- Average Price of New Houston Home Dropped 1.2% from Last Quarter of 2015 to First Quarter of 2016, First Such Drop Since 2009 [Houston Chronicle]
- Miami-Based Investor One Real Estate Investment Unloads 4 Houston Apartment Complexes for Nearly $50M [Houston Chronicle]
- Citigroup Inks Lease for Nearly 50K SF in Galleria Tower I at 2700 Post Oak [HBJ]
- Sneak Peek at 4 University of Houston-Designed Tiny Houses Planned for Fifth Ward [Offcite Blog]
- Fresh Market To Close All Texas Stores, Including 4 in Houston Area [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Construction Underway at Steel City Pops’ First Houston Location at 420 E. 20th Street [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot]
- Now You Can Take a Virtual Tour of Houston’s Parks and Trails with Google Street View [The Urban Edge]
- Galveston County Looking To Expand Beach Reconstruction Program to State Highway 87 on Bolivar Peninsula [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
Photo of the West Loop: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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@UH 5th Ward Homes – These are nice concepts and with land as cheap as it is in 5th ward, they can still build these on properties and still give families a yard to grow up in. Unfortunately, these will probably be sandwiched wall to wall with each other in an attempt to maximize land value and sell for $120-150k each.
This is still better than the Hurricane Ike effort to rebuild homes @ $225k per house when the original home value was closer to ~$35-50k.
I really can’t think of a worse place for those tiny houses than the 5th ward. The advantage of something like these houses is getting more value for your land. Land isn’t the problem in the 5th ward. The problem is the massive amount of unused land and vacants in the 5th ward. A strategy that optimizes limited land use is incredibly counter-productive there.
Fresh was just part of the name. The cook in our family often commented how the produce and fruit at Fresh Market was not as advertised. Many times when I went in the Memorial store I felt inferior. I shop at Randalls right down the street and never feel that way.
@ MrEction: I would argue that the problem about development in the 5th Ward (except south of I-10) is that there’s no price point on new construction that is low enough to entice people to buy it and move there and also cover the developer’s profit. If UH can economize on both land and living area then maybe you can hit a low-enough price point that there will be a broader market. Probably not.
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I hate to be cynical, but UH’s architecture program follows an art school model. There isn’t very much thought given over to the business reality of satiating the needs or desires of ordinary people, assessing market dynamics, or sometimes even engineering constraints. They know this, they’ve tried to provide coursework that exposes students to these concepts, but the culture overwhelms that as an institutional objective. I happen to think that projects like these are sponsored by UH because they’re relatively inexpensive and generate publicity for the program. Any innovation that is stumbled into would be a welcome accident, not much more.
Trader Joe’s should strongly consider moving into the Lantern lane Shopping Center space on Memorial Drive, that is about to be vacated by Fresh Market. I believe Trader Joe’s could do very well in this location.