. Water the lawn less or take it out completely, wash the car less often, take shorter showers. Whatever your solution, everything helps. We all need to take action before our beautiful slice of paradise looks like this, permanently:

Go to http://www.bewaterwise.com/ for more.

Cheers

TJ

Restoration Hardware, an awful waste?

If you have ever purchased anything from Restoration Hardware and not opted out of their mailer, then you recently came home to quite the surprise! A 17 pound, 3,300 page mailer in the form of 9 separate "source books."

Is this the ultimate expression of waste? I mean how many people don't even look at the magazines that come in once a month from RH and its competitors like Crate and Barrel, Pottery Barn, Pier 1 Imports and the like?

According to CEO and chief strategist, Gary Friedman, these source books will actually cut down 70% of what RH usually uses on paper in its monthly mailers. Since this is a once a year mailing blitz with beautiful books meant to be kept sitting on the coffee table, was it worth it?

Pundits and social media'ers aplenty are aroar at receiving the books or even the notion of sending them. Environmentalists have their knickers in a twist. The Sierra Club is probably having a coronary.

Personally I find it hard to accept in my mind that this is cutting back. It is an enormous waste of paper for the majority of people who will inevitably throw it in the trash without ever even looking at it. I will be watching to see how much other RH paraphernalia arrives in the coming months. As soon as I see even one more magazine, I am revisiting this post to blast them. If nothing comes, I will have to revisit and sure up my thoughts.

For now, I thought Jim Cramer from CNBC making Friedman bicep curl the mailers was a delightfully hilarious touch (fast forward to 0:56 to see him start).
CEO Bicep Curls his own Mailer

Cheers

TJ

Being WaterWise LA

So the whole reason I up and started a blog (beyond being told by numerous sources that I should and that it was a great idea) was because I was driving down the street and saw the sprinklers on at a local high school.

We are in the midst of what some are calling the worst drought in the history of California (the worst in the US since the Dust Bowl). Currently 100% of the State of California is in a drought and 96% of the state is in either a severe, extreme, or exceptional drought ( Drought by the Numbers). Exceptional Drought, by definition, is extreme losses in pasture and crops, shortages in our streams and reservoirs, and high instances of water related emergencies. More than 80% of our state in Exceptional Drought.

What are we doing about this? Well there are these scattered about when they aren't warning us about construction, traffic, Amber Alerts, or Reporting Drunk Drivers.

But does anyone think that is actually enough? I don't.

Current our neighbors to the South in Orange and San Diego Counties are making moves. Orange country currently recycles about 40% of its waste water for filtration and injection back into its underground aquifer. San Diego is in the midst of building a desalination plant in Carlsbad that, when up and running at full speed, can supply up to 7% of San Diego residents with clean tap water.

Both of these systems are more expensive than the current method by which a HUGE portion of Southern California residents get their water - we steal it! Through the State Water Project, most of SoCal gets its water from the Sierra Nevada Mountains and their snow melt. This feeds the multi-billion dollar farming community of CA's Central and San Joaquin Valley's on its way to supplying the water for most of Ventura, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Riverside Counties. Literally millions of people. Except this is what happens when we have a drought:

The white stuff is snow. The picture on the left is Jan 2013, the right Jan 2014. That is a big problem for those of us who would like to drink water in LA.

Ok, I'm getting long winded so I am going to bring it back around and wrap a bow on it. I was driving down the street, watching sprinklers water grass in a completely unused section of a local public high school. It was behind some bleachers, along a fence, along a road. Totally unnecessary to even be keeping this area up, especially in an exceptional drought. We need to be diligent, we need to be thinking, and we need to acting on this. It's not going to suddenly rain and solve these problems, or worse yet, it might. Temporarily, of course. We live in a desert. There are a lot of us. We need to be stewards of our land, make wise choices with our resources. I will expand on a few programs that local and state authorities are pushing in future posts... stay tuned!

Cheers

TJ

My First Blog!!!

Hello All

It has recently come to my attention that any self-respecting Realtor this day and age MUST have a blog. I have never blogged, I rarely read blogs, and for the life of me... I don't know how I am going to write one!

But alas, here I go. I know it's important. I know that once I get started it will come easier and easier and become more natural as time goes on. I look forward to comments and differing points of view. I plan to write about things that are always on my mind and things that I think other people should know about!

Thank you for coming here to my Blog, hopefully it will entertain and inform you. If there are ever any topics you want me to look into and write about... I am always open to suggestions!

Cheers!

TJ