Tag: Houston Data

Financing
03/05/09 1:32pm

Those Wet and Wild Houston Mortgages: 18 Percent Now Underwater, 7 Percent More Still Paddling for Air

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Houston Data, Price Trends
24 Comments

Sure is nice for us Houston didn’t get caught up in that big price run-up housing markets in the rest of the country fell for! That’s why in Houston real estate is in much better shape than it is everywhere else, right?

Not according to a study released yesterday by First American CoreLogic. The research firm estimates that 18.3 percent of all mortgaged properties in the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown region are in a “negative equity position,” and another 6.7 percent are within just 5 percentage points of being there. “Negative equity,” AKA “I’ve fallen down and I can’t get up,” means a mortgage holder owes more than the underlying property is worth.

In other words, 1 in every 4 Houston-area mortgages is already in deep doo-doo.

But hey, all it’ll take to recover is for prices to rise a little! And the rest of the country is doing much worse, right?

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Buying and Selling
02/25/09 9:52am

Houston Real Estate Sales Volume: Off the Charts!

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Forecasts, Price Trends, Real Estate Marketing
7 Comments

A reader writes in to poke fun at a few “awfully massaged” charts included in last week’s monthly MLS report from the Houston Association of Realtors, calling them “the unintended consequences of crazy average-it-all-together-to-create-a-veneer-of-stability reporting”:

….the latest monthly sales numbers for single family and condo/townhomes are ACTUALLY OFF THE BOTTOM OF THE CHARTS!!

HAR’s sales-volume charts show 12-month moving averages, but even that isn’t enough to keep the latest numbers from dropping through the floor:

The unintentional comedy arises from the fact that the latest values very prominently highlighted in the boxes (2,827 & 203) are well below the scale on either of these sales volume graphs. . . .

It also reveals WAAY TO MUCH data smoothing on their part which calls into question their credibility. Their charts convey almost no information -on purpose.

Okay, but if you’ve got any actual information to share, break it to us gently, please:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Houston Data
02/23/09 3:01pm

Katy and Those New Home Growths

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Katy, New Construction: Residential, Quicklink
5 Comments

KATY AND THOSE NEW HOME GROWTHS “Houston is the largest home-building market in the nation, according to the Greater Houston Partnership and Builder and Hanley Wood Market Intelligence, with 42,697 building permits. Population trends, job growth, home prices and the rate of building permits all factored in to rank the top 75 markets in 2008. Assisting the numbers, no doubt, was Katy. Business Week magazine ranked Katy as the second-fastest residential community in the U.S. in a study published this month titled ‘America’s Biggest Boomtowns.’ The study was based on new home growth from 2000 to 2008.” And what will next year’s numbers say? [Houston Business Journal]

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Forecasts
12/01/08 2:45pm

Las Vegas to Houston: What Are the Odds?

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Homebuying, Houston Data, Price Trends, Quicklink
6 Comments

LAS VEGAS TO HOUSTON: WHAT ARE THE ODDS? A Swamplot reader requests a long hard look at the Houston housing market crystal ball: “Do any ‘experts’ lurking among Swamplot’s readership have any thoughts on long-term residential price trends in Houston? Me and the missus were trying to sell our home in Vegas (good house, great neighborhood, bad timing). Now we will be holding on to it until the Vegas market starts coming back — whenever that is. I’m trying to get an idea on what prices could look like when we finally have the funds to buy locally (6 months – 1 year, depending). Any info or sites that might help us answer those questions would be greatly appreciated.” [Swamplot inbox]

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Online Resources
08/06/08 1:08pm

Google Now Looking Inside the Loop and Up Your Street

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Streets
6 Comments

Map Showing Coverage of Google Street View in Houston

When the Street View feature was first introduced to Houston Google Maps about a year ago, it allowed viewers to follow street-level photos . . . mostly along major thoroughfares. In March, Google added street-level views of residential neighborhoods within a huge swath of West Houston and Pasadena . . . but the update still left out most areas inside the Loop.

This week, a tipster informs us, Google has expanded Street View again, updating its database with photos taken from almost every street inside the Loop . . . and this time including most areas inside the Beltway and beyond as well. The map above shows the extent of the new coverage.

