- Houston Home Sales Up 1.1% This August over Last with 7,505 Sold, Finds HAR Report [Prime Property]
- Galveston Housing Authority Breaks Ground on Public Housing That Replaces Homes Lost During Ike [Click2Houston]
- Colorado-Based Century Communities Acquires Houston Homebuilder Grand View Builders for About $14M [Prime Property]
- Slideshow: This Venetian-Style Home Listed at $12.8M Is Sugar Land’s Most Expensive Listing [Prime Property]
- HISD Documents Show How Houston’s 1929 Original Phillis Wheatley High School Ended Up Slated for Demolition [Houston Advocate]
- H-Town StrEATs Team Opening The Bird House in the Same Heights Space as Seasonal Crawfish Restaurant Boil House [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- Torchy’s Tacos Opening Fifth Houston-Area Location on Sept. 18 in Vintage Park [The Spring Observer]
- Houston Getting $10M from Feds To Upgrade Its Transportation Monitoring System [The Highwayman]
- City Council Approves Water Conservation Plan Requiring Residents To Reduce Usage By About 1 Gallon per Day by 2019 [abc13]
- Work More Than Halfway Complete on Buffalo Bayou Dog Park; Will Include Bayou-Water Dog Wash Facilities [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Why the People in Charge of Transit Systems Should Be Required To Ride Transit Themselves [The Atlantic CityLab]
Photo of Rice Building Workshop’s “Micro Pavilion: Convergence” in Hermann Park: Swamplot inbox
Headlines
I’m not even sure how we’re supposed to interpret increased sales in this market. There was a significant decrease a few months ago, but that wasn’t due to lack of demand as it normally would imply, we had actually drained the market of adequate supply. I guess that this number is going to be supply oriented as well, increased demand probably would not increase sales #’s in this market, just prices. Would be nice to see the housing supply start to increase if that’s the case.
Water is way to cheap all over this country. In most places it is artificially low. We need to be passing on the true cost of water to users and perhaps even true cost plus. You can keep the cost of basic-need amount of water low, but as your usage increases, the cost/gallon should significantly increase. That way we can prepare for the coming water crisis while not limiting those who want to use more water.. they just have to pay for it.
That $12.8 Mil place in Sugar Land is appraised for $5 Mil. I always find it funny that folks will bitch and complain to the appraisal board that their house is not worth near as much as the tax man says its. Then they turn around and ask twice as much when they go and sell it. What game.
Uh nice posterior swamplot, ha.. The article about Metro officials actually riding the bus is spot on, they’re so out of touch and the routes are beyond bad.
Re: people who run transit systems should be required to ride transit themselves,
Let me preface this with acknowledgement that managing a transit system like Houston Metro is a thankless job. They do a good job given size of the system… I don’t think I could do better. But dammit the new park and ride buses suck. The people who designed it obviously never use it with a bike, which has resulted in a classic case of over-engineering. All I know is they probably spent good money on a crappy storage assembly that ‘solves’ a problem better when its not there.
Wow. That Sugar Land place. Pristine and Soulless. Nice kitchen counter tops though.
The solution to keeping hcad and protestors honest is to institute a “forced buy / forced sell”.
Hcad should be required to buy your property for their appraised value (minus, say, 25%). So if after you protest you still think they’ve over valued, make them buy it. Likewise, people should be able to buy properties for 25% over hcad value after an owners protest. If they value your place at $1m, and you say “no, it’s $500k at most”, then you should be happy to take a 25% premium over $500k right?
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The percent over/under that make the force sale/buy could be tweaked so it would have to be a fair amount off from reality before this would trigger, but you get the idea. It would stop hcad from over valuing if they were forced to pay those values — and it would stop people from protesting an already below market appraisal if they were forced to sell.