COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE CASE FOR TAKING DOWN TIMBERGROVE “. . . The Timbergrove houses East of TC Jester are not particularly well built, and they don’t really lend themselves to expansion. The slabs are undersized as well, so building up is very difficult. I would love to update and add to our house, but by the time everything is done, we could almost build a modern house with more room, better infrastructure, and lower operating costs. And that’s after adding something that will really be just a tacked on space that’s not well integrated. Tear downs make a lot of sense under those conditions.” [Ross, commenting on New Timbergrove Manor Cottage Puts Some Skin in the Real Estate Game]
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE APARTMENT PAMPHLETEER “Everyone who is a renter or is a landlord should know and read this.” (PDF) [denise, commenting on How Quick To Kick ’Em Out and Tear It Down?]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT IT TAKES TO BUILD AT THE UPPER END “You are right that you can build a very nice house for $150/sq. ft., but when you are in this stratospheric range, $150 is your starting point and you jump off from there. . . . Your roof will be slate and not composition. Goodness knows how much that costs, and how it impacts your structural engineering. Your floors will be stone and/or wide plank salvaged wood and not 2 1/2″ plain sawn oak. Your facade will be brick, not hardi plank, and bricks will cost $2-$3 each and not 50 cents. And on an 8,000 sq. ft. structure you may get 50,000, 100,000 bricks. Then you pay the mason. Your trim and doors will be custom manufactured and not stock. Your window package will be custom manufactured and not stock. Saw one house where custom fabricated metal windows cost $250,000. For the windows. Your light cans will cost 10x the cost of the cans you get in a builder spec house. You will have paid a lighting designer a fortune to tell you how to position those lights. Your HVAC, security, A/V systems will be state of the art, each of which will run tens and tens of thousands, if not more. You will insulate your house to an extreme level. And so on and so on. It all adds up . . . But yes, you can build a nice house for $150/sq. ft., but if you are building on a 50,000 sq. ft. lot on the corner of Kirby and Inwood, you just won’t.” [KG, commenting on Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: Out of the Closet]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BUMPER CROP “I wish acorns could be sold. I would be a filthy rich millionaire. Unbelievable how many my 2 oak trees produced and they keep falling. this past weekend, I filled my black trash can 4x to dump in the back. There are still a lot more.” [robin varner, commenting on Headlines: Mall of the Mainland Discount; Houston Raining Acorns]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE NORTH SHEPHERD EXPRESS “RE: DOT I-45 IMPROVEMENTS: I wonder why North Shepherd isn’t included as a ‘parallel route’ for development ‘to add capacity & alleviate congestion.’ It’s already a wide, straight corridor with a direct N-S orientation but (currently) too slow to be a viable alternative to I-45 (except under extreme crash/flooding conditions.) Many I-45 North drivers are headed to areas in The Heights, Galleria and points in-between, and, neither the Sam Houston/Beltway 8 Loop nor the Hardy Tollway are their paths of choice. Center lanes of Shepherd could be elevated as an express route. Below it, neighborhood traffic would be unaffected and the area could rejuvenate (or whatever developers call it these days) to a residential/light commercial area. There is currently a multi-unit project planned for the area, on Rittenhouse . . .” [movocelot, commenting on Headlines: The Push for Waterfront Homes; Unintended Light Show at the Rice Skyspace]
VERSES OF THE DAY: ABANDONED, ROTTING, RENEWED “Bereft of care and dignity in their old age, they take up too much space/land, they shelter vermin/cancer, and their bones have weakened. Rest in pieces, nothing reclaimed, forgotten.” [Darby Mom], “A pathetic sight that’s not so rare Heaps of garbage everywhere Lead, asbestos, junk hardware Neighbors are a true nightmare” [commonsense], and “It seems a silliness to mourn The past’s detritus, junk like this — To think of years a house has seen, Compared to what its present is. – Yet somehow I long to restore The leaning pillars, rotting wood, To shore beneath a sagging floor, To think that all that can be, could. – It’s not to be, this will be razed, Built up again in fashion new, O Soul, someday your turn will come, To be rebuilt — plumb, level, true.” [Practically_Yours, all commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Tulane Highway]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW THE OTHER HALF WILL EARN A LIVING “I really don’t care for any of the businesses coming in or their business models, but I’m really happy about the hundreds of jobs that will be created once they’re here. If these are the only companies with the capital to expand these days, well, that’s unfortunate, but at least someone‘s growing. That’s where most of the people—the ones that can’t afford the Rice Military townhouses, anyway—on this side of I-10—you know, the non-Heights side—work to feed their families and pay bills, etc., or where all the kids being raised over here