Ladies and Gentlemen, start your modeling engines! Google’s “please create a 3D model of this city for us” project, Building Maker, has come to Houston. To do the bidding of your Google masters, of course, you’ll need to download and install the Google Earth plugin for your browser.
Houston’s 15 “please wait 90 days before demolishing” historic districts — plus that special one that’s a little more strict — now have their own special page on HAR.com. And it comes with maps! It’s now easy to stake out the boundaries of each one, if you’re into that sort of thing. And each map shows properties for sale within the district.
But the information doesn’t appear to be flowing in the reverse direction. Listings for properties located in historic districts still include no indication what district they’re in — or even that they’re in one at all. Unless, of course, the agent is forthcoming enough to mention it in the main text of the listing itself.
The Greater Houston Preservation Alliance also reports that “if a designated landmark is located within a historic district, the designation will appear on the site.” Anyone wanna show us some examples?
Image showing map of Houston Heights West Historic District: HAR
Swamplot reader Superdave, a self-proclaimed “Google Earth junkie,” is grooving on the program’s recently extended time travel feature:
In the most recent update of the free software, they added a feature where you can view aerial images from previous years, which is cool. At first they only went back 5 years or so. However, today I noticed that they’ve added imagery from December 1978 for nearly the entire Houston area.
I was numbstruck as I zoomed around and realized how substantially different this city is after our rampant growth over the past 30 years. I even got kind of sentimental seeing all those rice fields out west, where I grew up. I also felt a conflicted sense of relief that we’re in an economic downturn that will kind of apply the brakes (I’m sick, I know).
How’d the area around the Astrodome look 30 years ago?
Got a shiny new iPhone for Christmas? HAIF founder Wayne Lorentz wants help testing a new mobile interface for Towrs, his online architecture database. It’s not exactly an application, but it should be just as easy to use: “[It] uses the iPhone’s geolocation feature to display the interesting, historic, and significant buildings near where the user is standing. Downtown Houston and Galveston are two of the areas it is designed for. It also works well in Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo, London, and a few other cities. . . . All you have to do is point the iPhone’s browser to Towrs.com and it should just work.” Send feedback to editor@houstonarchitecture.com. [Swamplot inbox]
Thanks to the reader who passed along this flyover video showing what a fat, happy, and rebuilt Highway 290 will look like as it wraps its newly grown tentacles around Beltway 8. The video comes from TxDOT’s fancy new my290.com website, which attempts to bring to the planned multi-billion-dollar highway widening program the feel-good vibe of a community barnraising. When construction begins in 2011, will we be able to follow the construction workers as they tweet?
The site features current maps and details of the plans for US 290 and the Hempstead Tollway. Notes the reader: “Looks like the NW mall is history, well, at least most of the parking lot.” Here’s a view:
Realizing that Modern house fans may want a little gingerbread of their own this season, local online small-houseplan hawker Hometta is offering detailed instructions on how to bake a mostly edible version of the Draft House, a 3-bedroom, 2-bath model designed by the half-Houston-based HouMinn Practice. And the construction documents for this very small house are . . . free! Among the ingredients: dry mixes and peppermint sticks from the Whole Foods gingerbread chalet kit.
If you like how the sample goes together, plans for a full-size, non-edible version of the Draft House are available from Hometta too. But they’re gonna cost you.
Texas Watchdog has released an interactive map that links to the financial disclosure statements of Houston’s city council members, including Mayor White. Each disclosure, which covers calendar year 2008, includes an accounting of real estate holdings by officials and their spouses — along with the usual stocks and bonds and mutual funds and business interests stuff.
Unfortunately, the map itself appears to note only the council members’ primary residences — not any strip centers, spec McMansions, apartment complexes, land grants, or tool sheds that might be lurking in their portfolios. For those goodies (if any), you’ll need to poke through the linked personal financial statements.