Smile! Photos of your home are likely now on the internet . . . unless you live in a few special areas in town . . .

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Houston Data
07/16/08 11:59am

HAR Monthlies: Sales Down, Prices Up

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Price Trends, Quicklink
No Comments

HAR MONTHLIES: SALES DOWN, PRICES UP “Of 41 Houston-area regions tracked by the Houston Association of Realtors, sales of single-family homes in June were up in seven and down in 34 from a year earlier. The median home price was up in 18 of the 41 regions. The median home price overall in the Houston area was $162,000, up 1.3 percent from a year earlier.” [Houston Chronicle]

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Financing
05/30/08 12:35pm

Where the Subprimes Went

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Houston Data, Online Resources
1 Comment

Map of Houston Subprime Loans in 2006 from PolicyMap.com

Here’s a tool likely to be useful to armchair developers interested in the lay of the land. PolicyMap is a new GIS website that allows you to view a range of local market and demographic data for Houston or any area of the country. You can see how local crime statistics, an interesting array of mortgage categories (such as the percentage of piggyback, subprime, and refi loans), income distributions, and even donations to presidential candidates look on a map. (Big surprise: Pearland and the Energy Corridor really like John McCain!)

PolicyMap is a project of The Reinvestment Fund, a non-profit community-development financial institution from Philadelphia. Some of the advanced features require a subscription, but there’s plenty to play around with for free.

The quick map above shows what Houston areas took out the most subprime loans in 2006. (The darkest purple means more than 50% of all mortgages funded that year.) If you discover more interesting neighborhood stories demonstrated nicely in PolicyMap maps, share your finds in the comments.

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Houston Data
04/07/08 11:28am

Google Street View: In Your Neighborhood, Out of The Loop

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Online Resources, Streets
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Google Street View Coverage of Houston

Last week Google rolled out a major update of its Street View feature, adding 13 new cities and a national park, and expanding its coverage in 6 cities . . . including Houston. The map above shows the extent of the Houston street-level photos now available through Google Maps.

Previously, street views from Google Maps were available only from major thoroughfares in the Houston area. Now, they are available on just about every street . . . within the areas marked in blue. South Houston, plus areas west of 290 and 288 outside the Loop are now mapped street by street. But most inside-the-loop neighborhoods are still left out.

Strangely, this means Google Map addicts can stalk Cypress subdivisions virtually street by street, but views of Southampton are limited to sideways glances from Shepherd and Bissonnet.

After the jump: a sampling of the new street-level views of westside neighborhoods!

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Homebuying
11/21/07 10:27am

The Clearest Sign of Trouble in the Houston Housing Market

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Housing Data, Houston Data, Price Trends, Real Estate Investing, Real Estate Marketing
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Map Graphic from HoustonFacts.orgSure, there’s the latest numbers out from the Houston Association of Realtors, showing a continuing decline in home sales in October, an 8 percent upswing in the average number of days homes have sat on the market, and a slight drop in the median home price compared to this time last year.

But the most blatant sign that serious problems in Houston housing have already arrived is the new promotional blitz just unleashed by the Greater Houston Builders Association — telling us all not to panic: Everything’s just rosy in the wonderful world of Houston residential real estate. Hey, everybody back in the water!

The PR push, which includes a blanketing of radio and TV spots in local markets, is designed to reassure nervous would-be buyers that now’s the perfect time to buy a home way out on the latest subdivision frontier, even though lots of scary signs have been suggesting otherwise for quite a few months now. The heart of the homebuilders’ campaign is the ominous-sounding HoustonFacts.org website, which fills Houston homebuyers’ ears with fact-filled, sage advice like this:

If you try to wait and time the market until it hits rock bottom, you are likely to lose out. Just as no one can accurately predict the peaks and valleys of the stock market (name one person who sold their tech portfolio in April of 2000), the same holds true for housing. If you sit on the fence and wait for the absolute best deal, you could end up literally waiting for years. And most likely, your guess on market timing would be wrong. But if you choose to buy now, you will not only be in the driver’s seat during the buying process, you will also reap the gains of price appreciation once you become a home owner. Remember, those who purchased homes in the early 1990s during the last big economic and housing downturn came out as big winners.

