Pearland Apartments

[bobby123]

Shadow Creek Ranch plans at least five 5 apartments and 2 town homes totaling 3736 units in the subdivision, and there is already an existing apartment--Waterford Place luxury Apartment--in the community. In addition, east of SH 288, adjacent to Silverlake, there are two more apartments. Pearland is a growing suburban community that predicts to increase its multi-family from current 14% up to 19 or 22% when the city is built out. Sugar Land only consists of around 10% multi-family now. I wonder if Pearland will ever be as desirable to live as Sugar Land or The Woodland? Will these apartments keep it from becoming an upscale community in the long run?

[jm1fd]

I wonder if Pearland will ever be as desirable to live as Sugar Land or The Woodland? Will these apartments keep it from becoming an upscale community in the long run?

If the current goings on out in the Sharpstown area are any indication, then yes, those apartments will turn ghetto.

[mrfootball]

Apartments suck.

They start out nice...then suck a decade later, providing a place for the transients, illegals, and riff-raff to live and ruin your community.

[editor]

In large part, it depends on how they're administered. I'm seeing more and more places where the majority of the development is condominiums, and maybe 10-20% are rentals. That way you develop a stable base of people who actually care about the property and the area while still bringing in the fat cash from the more itinerant folk.

[Mr. Smarts]

Apartments suck.

They start out nice...then suck a decade later, providing a place for the transients, illegals, and riff-raff to live and ruin your community.

I dont generally like apartments, but the silverlake apartments and townhomes are far from being affordable to the low-income masses as in Sharpstown. So I really doubt they will turn bad, especially with the taxes they are paying for the property.

[rps324]

I think it is naive to think that b/c these units start out nice, they won't turn ghetto in a hearbeat, sorry.

[blocked writer]

I could have sworn that read somewhere that the city of Pearland put a moratorium on apartments. I'll have to check.

I don't know. It's hard to say what will happen in terms of apartments. There are actually areas with apartments that don't turn into Sharpstown.

The medical center for example many older apartments that cater to medical students and staff. It may not be everyone's taste but it's certainly not a ghetto. I wouldn't be surprised if the Pearland apartments got some of that same population. There are already many, many medical center people that live in Pearland. In other words, there are all kinds of people that live in apartments. You can't assume that they will all be undesirables.

[BWSchultz]

You got that right. In my SCR subdivision, it's pretty much doctors and me (engineer). Granted, buying a home and living in an apartment are vastly different. I think Pearland should be careful about adding too many apartments. Apartments work best when people have to fight to the death for them. I used to live in an apartment in Clear Lake, where there are about 50,000 units. Some great, some ghetto. I like to think that old ones were just built bad instead of becoming bad but that's just me. The benefit Clear Lake has over Pearland is that there are a lot more jobs (ahem NASA). If I'm living in an apartment, it better be for convenience to job and entertainment. Pearland doesn't have that as much. At least not yet. Sounds like many tech jobs could be going into the Spectrum project. That could change the apartment landscape around 288/B8.

[ricco67]

You got that right. In my SCR subdivision, it's pretty much doctors and me (engineer). Granted, buying a home and living in an apartment are vastly different. I think Pearland should be careful about adding too many apartments. Apartments work best when people have to fight to the death for them. I used to live in an apartment in Clear Lake, where there are about 50,000 units. Some great, some ghetto. I like to think that old ones were just built bad instead of becoming bad but that's just me. The benefit Clear Lake has over Pearland is that there are a lot more jobs (ahem NASA). If I'm living in an apartment, it better be for convenience to job and entertainment. Pearland doesn't have that as much. At least not yet. Sounds like many tech jobs could be going into the Spectrum project. That could change the apartment landscape around 288/B8.

But one thing that needs to be taken into consideration is that people that may live in those apartments may not necessarily afford the homes in the area, but need to be close to their jobs (i.e. Grocery Store managers, Clerks). What few people realize that those that "support" a community are often those that need affordable housing. Pearland is too far to economically drive to and from every day, especially when you take fuel prices into account.

Then there are people like me that just doesn't WANT a house. Homes are too much work to live in. I don't want to deal with roofing issues, I don't want to deal with a lawn. I just want to get home and enjoy my evening.