will get their first job. Not everyone can work at Wabash or the comic book store.” [Jason C., commenting on Where the Walmart Golden Arches Will Rise]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: EXPENSIVE TASTE “This may be a dumb question, but why is it that the higher priced the house, the worse the interior design? I mean it sincerely. Some of the absolutely, positively, worst interior looks seem to congregate in high priced homes. Is someone trying prove the adage about lots of money, zero taste? Or is it that the interior designers are just so marvelous at sales pitches that their clients will think, what the hell? We are paying them enough, they must know what they are doing! . . .” [Hanabi-chan, commenting on Exploring the Indoor Wildlife in a Pasadena Dead Animal House]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BUFFALO BAYOU WILDLIFE “Years ago I saw someone pull a snapping turtle out of that bayou, near the Shepherd bridge. Vicious-looking brute; the snapper was mean, too.” [Brian, commenting on Headlines: Americana Remodeling Plans; a Place for the Houston Blues Museum]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW THEY DID IT BEFORE AIR CONDITIONING “At the risk of stating the obvious, the reason for the interior corridor windows and clerestory, as well as the central corridor slot with metal grid, is for chimney effect for ventilation in the pre-AC days. Apartments of this vintage often had to resort to innovative ways to get ventilation, like the angled window bays of Wilshire Village. The grid looks like it’s part of the floor of the second floor corridor, which would be perfectly reasonable if you’re trying to create a walkable but air-permeable floor.” [marmer, commenting on Taking on a Rough Midtown Trio]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: OBSTACLE COURSE SIDEWALKS WERE PART OF THE EAST END PLAN “. . . The City government had the power, through its consent agreement, to require wider sidewalks. Put another foot or two on a sidewalk and suddenly an intrusive fixture, like a power pole, become less of an obstacle. However, elected officials at that time were freaked out about right-of-way takes. Also, the mayoral administration at that time decided that the City should not burden METRO with more costs, a position with which of course METRO heartily agreed. There was no other funding mechanism (like the recently created East End TIRZ) to fill the cost gap. There were those of us who tried very hard to express our concern, but it was decided otherwise. So when you are dismayed at the photos above, rest assured that when the City officials made their choice, they knew full well that we would end up with those results.” [Local Planner, commenting on Power to the Pedestrians: Sidewalk Utility Poles of the East End Line]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE RING ROAD NAME INFLATION CHALLENGE “Only problem is that with a huge name like Grand Parkway, what will we call the next, even bigger loop?” [Frank, commenting on Three More Links in the Grand Parkway Are Now Ready To Roll]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: COOL DEVELOPMENTS NEED WACKY BUCKS “There’s plenty of eccentric millionaire money around. I guess they are just more private that they used to be? (My husband’s boss keeps bars of silver in his basement, for example.) Or, they prefer to spend their money on credit default swaps than cooky real estate schemes. C’mon rich people! Do something interesting.” [anon, commenting on Comment of the Day: A Different Kind of Money]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A DIFFERENT KIND OF MONEY “Could the banality and sameness of what developers in Houston are constructing be in part to changed lending standards by the banks? Back in the 1970′s Gerald Hines developed very innovative office buildings for the day, employing famous architects for the design. Pennzoil Place is no cookie cutter “international style†box, that’s for sure. But back then, we didn’t have interstate banking either. For those of you born post 1985, that means ALL of our banks were headquartered in Texas. I’d assume Hines went to see Ben Love at Texas Commerce Bank, or the guys at Allied Bank, and they worked out the loans. Today, those loan officers are in New York or Charlotte, and don’t want to risk their bank’s money on something avant garde. Also, developers today rarely keep their portfolios together more than a few years. They ‘flip’ their completed properties to REITs so that they have the capital to build something else. When you need to turn your property over quickly, it’s best to have something the buyers understand, and that didn’t cost so much per square foot that you can’t make a profit selling it in 18 months. A REIT just wants to purchase something with what they feel will be a certain stream of income over a 10 year time horizon. They are oblivious to the fact that it’s not a thrilling design.” [ShadyHeightster, commenting on The Muse Moving in Next to the Post Office in Castle Court]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: I’M SMELLING THAT LISTING ALREADY “I love this house . . . and I know exactly how it must smell: a homey mix of old furniture, mothballs, and mildew with a touch of Pine-Sol. I would buy it as is, furnished and everything.” [Miz Brooke Smith, commenting on A Lindale Park Cottage, Much as It Was]