- Montrose, Medical Center Lead Houston Neighborhoods with Most Apartment Construction in Second Quarter [HBJ]
- Average Occupancy Rate for Class C Apartment Market at 93.5% in Second Quarter, Finds Transwestern [Realty News Report]
- Bar Louie To Add 5 Locations Somewhere in the Houston Area [HBJ]
- Main Event Opening Entertainment Center in Humble [Community Impact Newspaper]
- Harborside Mercantile in Galveston Closing To Become Another Hubcap Grill [Houston Press; previously on Swamplot]
- Steinhoff International Holdings To Acquire Debt-Laden Mattress Firm for About $2.4B [Houston Chronicle]
- Why Houston Renters Aren’t Giving Their City High Marks [The Urban Edge]
- Zillow: Nearly 40% of Galveston Homes At Risk of Being Underwater by 2100 [HBJ]
Photo: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
The Urban Edge article has a graphic of apartment prices that labels Sharpstown as “Greater Greenspoint”.
I’m ashamed that my alma mater produced, or at least published, a map that puts “Greater Greenspoint” in the void between Gulfton and Alief.
Another day, another flawed city ranking list produced by intelligent people at some dot com. These rankings are almost always skewed because of the inconsistency in defining geography. Let’s not even mention only members of ApartmentList.com were sent surveys–that’s sampling bias. I’ve never even heard of that website, and I rented here for years. Moving on from that, why do Dallas and New York City have three geographies represented each? For NYC, there’s New York, Brooklyn, and Bronx. That’s confusing–last time I checked Brooklyn and Bronx were a part of New York. Sugar Land, The Woodlands, and Cinco Ranch weren’t isolated here–likely they weren’t even surveyed. Our political geography in Houston is unlike most other metro areas. We have so many apartments in unincorporated areas. If you are ranking based on city limit or census place boundary, we will always be at a disadvantage since many of our bedroom communities are small and millions do not actually live within a city boundary. It’s comical that we were given a D overall score when we received 2 As, 2 Bs, and 3 Cs for the individual categories. What a load of horse$hit.
With respect to the Transwestern article, it implies that there are a lot of class C apartments being built. I didn’t realize that you could even build those, I thought part of the definition of a class C apartment was that it was fairly “out of date”. Could someone help clarify this for me?
Speaking of apartments, does anyone know where Cody is? Maybe he has decided to post incognito under a new name?
@skooljunkie: ” Supposedly” intelligent people @ some dotcom.. Working @ a dot.com doesn’t guarantee well researched /referenced articles /publications / releases. Obviously these nimrods DON’T know what the hell they’re talking about and probably are NOT even in Texas !!! Their IGNORANCE is showing. And NO, you can’t build Class C structures. That is a classification that is assigned by HCAD many years after a property has declined per usefulness, value and maintenance metrics. That’w why most people use their CRITICAL thinking skills and the brains/minds we are endowed with and form INDEPENDENT thoughts/opinions/ideas. And we use many sources of info. Just saying..
Dear swamplot folk: Please know that there has been a trend lately where companies hire “data scientists” to gin up stories related to their business. This makes them seem knowledgeable about their industry (attracting acquisitions/exits) and generates click traffic to their main websites. If you really want reliable analysis, you need to look to peer-reviewed research and non-partisan non-profits that use rigorous research methods.
@ MrEction: I’m not under the impression that Transwestern implied that any of that construction was of Class C apartment properties, only that they lead the market in terms of occupancy.
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@ Real Estate Junkie: Asset classifications are not just something that HCAD does. The idea of Class A, B, C & D apartments is used quite often throughout the commercial real estate industry. The confusing things that HCAD does is 1) it uses proprietary definitions and yet doesn’t apply them to buildings with very good internal consistency, and 2) it assigns “Class E” to properties which are appraised on the cost approach to market value; and that is just a placeholder that has absolutely nothing to do with their quality.
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@TMYK: The problem with academic research is that it may be reliable in terms of answering the question that it itself is posing, but the question itself may or may not be especially valid insofar as you attempt to apply it to your own subject of interest. This is especially problematic when you want the research to be timely. If you want good, valid, useful research — pay for it.
Shaking my head at the flooding fearmongering wannabe soothsayers. I guess they really think there is a sucker born every minute.