The Exciting world of Construction - Peaceful Congruence

Welcome back to The Exciting World of Construction.

Lesson Eight -Peaceful Congruence

Dear Students,

Today I am your philosophy teacher. From Concrete Foundations to Philosophy…yeah, I know…it’s a bit of whiplash. 

We have learned a lot at UPSI University: Forming and pouring concrete, podium slab foundations, mud jacking, and stucco.

Today we take off the boots and head to the classroom to explore Peaceful Congruence. 

WAIT!!!!  Come back! 

You enjoyed pouring concrete – you’ll enjoy poring over this for a moment.

The multi-family inventory is aging. The BOOM of condos built in the 70’s, 80’s, and even the 90’s are not aging with grace. The quick fixes to maintain appearances over those middle 20 years of the structure’s lifetime are proving both inadequate and often in retrospect detrimental. Think Botox, crash diets, and fake tans – but for condos. Decisions to go cheap by past owners are almost uniformly proving detrimental to current owners.

We all understand the temptation. None of us are innocent of decisions to sacrifice quality or permanence on the altar of this year’s budget or convenience.

Our clever marketing department came up with a term that we have decided to ponder – Peaceful Congruence. 

Think about Peaceful Congruence this way: Taking two people with misaligned incentives or values and bringing them harmoniously together. Think: getting the rancher and the vegan to work together for a common objective.

Consider this: 

Will the incentives of the current roster of condo owners ever align with the incentives of the future owners of that same condo?

Are you thinking about it, or did you gloss over the question and hope I will answer it in the next paragraph? 

Yeah, I thought so…no worries, I’ll help out.

I’ll give one example and then class will be over: How about reserving funds for future repairs?

• Current Condo owner – not excited about reserving funds for the next generation of owners.

• Future Condo owner – Very excited about the current condo owner reserving funds for the next generation of owners.

Did you see that?

That misalignment is both a demonstration of basic human nature, and also fundamental to why we have such widespread deterioration of the multifamily inventory today. We are all excited about others doing the right thing until “they” becomes “we” and the burden to act responsibly falls on our shoulders. 

UPSI is committed to Peaceful Congruence. How can we both peacefully present what is in the best interest of the community now AND in the future while also peacefully bringing incongruous paradigms together to discuss the options.

Peaceful Congruence! That’s just a small part of what UPSI can help with in your community!

Class dismissed.