The statements, which state law requires council members to complete, are broken into 2 segments; real estate holdings are listed at the end of the first. Of course, for the more sophisticated investors in the City Council crowd, the more interesting properties are likely to be held under the name of some sort of business entity — like, say M/A Khan Holdings LP. You’ll find that sort of info in part 2.
Responding to reports that home sales prices have been systematically omitted from MLS records in Dallas, a few Houston Realtors tell the Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff that sort of thing can’t happen here: “. . . after a house sells, the price is supposed to be recorded on the Multiple Listing Service by the real estate broker who sold it — a practice that’s hard to get around, in Houston, at least. That’s because agents are bound by MLS rules to report the price or face a $250 fine and possible suspension. ‘If the seller doesn’t want their sales price reported, then they can’t list it in the MLS,’ said Shawn Dauphine of the Houston Association of Realtors, which runs the MLS — a database of listings of homes on the market and those that have sold. Members of the association have access to price data, but the public does not. . . . Over the last 12 months, just three agents in this area were fined for not reporting sale price. The problem is more severe in Dallas because the group that runs the MLS there has an exception in its rules that allows the seller’s agent to report the last known list price in lieu of the sales price, Dauphine said.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
A few new features now make it much easier to search for real estate listings directly from Google Maps. Although you can’t limit searches as neatly as you can with the map functions of some other real-estate sites — and the listings don’t come straight from MLS — Google doesn’t make you register for anything, and this map search isn’t so likely to crash your browser. The listings are integrated into the standard Google Maps interface, and links to the listings themselves are easily accessible.
You can start searching Houston listings simply by searching for “Houston real estate” on Google Maps. Click on the first result (”Real estate on Google Maps”) to see more listings, which appear as tiny dots on the map. Click on any of the dots to find more information about a particular property.
What’s most interesting about the new real estate features is how neatly they allow househunting to fit in with more everyday map activities. Real-estate obsessives, take note: Searching for listings no longer has to be such a deliberate act. Looking up directions to a friend’s house? You can scour listings along the route with just a few extra clicks. Wondering about the real estate action near one of the demos in Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report? You no longer have to navigate to a separate site to do that.
Here’s how to try it:
The Center for Neighborhood Technology has updated its interactive region-comparison website to show data comparing carbon dioxide emissions around the Houston region. The Housing + Transportation Affordability Index now allows you to compare CO2 emissions — from “household vehicle travel” only — on side-by-side zoomable maps.
The 2 new data sets available show CO2 emissions per acre (at the top above), and CO2 emissions per household (directly below that) from household auto use. The Houston-Galveston-Brazoria region is one of 55 U.S. metropolitan areas mapped on the website. The center’s point?
When measured on a per household basis, it found that the transportation-related emissions of people living in cities and compact neighborhoods can be nearly 70% less than those living in suburbs.
The center figures that transportation accounts for 28 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.
Other H+T map tools focus on how affordable different locations are to live in — when you take transportation costs into account:
Five Houston designers are gathering on the ground floor of Hometta, a new web-based business that aims to promote and sell plans for small Modern homes. Architect James Evans of Collaborative Design Works, Rice architecture professor Dawn Finley of Interloop Architecture, Brett Zamore of Brett Zamore Design, and Blair Satterfield of HouMinn Practice are scheming with architect Andrew McFarland to build up a company store of designs measuring less than 2,500 sq. ft. Hometta’s founder is developer Mark Johnson of Area 16 Homes.
The company plans to have designs from 25 different studios ready for the launch of its web catalog next month, available under a tiered subscription system. Access to design renderings will be available for a small fee; for a larger fee, customers will be allowed to look through plans on the site and give access to contractors for bidding.
Once the customer finds a builder and receives a bid they are happy with, they may then buy the plans, which range from $1195 for a studio-sized house to $3195 for a 3-bedroom. Our Builder Search feature will help match homebuyers with a qualified builder in their area.
After that, you’re on your own:
Okay, that guy with the lawnmower is just a little creepy, no?
Committed real-estate snoops, come out from behind your laptop screens. With Zillow’s new iPhone app, you can just pull out your device and lurk . . . in person! And . . . uh, it follows you!
