12/23/08 5:19pm

There’s no time to play the Neighborhood Guessing Game this week — Swamplot will be off Thursday and Friday — but there is time to do a little bit of thinking about changing the rules of the game.

What should change? Well, here are a couple of ideas: First, to encourage better comments, we’d like to alter the way the winner is determined. Under the new rules being considered, the winner will be the player who names the correct neighborhood and backs it up with the best explanation.

Here’s an example:

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12/22/08 1:32pm

Nominees for all 10 categories of the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate have been announced, and voting has begun!

Where can you find them? Where can you vote? They’re all on this page. Or you can get to them individually from this handy list of links:

Already, more than 200 votes have come in. And yes, it’s a slow week. But there’s still time for come-from-behind candidates to win their categories! All it takes is a little campaigning. The deadline for the votes you bring in: midnight this coming Sunday, December 28th.

12/18/08 11:12am

Nominations in all categories of the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate are now closed. A big thank you to the many readers who contributed excellent suggestions and descriptions! Your efforts have made a big difference in the quality of the awards.

Today and tomorrow, we’ll be announcing the official nominees and opening voting in the final 3 categories: Most Fattening Real Estate Development, Houston Neighborhood of the Year, and Greatest Moment in Houston Real Estate, 2008. The voting continues in the 7 categories in which nominees have already been announced. You can find them all on this page.

As spelled out in our official voting rules, all votes in all categories must be in before midnight on Sunday, December 28th. Until then, keep up the campaigning! If the winner of one or more categories matters to you, get your friends over to Swamplot to vote! Already in a few of the races, email and Facebook campaigns launched by readers have begun to affect the results.

12/17/08 5:53pm

It’s time to thank this site’s advertisers, for making Swamplot possible:

Please also welcome back the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Education at Rice University, which is showing off a few of its Spring 2009 course offerings in a new series of ads on this site.

Swamplot owes thanks to these advertisers for supporting us — and thanks to our readers for supporting them!

If you think your firm might benefit by reaching Swamplot’s intelligent and dedicated readership of real-estate fans, please see this advertising page for more information.

12/17/08 10:40am

Only 2 categories in the Swamplot Awards for Real Estate remain open for your nominations: Houston Neighborhood of the Year and Greatest Moment in Houston Real Estate for 2008. If you haven’t contributed a good suggestion to one of these categories, please do it today!

Nominations closed early this morning for 3 other categories, and we’ll announce the official slate of nominees and open voting later today in 2 of them: The “Only in Houston” and Best Home Sleuth awards.

Meanwhile, it looks like some of you have taken the hint and started your own Facebook-and-email campaigns in support of your favorite candidates. Twitter might work too! Will the other contenders be able to fight back? Voting in all the categories will end just before midnight on Sunday, December 28th.

12/16/08 9:35am

Nominations closed for 3 more award categories early this morning: Best Teardown of the Year, Best Rebranding Effort, and Most Grandiose Development. We’ll be announcing the official nominees and opening the voting in all 3 today. Voting began yesterday for Favorite Houston Design Cliche and Best Project Cancellation or Delay.

We’ve also posted the official voting rules. Please note that campaigning for your favorite award candidates — by sending out emails to friends, Twittering, or posting about the contest in forums, other blogs, or on Facebook, for example — is highly encouraged. Start a groundswell for your choice!

Also, there’s still a just a bit more time for you to submit your nominations for the 5 remaining categories. The deadline for submissions for the “Only in Houston,Best Home Sleuth, and Most Fattening Real Estate Development awards is early tomorrow morning. Please help make the awards the best they can be by looking at each of those categories and adding your suggestions for nominations before that deadline. If one of your choices has already been submitted, you can help it succeed by adding your own explanation why it deserves to be on the ballot.

12/15/08 8:30am

Nominations are now closed for the first two categories in the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate: Favorite Houston Design Cliché and Best Project Cancellation or Delay. We’ll be announcing the official nominees in these categories — and opening the voting for each of them — later today.

This means there are now less than 24 hours left to make your nominations for the next 3 categories: Best Teardown of the Year, Best Rebranding Effort, and Most Grandiose Development. Although some strong nominations for each award have already come in, it’s obvious these categories need some attention. What potential award winners are missing? Could an existing nomination be improved with a more eloquent introduction?

Nominations will close as the sun rises tomorrow. Help save these 3 award categories with your smart contributions . . . before it’s too late!

12/12/08 12:04pm

Some terrific nominations have already come in for the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. But we still need your help! Voting begins next week. Before then, we want to make sure that all the candidates are the right ones, and that each is presented in the best possible light.

So if you see something missing in any award category, please add your nomination now! Or if you think you can improve on any of the explanations submitted with a nomination you like, feel free to write in with your own better presentation.

Early Monday morning, the nominations will close for the first two award categories: Favorite Houston Design Cliché and Best Project Cancellation or Delay. Then we’ll announce the official slate of nominees for those awards and open them for voting. We’ll close nominations and open the voting for the next three categories on Tuesday. There’ll be three more on Wednesday, and the last two on Thursday.

