- Grey House, the Apartment Complex with Direct Views of the River Oaks District, Now Open for Leasing [Houston Chronicle]
- Apartment, Townhome Complex Going Up Near Main Entrance to UH Will Naturally Be Geared Toward Students [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston Multifamily Destined for Negative Absorption in 2016, Predicts Colliers [Realty News Report]
- Equus Capital Partners Adds 2 Buildings at 5300 Memorial and 10497 Town & Country Way to Its Houston Office Portfolio [Houston Chronicle]
- What KPRC’s New Building Under Construction 15 Feet from Its Existing One Will Look Like [Houston Chronicle]
- Hillary Clinton Campaign Sets Up Shop in Former Labor Union Hall in South Houston [Houston Chronicle]
- Underground Food Hall Conservatory Debuting March 1 Downtown [Houston Chronicle]
- First Houston Cabela’s Opening March 17 at 2421 S. Gulf Freeway [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- Cataloguing the Empty Lots of Lower Westheimer [Houston Streetwise]
Photo of the Southwest Freeway: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
I give the “underground food hall” 12 months to live. The word “concept” was used 5 times in the article. Here’s a concept: if you want your downtown restaurant to survive, offer affordable, good food. That’s how Wimpy’s, Treebeard’s and Pappa’s BBQ have lasted so long as lunch spots. As for the night crowd, I highly doubt that drunk dude-bros wobbling in from nearby bars will spend enough at 2 am to keep it profitable at night…but who knows…weird things have been happening in Houston lately.
A feeder road apartment complex. Which student wouldn’t want to live there?
Re: Houston Multifamily Destined for Negative Absorption in 2016
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Pretty amazed at the specificity of this quote from the Colliers group: “Consider: only 125 apartment units were absorbed in the fourth quarter of 2015, while some 29,000 units are under construction.”
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Dang. If only economists could be this precise in their economic forecasts, then we’d only need one economist. Ha ha! But, with 29,000 units coming on line soon, it will be a renter’s market soon.
Great to see Westheimer getting cleaned up/updated! This could be such a cool area of town if the progression continues. I’m all for this part of the street being the mecca for local-based, small boutiques and restaurants…similar to Abbott Kinney Blvd of LA. And hopefully it becomes pedestrian friendly as well.
Yup. I saw another apartment crisis coming in Houston, and true to form, it’s here. Multi family Developers are very boomy-busty in Houston. During the boom years they get rich throwing up way too many units, which they sell to investors before anything bad can happen. If they times it right, they bank their profits and sit tight in the bust years, and do it all over again in the next boom.
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This should be a plus to middle and upper middle class renters. If you managed to keep your job, you’ll find that you can now afford a better apartment for the same rent due to concessions. But it could be a terrible, awful thing for older class D apartments and the neighborhoods around them. Tenants in Class B apartments will find that they can now afford a Class A apartment, and so on down the line. The class D apartments that lost their good tenants to class C apartments will have nowhere to turn. Crime on the property will skyrocket as they give up on what little tenant screening they had. Maintenance will be deferred even more as they try to control the financial bleeding. Worst case scenario, the two problems will feed each other until the complexes are totally derelict and need to be condemned.
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Granted this is just a worst case scenario. The damage could be limited to only a handful of complexes. Fingers are crossed.
They’re destroying Westheimer. This used to be a cool area of town, a real mecca for local-based runaways, hustlers, junkies and freaks. Now it’s just another Abbott Kinney Blvd wannabee.
@strollerpusher – It was a cool part of town and it got bulldozed. There used to be thousands of people on lower westheimer at night. Never again.
@Superdave: Samurai Noodle could support the food hall. The Durham location is usually packed.
I am very suspicious about the absorption stats that get published as apartment market data. There is no such thing as a 100% sample on either a monthly or quarterly basis and there is no extrapolation of the survey sample to other properties. I believe that most of these stats are understating volatility in both directions and also that indicators are lagging the market.
What Grey House post not in reference to Grey House from Fifty Shades of Grey?! Couldn’t resist!! ;-)
Just a little reminder of the 80’s bust. Ronald Reagan was president, Interest rates on mortgages were 17%, Certificate of Deposits paid 14%.
In addition to the apartment/townhome complex, there is a separate project to build a retail center where the warehouse for Finger Furniture Center used to be located, across from the complex, also near the entrance to UH’s main campus.
fyi, retail center = Walmart with pad sites (banks, etc, i guess?)