COMMENT OF THE DAY: YOUR VERY OWN INNER LOOP TRAILER PARK, FOR FUN AND PROPERTY TAX CONTROL 
“Are there typically HOA restrictions against mobile homes inside the Loop? Like if someone’s sitting on a cleared-off lot and not wanting to build, could they just pull in 2 mobile homes and start renting out? Or would the neighborhood/city be pounding on the doors? Not sure such a thing is feasible with $400k lots, but if you had to demo a multifamily and still wanted to hold onto the property, sounds like [that] could potentially keep the tax value low while still bringing in rental income.” [joel, commenting on All That’s Left of the Heights Trailer Park Behind Eight Row Flint] Photo of cleared mobile home park on W. 11th St.: Swamplot inbox
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Tag: Rentals
This patchy map of the Houston region, from the national tool released last week by Airbnb, shades the area’s zip codes by what percentage of monthly rent could purportedly be covered by a single night of Airbnb rental. The map is the DIY-hotel company’s submission to this spring’s federal call for more public data tools related to housing and economics. And the rental rates used for the comparison come from the so-called small area fair market rates set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which this summer proposed breaking up the flat city-wide rates currently used for Section 8 housing voucher payouts into smaller pieces (with the intent that offering higher subsidy rates in higher income areas might reverse a trend of concentrating housing voucher recipients into already-high-poverty neighborhoods).
Topping the company’s list in Houston is 77018, the quasi-trapezoid covering much of the Garden Oaks and Oak Forest area; the tool says the federal market rental rate for the zone is $830 per month, but that earnings for renting out a private room in the area via Airbnb average around 22 percent of that amount, or $179 a night:
AirBnB R&D
The agent listing this 3-bedroom home on E. 24th St. tells Swamplot that it’s one of the first homes in Houston specifically designed for potential AirBNB rent-outs — the new construction includes private-ish quarters with separate kitchens and bathrooms above both the main ground floor suite and the carport out back (above). The 3,000-sq.-ft. plot of land beneath the home(s) appears to have been formerly occupied by a driveway and a 2-car garage associated with nextdoor 857 E. 24th (which, along with its companion guesthouse on the back of the block, has since been knocked down for a taller rebuild. The surrounding area (which lies between covert N. Main tiki bar Lei Low and rhyming blues joint Dan Electro’s Guitar Bar) is populated by a shifting balance of low-slung 1930s-and-40s bungalows and long-and-tall townhomes.
The 2-story space was designed by kinneymorrow (whose relocation and redesign of its own newly slotted office house got some AIA praise last year). Here’s what the place looks like from the front:
Trading Up
