Rosetta Resources Out Downtown; Taking Notice of the Mickey Leland Federal Building; A First Ward Microbrewery

Skywalk Moving on Corner of Woodway and South Post Oak Blvd., Galleria, Houston

Photo of skywalk traffic at the corner of Woodway and S. Post Oak: Swamplot inbox

Headlines

4 Comment

  • Was there ever an update to the estimated vs actual sales numbers from HAR? Aaron Layman compared monthly sales volumes from HAR press release to actuals and found HAR’s reported numbers were overestimated by more than 3%. The 3.8% year over year sales increase was actually only a .4% increase. I’m very interested in how April, May, and June compare.

  • where was that skywalk headed to?

  • springwoods village slideshow is great. you know there’s gotta be an algorithm that tells you the pricing of the homes based on how many trees were left standing while clear cutting the forest for development. enjoy the traffic folks.
    .
    and cmacd, i think sales numbers are pretty pointless anyways. the inventory numbers give a better picture of where the market is heading and we’re showing good progress in that regard. seems to be hovering at about 0.3%/month lately.

  • @ cmacd
    That’s a great question. I was wondering the same thing, so I decided to check the numbers for the first half of the year to see how things are shaking out. Single family sales per MLS are still year-over-year negative by about 500 sales (61,855 last year vs 61,366 this year. June was a solid month for sales considering the overhang of a soft oil sector and a slight bump in mortgage rates. I would point out that interest rates are still a bit lower than last year, so this is helping to provide a floor on prices…for now. The comps are going to get VERY challenging during the second half of the year, particularly if we continue to see more layoffs in the energy sector.

    The new home market is still showing a little softness, particularly in West Houston where soft energy market employment is starting to eat away at demand for expensive new homes. New construction sales for June were down about 16 percent from last year in the Katy area.

    Regarding the record month (or near record) for dollar volume, that theme was present in Cinco Ranch where a larger-than normal batch of closings for million dollar homes bumped prices higher. Outside of luxury home sales, there is still noticeable softness in the market. That doesn’t surprise me because it correlates very well with the disparities/softness we are seeing in the real economy.
    http://aaronlayman.com/2015/07/cinco-ranch-posts-record-high-prices-on-million-dollar-home-sales-but-overall-market-still-lukewarm/