COMMENT OF THE DAY: WE’LL DO IT OUR WAY “The (ugly) status quo is easy and cheap — why take risks? This is the mentality that makes Houston Houston, and this is why Houston is ugly, easy, and cheap. Just what Houston needs: another “Mediterranean†Villa, or French Chateau, or Spanish Revival building. BARF. Why not make it a mixture of all three and stir it up with a dirty, oily dipstick? All of the potential should be squeezed out of this project until it is as dry as last years Thanksgiving wishbone, then it should be propped up with an open-air parking garage, cheaply constructed cookie-cutter units that will be rather nasty in 10 years, and exorbitant rents. Then it will fit in purr-fectly! Go H-town!” [Bare, commenting on Apartments Planned for Montrose Fiesta Site Will Go Tall Mediterranean]
Sign up for the Newsletter
Tag: Real Estate Marketing
KELLER WILLIAMS’S NEW OFFICES ARE IN THE OLD STANFORD FINANCIAL GROUP BUILDING 
“To this day, people still refer to 1400 Smith as ‘the old Enron building,’ even though the company collapsed more than a decade ago and Chevron now owns the property. Will 5050 Westheimer face a similar fate? That’s the building that housed Stanford Financial Group, whose founder, R. Allen Stanford, is awaiting a jury verdict on federal charges that he ran a $7 billion investment fraud. . . . Bruce Kink of Keller Williams said the company chose the space for its prime location directly across from the Galleria mall. He doesn’t focus on who used to occupy it. ‘They removed the name out front,’ Kink said. ‘To us it’s 5050 Westheimer.'” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Wikimedia Commons
- 107 W. Circle Dr. [HAR]
- 1121 E. 26th St. [HAR]
There are more than enough bugs to go around in the NuHabitat beta that officially went live yesterday, but the brand-new real-estate listings website does have one killer feature with the potential to shake up Houston’s real-estate landscape. To registered users, NuHabitat coughs up a set of details that until now were available only to real estate agents: date-by-date, blow-by-blow pricing histories for listed properties — even if the MLS numbers have changed. With these little kittens wandering out of the bag, there aren’t a whole lot of top-secret MLS data fields left to the exclusive domain of real-estate agents.
- 502 Pickford Dr. [HAR]
IS RICE WORTH IT? 
Having stood up for Houston’s heat, humidity, flying cockroaches, mosquitoes, sprawl, flooding, “no mountains,” and other typically unheralded features of the local landscape (even as more official civic campaigns shied away from the task) the folks behind the cité vérité Houston. It’s Worth It. promotional campaign are ready to move onto their next crowdsourced publishing project. “Contrary to the way it might sound,” declares a splash page announcing the project, HIWI: Rice “is not a cookbook. Nor, for all you anxious undergrads, is it a text book.” Instead, the publishers at communications firm ttweak are hoping to produce a collection of comments, stories, and photos that’ll end up serving as “part love letter, part roast, part remembrance” of Rice University, on the occasion of the institution’s 100th birthday. Working from the same model that produced the original Houston. It’s Worth It. book and HIWI: Ike, the publishers are soliciting contributions from anyone who has anything to say about the campus, its people, and its place in the city: “Have you ever shot bottle rockets in the parking lot? Were you there for Kennedy’s speech? Ever knocked back a few at Valhalla? . . . Even if you’ve never set foot inside a Rice classroom, we want to know what the ‘Institute’ means to you.” [HIWI; previously on Swamplot] Photo: ttweak
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE EADO VIRUS “For goodness sake, when are people going to stop referring to random areas within the East End as EaDo! EaDo’s northern most tip is on Commerce. The KBR site is pretty far removed from EaDo’s borders! And realtors, please stop coming up with new names. I recently saw a listing near EaDo, with a location described as “SEDO†(Southeast Downtown). When will the madness stop!” [Eddie, commenting on The Clearings on Clinton]
Where’s Randall Davis gonna find buyers for the glitzy condos in this new 24-story Uptown highrise he’s planning — you know, the kinds of carefree, fun-loving sophisticates who’d regularly leave all the lights on in their bedrooms at night just to make sure the whole building glows like this? In other countries, probably. But they’ll be moving to Houston soon!
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ONE OF THESE DAYS THEY’LL HAVE HOUSTON PEGGED “Another version of the same description we’ve heard for the past 5 years. Prior to that, no description was heard. I’d say having any kind of identity is better than none at all. L.A. spent decades being bashed until a new gaggle of journalists discovered the ugly duckling had grown up. I expect a similar timeline for Houston.” [Dana-X, commenting on More Spit Than Polish]
MORE SPIT THAN POLISH Another magazine profile of Houston, another run for the metaphor machine: “Houston is what you might get if you took everything that is really, really great and slightly irritating and crazy in a good way about the South and about America and threw it in one of those rock-polishing tumblers for a spin or two before dumping it all out and leaving everything where it lay.” [Garden & Gun]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: UP OR DOWN “On the agent side of HAR, you can see the different listing amounts. So while you might avoid the big red arrow showing a decrease, any agent can still see the pricing history. What a lot of agents do is lower their places by a few bucks a day, that way people with searches setup for a given location will keep being notified of their listing (since a price change will kick in a notice to be sent out). I know it works as I just RAISED the price of a rental on HAR and got a ton of calls. Likely because anyone that has an alert setup for my rental type just got ‘re-alerted’ about the apartment.” [Cody, commenting on Back, Slashed: Ken and Linda Lay’s Huntingdon Penthouse]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TOO EASY “I was really interested in buying . . . when it wasn’t for sale.” [northside girl, commenting on On Second Thought: Yeah, It’s Available]
A few amendments appear to have been made to that giant “Property Not for Sale” sign on JFK Blvd. near Greens Rd. just south of IAH featured on Swamplot last month, notes reader Brett Jensen. Plastered over that simpler earlier sign (shown at right) are now indications of the property’s size, a revised phone number, a real-estate company name and contact, and what appears to be a complete reversal of the previous marketing strategy. An indication that that “don’t even ask” strategy was a flop? Or that it worked too well, and now a new owner of sign and land is simply trying a more practiced strategy to flip it?
- Previously on Swamplot: Not Even Trying
Photos: Brett Jensen (for sale) and Katie Pearson (not for sale)
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT TO RENAME THE HOUSTON ASTROS “Astros’ owner is considering changing their name and uniform once they join the AL? The lack of tradition I believe hurts a sports franchise. Alright, Swampies…let the names begin; The Houston Hurricanes?” [Dana-X, commenting on Headlines: IAH Expansion; Brazos River Battle]