There’s still plenty of time to contribute. Add your nominations to the comments below the post announcing each category. Or send them to us in an email. Who are the contenders in Houston real estate this year? What deserves recognition?

12/11/08 2:11pm

Do we have enough categories in the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate yet? We’ve announced 9 of them so far: Houston Neighborhood of the Year, Most Fattening Real Estate Development, Best Home Sleuth, the “Only in Houston” Award, Most Grandiose Development, Best Rebranding Effort, Best Teardown of the Year, Best Project Cancellation or Delay, and Favorite Houston Design Cliché.

Whew! That’s a lot of ground to cover. But we’ve saved the best category for last. And here it is: What was the Greatest Moment in Houston Real Estate in 2008?

Swamplot works hard every day to cover great moments in Houston real estate. That’s why we’re here. But maybe we missed a few this year. Browse through the site if it’ll help you to draw up a list of contenders; or raid your own memory banks. Then tell us what moment deserves this recognition.

A great moment is lost if there’s no one there to chronicle it or cherish it. Which is why we need your help. Send us your comments or emails describing the moments you’d like to nominate.

12/11/08 10:45am

Just 2 more categories remain to be announced for this year’s Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. The final category will be revealed this afternoon. And here’s the next-to-last one: Houston Neighborhood of the Year, 2008.

What makes a neighborhood “Neighborhood of the Year”? Whatever you say does, really. Of course, a neighborhood might win Swamplot’s Neighborhood of the Year award for vastly different reasons than another one might win an award of the same name from, say, the GHBA.

Nominating rules are still here. You can make your nominations for this award in a comment below or in an email sent privately to Swamplot. So tell us: What neighborhood deserves to win this award from Swamplot — and why?

12/11/08 10:13am

If you’ve seen and followed the ads running on this page all this week, you may be aware that Swamplot is a sponsor of GreenCamp Houston ’08 at the Houston Technology Center this weekend. GreenCamp is an “unconference” — a freeform, participant-run event in the (relatively brief) tradition of BarCamp — that will focus on “green” initiatives in and around Houston: sustainability, renewable energy, energy conservation, material reuse, and all that kinda stuff.

GreenCamp is entirely free, as in — and yes, including — free lunch. However, the program is limited to 200 participants. It’ll take place this Saturday, December 13th, from 9 am to 4 pm at 410 Pierce St. in upper Midtown.

You can sign up to attend, or find out more about the event, on the GreenCamp website.

12/11/08 9:02am

In the last week or so we’ve heard a few complaints from Swamplot readers that this site was loading slowly. So earlier this week we made some changes — which should speed things up for many of you. We’d like to know if these improvements are working. Do Swamplot pages load fast enough in your browser? Those of you who had problems before: Is it better now?

12/10/08 6:19pm

Here comes the eighth nominating category — out of a total of 10 — in the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. And this is a hefty one: The Most Fattening Real Estate Development of 2008.

Houston is big, but clearly it’s nowhere near big enough yet. Which is why fattening real estate developments are so important to our local economy. A fattened Houston might refer to the city’s geographical spread . . . or to some other variety of enlargement. Make your choice, and make your case!

The comments section below — and Swamplot’s inbox — are wide open for your nominations in this category. Stuff them with your suggestions!

12/10/08 3:50pm

Here’s another puzzle for you to mull over while y’all try to figure out where the property in this week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game is located: Who’s the best at playing the game?

That’s not just an idle question. It’s actually the 7th category in the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. Let’s call it the Best Home Sleuth Award.

This week marks the 35th edition of Swamplot’s regular Neighborhood Guessing Game. And sure, anyone could tally all the winners to find out who typed in the right neighborhood name first in the most contests. But that’s not what what this award is for. The Best Home Sleuth Award belongs to the participant who’s proven — over many rounds — to be consistently good at the game. If we played the NGG in teams, it’s the player you’d want to pick first to join yours: A Houston neighborhood expert.

Yes, it’ll be borderline acceptable to nominate yourself for this honor — in the comments below, or in a private message — but do keep in mind that once the nominating period for this award ends a week from today, the winner will be chosen by reader voting. (See the rules if you have questions.)

You can relive all 35 NGG contests. Or just go from memory. However you figure it, tell us: who’s the best?

12/10/08 10:03am

There are 3 more categories to introduce today for the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate, and we need your help filling the slates! So far, we’ve begun accepting nominations for Favorite Houston Design Cliché, Best Project Cancellation or Delay,  Best Teardown, Best Rebranding Effort, and Most Grandiose Development. We’re halfway done!

The first of today’s categories is the “Only in Houston” Award. You may have noticed a few differences between Houston and other places — especially when it comes to our city’s real estate landscape. This award is meant to celebrate an event, circumstance, development, or phenomenon of this past year that could only have manifested itself hereabouts. Or somewhere around hereabouts. Or maybe, okay, it happened somewhere else too, but it really seems like a Houston thing, anyway.

As usual, your spin can make the difference between a possibly dull and obvious entry and a compelling choice for the award. So think hard, reframe the ordinary to make it seem extraordinary (and consult the nominating guidelines if you need to), then submit your nominations!