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 GROWING SCALP The Center for Houston’s Future reports on the continuing disappearance of the region’s trees, mostly from sprawling new development: “The total loss of tree canopy in the greater Houston region between 1992 and 2005 is 680 square miles. This loss equates roughly to the physical size of the city of Houston, and since 2005, tree loss has continued. . . . No data exists as of December 2009 to inform the region how much tree cover we lost between 2005 and 2008. . . . Since 2005 the region experienced Hurricane Ike which literally decimated the tree population on Galveston Island. The island lost many of its 100 year old live oaks, most of which were planted after the Great Storm of 1900. Meanwhile, since 2000 the trend has been a steady increase in the number of trees planted by government agencies, volunteer organizations, and individual citizens. . . . From 2000-2008, almost one million trees were planted by public and private efforts, according to organizations that reported as part of this study.” [Center for Houston’s Future; full report (PDF)]
Swamplot’s chart-wielding analyst is back with a few comments on the Houston Association of Realtors’ latest report and media push:
Median and average home sales prices fell $7,200 from the prior month. This was including increased activity to get the $8,000 home buyer tax credit in under the wire! Now it is not fair to compare month to month numbers as seasonal factors are working against the housing market this month.
So we get some good spin from the realtors: “Home prices up 5%†“Sales up 13.8%†…this maps directly over to the mainstream press with no research: “Home sales rise for second month,†“Home prices up 5%,†“Sales up 13.8%†Homeowners in this town should be proud that such a hardworking PR machine still gins out great product!
Why would you call those year-over-year increases spin?
The realtors get to make a press release every month and every month something is a “record†and the press is under deadlines and it gets copied in verbatim. This is home prices up 5% and sales up 13.8% from HURRICANE IKE with no caveat in the headline going out to 200,000 print readers and as many web readers! Not bad for a days work.
Oh, yeah. Forgot about that whole Ike thing. So what’s the market looking like really?
HAR is out with its September home-sales figures, giving Swamplot’s spreadsheet-side correspondent a chance to eulogize the spring-summer selling season:
Home prices and volumes are flying south for the winter. With this volume downturn for the year, we have most likely seen the highs and sales volumes will now complete their third year of contraction. Prices were down 2-3% in the month, depending on whether you follow the median price or the average price. Pending sales are well below sales for the month, suggesting a further seasonal contraction in October.
This month featured an upturn in foreclosure sales as a percentage of the total. Foreclosure sales were 18.6% up from 16.7% the prior month. Luckily, foreclosure sales are still way down from the 32% peak in January.
But aren’t all those foreclosures going away soon?
Just in from real-estate data firm First American CoreLogic: This handy map of the greater Houston area, showing foreclosure rates by Zip Code. And yes, compared to this time last year, the numbers are still up:
. . . the rate of foreclosures among outstanding mortgage loans is 1.20 percent for the month of July, an increase of 0.30 percentage points compared to July of 2008 when the rate was 0.80 percent. . . . Foreclosure activity in Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown is lower than the national foreclosure rate which was 2.80 for July 2009, representing a 1.60 percentage point difference.
Also in Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, the mortgage delinquency rate has increased. According to First American CoreLogic preview data for July 2009, 4.80 percent of mortgage loans were 90 days or more delinquent compared to 3.30 percent for the same period last year, representing an increase of 1.60 percentage points.
HAR’s real estate sales report for July is out! And Swamplot’s housing-market reader-analyst uses the data to piece together a better picture of Houston’s still-somewhat-mysterious foreclosure scene:
The press releases in 2009 have included a running commentary on the % of foreclosure sales in the month. This month’s release featured an interesting nugget — foreclosure sales from the prior year’s month! It is new information, and a few future monthly releases of it will allow us to fill in the data gap in the graph [above].
The foreclosure graph can be looked at in two ways. The glass half full crowd can cite the fact that a wave of foreclosures has been passed through the system — like a painful kidney stone — and it hasn’t led to piles and piles of unsold homes on top of each other in a negative feedback loop. Inventory is down to 6.5 months, backing this view.
And what if you aren’t sure there’s enough water in that glass to, uh . . . pass those stones?
