The Rice Hotel’s New Owners; Making Munger St. Sparkle

Patrick-Dougherty-Boogie-Woogie-installation-Hermann Park

Photo of Patrick Dougherty’s “Boogie Woogie” at Hermann Park: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool

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8 Comment

  • According to Zillow?!??? Do you mean the same zillow that admitted to having a 70% error rate in the Houston market and who’s Zestimate has no basis in reality?
    I’ve crunched the numbers forwards and backwards and the true number is 7 to 10 years.

  • More apartments in the suburbs. *sigh*. If they’re entirely market rate, then I guess it’s the developers who decide. But suburban apartments have not historically fared well in the Houston metropolitan area. Due to weak regulations, Multifamily and low-end single family developers overbuild in the boom years, and when the bust inevitably comes, the developers all high tail it to the next hot market, and their developments go to pot. Neighbors who weren’t on their toes, and didn’t sell at the first hint of trouble, are in for a long, bumpy ride.
    .
    We can only hope that office construction outpaces multifamily and low-end single family development in the Exxon campus area south of The Woodlands. A surplus of offices and high office vacancy rates seems to be much less painful, for neighborhoods, than a surplus of apartments and/or starter homes.

  • Yeah I’m not buying that Zillow Rent vs Buy Garbage. If you use better calculators (NTY has a great one) it is more like 6-7 years.

  • The whole rent v. buy thing is a very silly metric. Most people go from renting an apartment to buying a house for reasons that have very little to do with economics. They want to start a family, have pets, have a garden, have personal space, etc. and get much more value out of their dwelling when moving into a house. The whole rent v. buy analysis is something that the real estate biz (i.e. realtors) invented to get people who had no reason to buy a house into the market. It was basically a way to say “yeah, you may not want a house, but it would be a better investment if you bought one anyway.”

  • Zestimates in Houston are just HCAD values. As commonsense said, no basis in reality.

  • I once attended a lunch seminar on rent vs. buy, hosted by my company, and presented by our company credit union. Having bought a house a few years before, I was horrified to watch as it quickly turned into a sales propaganda session on why renters are stupid and buying a home the only solution for everyone.

    Of course, it then segued into how great the credit union’s mortgage rates were and how “willing to help” they would be if anyone is interested in applying for a mortgage.

    The graphs and data they showed were very carefully chosen to show a strong business case for buying a house, but conveniently left out a lot of real world details like fluctuating home values, maintenance and repair costs, property taxes, etc.

  • The article that states Metro checks the fares of all passengers is a joke. I’ve ridden the MetroRail off and on since it opened years ago, and every working day for the last year, multiple times per day, and have never been asked to show proof of purchase. I’ve never even seen anyone checking. During peak riding hours in the Medical Center, Metro personnel would be lucky to get a squished spot on the train much less be able to check anyone’s ticket more than 2 feet away.

  • In the past two weeks i have had my fare checked more than it has been in the last two years. Man its fun to see the expressions and excuses come out when they see the ticket man.