COMMERCIAL BREAK The dollar volume of Houston-area commercial property sales for the 12 months through March was $2.36 billion, almost exactly half the figure for the previous 12-month period, reports LoopNet: “In the Houston office market, only $830 million worth of deals closed in the period ending in March 2010 compared to $1.37 billion a year earlier, while the price per square foot dropped to an average of $110 compared to $172 a year earlier. The square footage price in the Houston retail market has dropped the most precipitously, down to $69 in the most recent period from $143 a square foot for the year ending March 2009.” [Houston Business Journal]
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Waiting for HAR to juggle those figures to make it appear the figures are misleading and in fact Houston is booming! Residential is. A little slow but booming. According to HAR.
Reality is most expect “Round Two” of “The Recession-That-Wasn’t-Really-A-Recession-Because-It-Was-And-Is-A-Depression” to hit sometime over the summer.
And rumor is quite a few commercial and multi-family property owners who sued HCAD and dropped the suit after HCAD dropped the 2009 valuations back to or near the 2008 valuations have found HCAD “undropped” the valuation back or near the 2009 valuation for 2010.
Maybe this time they will learn to proceed to court.
Speaking of HCAD, apparently foreclosure sales don’t count, they exclude the sales from comparables, silly me for thinking the sales price was market value.
Foreclosures are considered “false values” unless there are several “non-foreclosed” homes that sell within I believe 10% of the sale price of the foreclosures. Who knows. HCAD lies about their methods of valuation. It seems to be whatever rabbit they can pull out of a hat.
The bottom line is they are there to ensure the taxpayers pay the maximum amount of tax allowed by law so the politicians can waste it all.
I suspect more and more homeowners are going to be suing. And not settling.
As will more and more commercial and multi-family owners who are on the edge of seeing “negative income” as a result of the overvaluation.