- Class A Apartment Occupancy Rate Drops To 86% While Class B at Near-Record High of 96%, Finds CBRE [Realty News Report]
- Downtown’s First Church of Christ Scientist at 1720 Main Sold For Above $2.25M Asking Price [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- 2-Building Uptown Complex Park Towers in the Midst of Multimillion-Dollar Renovation [HBJ]
- Burlington Stores To Anchor Mixed-Use Project University Commons Opening Next Year in Sugar Land [HBJ]
- Members-Only CityCentre Club Marque Houston Has Closed [HBJ]
- Rice Village La Madeleine Hoping To Relocate to Rice Village As Shake Shack Takes Its Place Next Year [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Galveston County Chooses Law Firm To Navigate Use of Eminent Domain on Rollover Pass [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Open Houses Rarely Lead To a Higher Price or Quicker Sale in Houston, Finds Redfin Corp. [HBJ]
Photo: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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My experience from looking at houses in earnest from 2008 – 2013 is that open houses were usually properties that were “difficult” to sell for one reason or another.
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In my perusings of the weekend’s OH listings, I began to notice that the same townhouses appeared week after week. That was during one of the huge townhome building booms taking over Montrose and the western Third Ward, or perhaps as the boom was fading. Perhaps because there were so many nearly identical properties for buyers to choose from, the buyers could be choosy about location, so some of them were harder to sell than others.
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The OHs that I actually went to were for older homes (1910 – 1940 was the approximate range), and generally there was something just not quite right about them. Either the layout was awkward, or they had been badly remuddled, or in one case, there was a distinct earthy smell and the A/C had been set to about 60 to try to keep the potential buyers from noticing that the house had a serious moisture problem. That was also the house where a somewhat well-known businessman had been murdered at his front door, but we knew that going in and it wasn’t a problem for us like the horrible moisture/mold problem would have been.
I always thought that open houses were more of a way for realtors to meet potential clients than to actually sell a house. I found my realtor at an open house.
Also, open houses are a great way to snoop on your neighbors’ homes without having to deal with the boring small talk needed to get an invite to look inside. “So, you are in the upstream market, blah blah blah. What are the Republicans going to do with Trump, blah, blah.” With a realtor at an open house, you can just walk in the door and say “we live down the street and are just snooping” and you can have your run of the place.
@GoogleMaster which property was the “dead smell” at?
@Texmex01, it wasn’t a “dead smell”. It was a “this place has had standing water underneath it, and possibly in the walls, for months or years” smell. It’s not uncommon for pier and beam foundations to collect water, especially if there is higher-built newer construction nearby, but there are ways to remediate it. Mold in the walls is a different problem. The place just smelled very wet, more trouble than we wanted to get into.
@GoogleMaster, I hope that since your earnest looking dropped off in 2013, you found a place. If 2013 was the magical year in the search, you were at least able to buy as the prices were getting high.
Interesting re: class A having issues, and class B crushing it. My magic 8 ball was right.