HOUSTON-AREA MORTGAGE STORM SURGE: NOW A QUARTER UNDER WATER Another few months, another one of those studies from research firm First American CoreLogic — this one using data from the end of June. By that date, the firm says, 26.15 percent of all Houston-Sugar Land- Baytown-area mortgages were in a “negative equity” position. Add in the “up to their eyeballs” crowd of mortgage-holders who are within 5 percentage points of owing more than their homes are worth, and the figure rises to 33.86 percent. That’s a marked increase from the figures in the firm’s March study, which used data from September 2008. [First American CoreLogic; previously on Swamplot]
HOUSTON’S COMMERCIAL FORECLOSURE BOOM The far greater numbers of residential foreclosures — currently spiking now that moratoriums have been lifted — may be sucking up the attention. But there’s plenty of excitement in Houston commercial foreclosures too, the Foreclosure Information & Listing Service reports: “The number of commercial properties posted for foreclosure in Harris County in the past three months is up 84 percent over the same time last year. Records show 335 commercial properties were posted for foreclosure in Harris County in May, June and July compared to 182 during the same months in 2008. Just over 20 percent of the commercial properties posted for foreclosure from May through July 2009 actually passed through the foreclosure process by going back to the lender or getting purchased at public foreclosure auction by a third-party buyer. During the same time period last year, only 15 percent of the properties were foreclosed. Ralph Murdock, president of Foreclosure Information, says most postings don’t result in foreclosures, but a significant increase in the number of postings shows that more property owners are having problems.” [Houston Business Journal]
“The increase in local unemployment reported this week is sickening,” reports Swamplot’s local financial correspondent. But don’t the latest HAR numbers show Houston home prices at some sort of record high?
Historically, the peak for home prices comes in July or August every year. The increase in the median and average over the past several months has been due to two factors. First, seasonality –summer prices are always the highest. Second, a change in the “product mix†of Houston homes –the % of foreclosed homes has fallen every month for several months straight . . . So the change in the product mix means that the value of any given house probably has not risen, only a change in the product moving through the system is reflected in the numbers.
Is it okay to get excited about the foreclosures, then?
MLS IN HOUSTON: MANDATORY SECRET SALES PRICE DISCLOSURE 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:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE LOW PRICE OF HIGH PROPERTY TAXES “Houston is pretty affordable overall. However, people like to make statements about how affordable the city is and say ‘Prices are low because of __________.’ My point is, property prices are low for a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is that property taxes are high.” [Andrew Burleson, commenting on Houston Home Values: The Property Tax Effect]
THE SECRET SALES PRICE SECRET Over the past 2 years, the practice of omitting sales price information from Multiple Listing Service sales forms has increased, possibly skewing reported median home price data, reports Steve Brown in the Dallas Morning News. In several high-end Dallas neighborhoods, transactions with a “Z” in the price column now account for the majority of sales: “Because of the way the MLS database is structured, it’s hard to find out how prevalent the practice is. . . . Jim Gaines, an economist with Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center, wonders how withheld prices affect the data his center releases to the public each month. ‘Of course, if these are systematically at lower prices, then our averages and medians are overstated to the extent they are not showing lower-priced property sales,’ Gaines said.” Texas is one of only 5 states that doesn’t require public disclosure of home sales prices. [Dallas Morning News]
The May home numbers are in and they’re . . . not so bad, says Swamplot’s chart-wielding commentator:
The “spring selling season†is going well as average home prices are up 21.6% since the beginning of the year. Errrr…ummm….that is a big move and it underscores that there is a strong seasonal trend at work. The big bounce brought us up to slightly above May of last year on a median basis. Positives included record low interest rates and foreclosures were “only†20% of the total.
Fewer foreclosures is better, right?
A reduction in foreclosure sales is a change in “product mix†and doesn’t reflect on the price of a given home. In prior reports we were encouraged to ignore them, now the lower # of foreclosures is embraced and is cited as “price gains.†The strong seasonal trend is powerful enough to keep the housing “bears†like me silent for a few months. May also featured some of the lowest interest rates in a long time, so buyers were poised to move and lock in lower rates.
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:
