- Houston Home Sales Up 35%, Prices Up More Than 8% Over Last Year; Inventory at Lowest Level in More Than a Decade, Says HAR Report [Houston Business Journal]
- Park Board Hoping To Increase Tourism to Galveston’s Far East End By Leasing Tracts to Viable Business Interests [Galveston County Daily News]
- Woodlands Township Supports $2.49M Extension of Pathways Around Waterway [Woodlands Villager]
- Westwick Residents Complain About ‘Crazy’ Traffic as Commuters Avoid I-10 Slowdowns [abc13]
- Galveston Asking Residents To Conserve Water; Rainfall Down in Brazos River Watershed [Houston Chronicle]
- Thanksgiving Tradition: Family Camping Since Tuesday Outside Best Buy Store in Meyerland for Black Friday Deals [KHOU]
- Why Doesn’t Reliant Stadium Open Its Retractable Roof on Nice Days? [Hair Balls]
Photo of the Huntingdon: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
I also was wondering why the roof was closed for the Texans game, since the weather was absolutely stunning outside! I just don’t get why taxpayers paid for both Reliant and Minute Maid Park retractable roof’s, just to have them closed most of the time…
A retractable roof is quite the engineering feat, but I imagine it’s an upkeep nightmare, being a highly customized one-off design. The older they get, the more likely it is they’ll get stuck open or break down while transitioning.
What the Texans should do is just declare that the new rule is that roof opens when: 1. they are 100% confident that the outdoor temperature will not go below 72 and above 74 during the course of the game, 2. that the average wind speed never be above 0, 3. humidity is less than 2%.
That will allow the “air-conditioned” obsessed corporate season ticket holders to feel safe that their weekend won’t ever have to involve breaking a sweat. They hate that.
I don’t buy anymore anything HAR says regarding sales of homes, they always manipulate statistics and put a spin on everything to make it seem home sales and prices keep going up and up and up. After all, their job depends on how people perceive the market. In my personal observation, the market is certainly better than most of the country but is still 1/10th of what it was in 2007 and just bouncing around the bottom, still in a holding pattern.
I was at the Pittsburgh game a several years ago when roof was open, it was around 105 degrees in the sunny parts of the stadium, and of course they sold out of $8 bottles of water. It was a BIG mess.
you’d think if they know they are going to sell a lot of water, they’d get more water and open the roof, then charge more for water. they could make a mint off of water alone!
btw, $8 for a bottle of water? that’s so ludicrous it’s plaid.
A major purpose of a retractable roof is to enable the use of real grass turf. I drive by Reliant every day, and the roof is often open on non-game days, presumably for the sake of photosynthesis.
commonnsense: I agree, except I don’t think the numbers are being ‘spun’ with any misplaced intentions.
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The big hold-back is still financing. If I put a SFH up that mentions seller financing, I’ll get 10x the replies. People with good income, good down payments, etc. are still having a hard time getting loans due to how the government is forcing banks to underwrite.
@ Cody and @ Commonsense. I think I read where FHA is about to explode from making subprime loans after the 2008 Freddie and Fannie blowups. My question is, how much does a person have to put down on say a $400k house? and do they still have the 401C charities to gift the downpayment so it is 0 down net to the borrower? Im not in real estate but i agree with Commonsense, i think the numbers are manipulated by HAR