There’s lots more of this kind of wisdom available on the site, but here’s a special challenge to eagle-eyed Swamplot readers: See if you can find the comparison of a home investment to a stock-market investment on the site that simplifies all those messy calculations by leaving out the cost of monthly mortgage payments and expenses!

Keep reading for a HoustonFacts.org tip on home foundations for the Houston climate!

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Houston Data
08/09/07 10:42am

Google’s Houston Street View: All Your Favorite Parking Lots and Freeways

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Online Resources
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Downtown Houston from I-45 North, As Seen from Google Maps Street View

Google has just added its Street View feature to Houston Google Maps. This means that you too can experience what it’s like to drive around parts of this city with a 360-degree camera mounted to the top of your Chevy Cobalt—all from the privacy of your own computer.

Google first rolled out Street View in May for the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami. Several websites have sprung up to document interesting streetlife recorded by Google’s cameras.

For Houston, of course, Street View is much more exciting: at last, online photos of all your favorite strip centers, parking lots, and freeways. Occasionally a pedestrian gets in the way to mar a view, but most of the shots are much cleaner.

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Houston Data
07/30/07 9:44pm

Houston: A Nice Place To Visit and Flip Real Estate

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Tourism
No Comments

After some “research,” Forbes declares Houston the fourth-best place to flip a house. Meanwhile, Forbes Traveler says Houston is the ninth-most-visited city in the U.S.

Coincidence? Or has Forbes simply stumbled upon the awful truth about our city: visitors, upset by a lack of tourist attractions, have turned to quick real-estate thrills instead.

Maybe that explains the Tremont Tower train wreck.

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Houston Data
07/25/07 10:29pm

Do Traffic Medians Count as Parkland? How About Demolition Sites?

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Parks
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Lake Houston Dock

The Trust for Public Land’s annual report on parks in cities is out and—guess what! Houston miraculously has a whole lot more parkland than it did last year.

In 2006, the Trust’s report showed Houston had 16.5 acres of parkland for every 1,000 residents—below the 20.6-acres-per-1,000 average for cities of similar density.

This year, Houston looks a whole lot better: Suddenly, there’s 27.2 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents. That puts us in third place among cities in the “intermediate-low density” category, and well above the new 17.5 acre average.

How’d it happen? Was it the new 11th Street Park? A secret citywide playground-building program? Not quite. It’s the creative accounting effort launched by Mayor White’s office to make sure the Trust counted every green acre.

White simply wanted Houston judged by the same criteria as other cities, [spokesman Frank] Michel said. “As the mayor likes to say, the facts are our friends.”

Where did the mayor find all that green? Well, here’s his biggest catch:

. . . the city argued successfully that the surface area of Lake Houston — almost 12,000 acres — should be counted as parkland. Harnik said the trust agreed that bodies of water should be counted if they were associated with a park owned by a government agency. Houston acquired the 5,000-acre Lake Houston Park in August 2006 from the state parks department.

Too bad we were limited to just the surface area, though. Next year’s report will probably be even better. Isn’t there a city park somewhere associated with the Ship Channel too?

Lake Houston Photo: Flickr user Demonhawk.

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Homebuying
04/16/07 8:22am

Good Morning, Houston! Here’s Your Donut

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Housing Data, Houston Data, Price Trends
No Comments

Some highlights from the Chronicle‘s annual housing-price survey extravaganza, published Sunday:

  • Yeah, prices were up again last year, growing steadily since 1992 (a good year to start with if you’d rather forget Houston’s big busts). But price increases slowed down in the second half.
  • Anyone needing proof that Houston is still a donut need only glance at this map of sales activity inside and around the Loop and Beltway. We love that creamy filling as much as anyone, but there’s more dough to be made at the edges (eighty percent of sales are outside Beltway 8).
  • The front-page graphic, which at first glance appears to show steeper historical price growth for inside-the-loop homes (and a better rate for them this year), is a little misleading: Except for last year, average percentage price increases since 2001 have been highest outside the loop.

As usual, specifics on last year’s neighborhood price trends are hidden in the Chronicle‘s Homefront section.

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