It “only” took 987 days to sell her Pearland home, Jenny Lawson announces. But did the Bloggess — and now bestselling author — shirk on that “No Zombies — sort of” guarantee she had offered on her single-story David Weekly model in Southern Trails back in 2010 when she first put it on the market? “In the middle of signing all of the paperwork,” she writes, “I mentioned to Victor that we should probably disclose that we buried that-guy-I-couldn’t-remember-the-name-of in our yard years ago and Victor looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Probably because you’re not supposed to say that in front of realtors. Then Victor told me to be quiet, but I mentioned that we’d probably go to hell for not digging the guy back up. Then Victor explained that I was talking about a saint I’d buried upside down in our front lawn to help sell the house and the realtor looked at us like we were insane because apparently she’s not Catholic. And technically neither are we, but at the time we were pretty desperate to sell the house and I was willing to bury just about anyone in the yard to stop having to pay two mortgages.”
“I need help,” writes the would-be seller of 
The health club up there on the 8th floor of the Travis Place Parking Garage (see it? you gotta squint) at the corner of Travis and McKinney streets downtown is no longer a dedicated workout space for Kinder Morgan employees. The pipeline and terminal company has sold the 25,000-sq.-ft. facility at 1010 Travis St. to Redstone Companies Hospitality, operators of the Houstonian Club at the Houstonian and a couple of other downtown clubs. It’s now called the 
“Update on this corner: 
HAR’s pioneering ratings program for real-estate agents gets a bit of scrutiny from the Wall Street Journal’s Smart Money magazine. Among the amazing stats: A mere 1.4 percent of all ratings on HAR come in at less than 4 stars; meanwhile, on Angie’s List 5.9 percent of real-estate-agent reviews have equivalent “mediocre to poor” scores, and on Yelp the number is 18.5 percent. Agents participating in the Houston Association of Realtors program earn an average rating of 4.94 out of 5. How do they chalk up such glowing reviews? “In reality, that 4.94 represents the average score of just 12 percent of the association’s agents. Another 7 percent participate in the rating program but don’t make their results public. The rest — some 17,000 real estate pros — don’t get rated at all, either by choice or because they haven’t completed enough transactions. The group surveys only customers who have closed deals, leaving out everyone who, satisfied or not, walked away. Those qualifications help explain why 
Comment of the Day: The Same Boat
“. . . When talking to people looking for stuff in Montrose, this is what I hear:
1) Nothing available
2) Over priced for what you get
3) By the time you try to take it, someone else already has
4) What you do get will have bad electric, bad roof, bad pipes, sketchy tenants, etc.
5) Was built in the 60′s most likely. Doesn’t have it’s cert of occupancy, no water pressure, low insulation, old windows, etc.
Then I like to joke that this is what I hear from people trying to BUY apartments in Montrose.
Point being, the challenges you face as a renter are the challenges you face as an investor. And the solutions are often the same: Network with owners, jump on something good if you see it, communicate with the property manager showing if you don’t like the place (this is big), look every day. . . .” [Cody, commenting on Comment of the Day: What’s the Thought Process?]