- ‘Rash of New Retail’ Planned Near Cabela’s in League City [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- 11 Homebuilders Selected To Build in Johnson Development’s Fort Bend County ‘Agrihood’ Harvest Green [HBJ]
- What Houston’s TIRZs Actually Do [HBJ]
- The Top 10 Issues Affecting Real Estate Today, According to Counselors of Real Estate [Prime Property]
- Nixed Proposed Street Designation Changes Including Dunlavy Narrowing To Get Second Chance as Part of Major Thoroughfare Plan Amendment Process [The Highwayman; previously on Swamplot]
- Why Houston Parks Are Designed To Flood [Houston Chronicle]
- More Houston Homeowners Expected To Install Fake Grass in Their Backyards [Click2Houston]
- Part II of Stephen Fox’s Driving Tour of the Third Ward [OffCite]
- Zillow’s List of the 25 Houston Neighborhoods Where Home Values Are Increasing the Most [HBJ]
- Help Us ID the Art in This Spires Condo [The Great God Pan Is Dead; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of Buffalo Bayou Park: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Re Astroturf back yards: If they have to be sloped for drainage purposes, does that mean they count as impermeable surface area on your water bill? And does it mean they will make flooding worse?
What goes into Zillow home value index? It has the price for Downtown as $289,500. Where are those condos at?
Rex,
Most that I’ve seen are on Main Street or very close to it. There are a few on the 400 block, some more on the 700 block, and a whole bunch more on the 900 block. There are a few other buildings with condos scattered throughout downtown, though.
@Memebag The image processing techniques used to detect impervious cover relies heavy on the infrared band. That is reflective of healthy growing vegetation but not plastic. Fake grass should come up as impervious surface unless corrected by another part of the classification process.
Anytime someone asks about the quality of Zillow data, I like to show them articles like this.
Absolute…garbage.
I don’t necessarily disagree with the neighborhoods it’s identified, Eastwood and lawndale-wayside are blowing up like a Taliban youth, but the actual numbers it’s presenting are pretty off. No way the median price is anywhere less than 200 for either of those neighborhoods. My guess is that it’s using the Z-estimate tool, which seems to perform very poorly in rapidly exploding markets (but may work much better in more stable areas)
That Top 10 list from the “Counselors of Real Estate” could win a no-shit award. Save yourself the time of reading it…here is a summary…
Real estate values will continue to reflect the overall economy, human beings, and location.
OK despite TIRZs for Uptown, Midtown, Upper Kirby having been created over 20 years ago. Midtown would have been the only qualifying area as it did look like an urban wasteland in the early 90s. Upper Kirby and Uptown never ever EVER fit the requirements outlined in the article. More deserving areas of Houston would be significantly improved even if they were upgraded to the streets, sidewalks, lighting and infrastructure of what Upper Kirby and Uptown had in the 90s.