Here’s a brand-new home-search tool that will likely change the way you hunt for residential properties in Houston. And you can find it on the website of . . . a real estate agent working out of this Pearland strip center??
Actually, the new search tool is just a branded implementation of Diverse Solutions’ dsSearchAgent, which has been around for a few years in other markets, and received a major makeover late last fall. The same system might be hiding on some other area broker’s website, but this is the first we’ve seen it working with Houston MLS data.
What’s so special about dsSearchAgent?
The Houston Chronicle’s annual neighborhood-sales-data extravaganza came out this weekend. Since it covers the 2008 calendar year, the survey is timed just right to document the continuing drop in sales and prices of far-flung lower-priced homes — but maybe a bit early to catch the extended Wile E. Coyote-style midair hang a fair number of closer-in half-a-million-plus homes on the market are currently experiencing.
A few highlights:
Sales activity dropped in all counties for non-foreclosure transactions. All counties showed a rise in sales of foreclosed homes.
And those foreclosures are also clearly missing the bullseye: In 2008 there were only 362 foreclosures inside the Loop and 2,556 between the Loop and Beltway 8 — but a whopping 9,342 outside the Beltway. In total, foreclosures were only up about 11 percent over the previous year. But the number of non-foreclosure sales dropped by almost 22 percent. So in 2008 foreclosures accounted for just under 22 percent of all sales.
Where did the prices fall last year?
It’s now a whole lot easier to figure out how to get around Houston using public transit: Metro routes have at last been embedded in Google Maps. Which means if you use Google to plan a local trip, figuring out how to get there by bus or rail is now as simple as choosing “By public transit” from a dropdown menu. Schedule info is right there too.
So far, the public transit option shows up whenever you use Google Maps to get directions in Houston — or you can start from a separate Google Transit gateway here. Not yet activated for Houston: Google’s Transit Layer, which in other cities lets you see all the routes at once.
Even more convenient: If you can get Google Maps on your mobile phone, you now have access to bus and train directions and schedules there too. Here’s a video demonstrating how that works:
From MarkWBennett (Mark W. Bennett): RT @StephStradley: #FF @houstonpress "Blog Stars" @kuff @lmayes @thebloggess @houstoncalling @swamplot @htownchowdown @bluejeangourmet & me
From steveneparker (Steve Parker): A good explanation of the the major light rail issues: RT @swamplot Where the New Light Rail Lines Are Stuck http://tinyurl.com/yj579v3
From texaswatchdog (texaswatchdog): Can anyone help rescue the ex-presidents buried in the mud in Pearland, TX?: http://twurl.nl/hmxdjj h/t @swamplot
From StephStradley (Stephanie Stradley): #FF @houstonpress "Blog Stars" @kuff @markwbennett @lmayes @thebloggess @houstoncalling @swamplot @htownchowdown @bluejeangourmet & me #nice
From icemanhorns84 (David Crowl): I would support this RT @swamplot Extending Metro’s Main St. Rail Line to Fort Bend County http://tinyurl.com/yzvfygp
From smurfing74 (Irfan S): I heard from someone in pearland that they decided to not put obama's bust their for fear of vandalism. So sad. @swamplot
From melindamerola (Melinda Merola): Did it. RT @swamplot Coming Soon to San Felipe: Winetopia http://tinyurl.com/yzd7jb6From melindamerola (Melinda Merola): Edit: I *love* Swamplot! RT @swamplot The Houston Press Sez Some Nice Things About Us http://tinyurl.com/yhjre5o
From FoodPrincess (Joanne Witt): +2 RT @she_eats: Congrats @HTownChowDown @BlueJeanGourmet @texanschick @swamplot @lmayes named Houston's best bloggers: http://is.gd/aM9GCFrom FoodPrincess (Joanne Witt): +2 RT @she_eats: Congrats @HTownChowDown @BlueJeanGourmet @texanschick @swamplot @lmayes named Houston's best bloggers: http://is.gd/aM9GC