[BWSchultz]

Oh absolutely. How many new stores/restaurants will be opening in Pearland west of 288 in the next three years? Anyone want to take a stab at it? I would say 100. Right now, there is CVS. I would guess that the vast majority of SCR residents, maybe 85%, don't work in Pearland right now. With this enormous influx of commercial construction, that will change. And the need for apartments will go way up.

[Skintrade72]

Oh absolutely. How many new stores/restaurants will be opening in Pearland west of 288 in the next three years? Anyone want to take a stab at it? I would say 100. Right now, there is CVS. I would guess that the vast majority of SCR residents, maybe 85%, don't work in Pearland right now. With this enormous influx of commercial construction, that will change. And the need for apartments will go way up.

I would up that number to 200, considering there are 3 large commercial developments (Promenade Shops at Spectrum, SCR Town Center with HEB, Pearland Town Center with Dillards and Macy's) off of 288 + 3 local strip malls within SCR (SCR Village, SC Island Plaza, Plaza at Reflection Bay).

Salesperson at one of the SCR builders estimated 80% of their home buyers are actually Medical Center employees. The new HCA and Memorial Hermann complexes should keep that number high. I think as commercial developments increase around SCR, even more Medical Center people who previously avoided Pearland will be moving there. I know physicians who wanted to live in SCR, but decided not to because of the lack of commercial development.

Apartments will go up anywhere there is increased commercial development. Uptown/Galleria area has seen a proliferation of luxury apartments as has Clear Lake over the years. Sharpstown is ghetto because the whole area is kind of ghetto. I don't think there are any real high-end neighborhoods in that area. Apartments in Pearland are required to support the local "industry" (commercial, medical) workers as Pearland sees commercial progress.

I definitely think Pearland could become the next Sugarland/Woodlands. That's part of the reason why I'm building there. After all the new residential and commercial developments mature in 5 years, Pearland could start to crack the top 100 small town lists like Sugarland, League city, and the Woodlands.

[rem78]

I hope they limit the number of apartments they put up around the area. I tend to agree that they start off nice, but utlimatley as they get older, prices start to drop and some of the problem folks start drifting in.

I do think a nice set of townhomes/condos would be good since many people do not want the obligations of a yard and upkeep, and there are not a ton of townhome/condo options outside of the inner loop.

[ricco67]

I hope they limit the number of apartments they put up around the area. I tend to agree that they start off nice, but utlimatley as they get older, prices start to drop and some of the problem folks start drifting in.

I do think a nice set of townhomes/condos would be good since many people do not want the obligations of a yard and upkeep, and there are not a ton of townhome/condo options outside of the inner loop.

Look, I agree with your general argument that SOME apartments generally start going bad due to bad management decisions and whatnot.

The thing is that they're a matter of necessity. A single person earning 40K a year isn't going to be able afford to buy something in Pearland, or any place else!

If you don't think pearland is a place for apartments, then where DO you think apartments should be built? As I have stated in another post, that's where your "support" people are for your community lives.

[rem78]

Look, I agree with your general argument that SOME apartments generally start going bad due to bad management decisions and whatnot.

The thing is that they're a matter of necessity. A single person earning 40K a year isn't going to be able afford to buy something in Pearland, or any place else!

If you don't think pearland is a place for apartments, then where DO you think apartments should be built? As I have stated in another post, that's where your "support" people are for your community lives.

I said "limit" not stop building apartments. I agree that they serve a purpose, but I would hate to see a ton of apartments built up and have little occupancy. I'm not sure what the vacancy rate for apartments is in Pearland, and who knows how all this will be affected by the new businesses.

[Lowbrow]

I was paying $1250/month for a 1.5 bedroom apartment down there while I was going through my divorce. If it was about money I would have gone into Houston where I could get a better deal.

[PureAuteur]

Apartments do not necessarily go bad unless the entire community goes bad. There are exceptions where a community is really solid, but then one apartment complex will be extremely ghetto because of the management. Basically all the smart people move out because the place is run down and managed incompetently by some crummy company based in another state. There is some company in Louisiana that owns apartment complexes scattered throughout Houston, and I've heard that every complex they manage, they manage to ruin. I forget their name though.

If you want to know the root cause of all the problems with crime and gangs that seem to be in a lot of threads on this forum lately, the main thing is a more globalist economy in which Houston is just a place for illegals and transients to come and live cheaply while they work low pay jobs or illegal jobs. Secondly, society itself is not as disciplined and controlled as it once was, making lots of social behavior and crime acceptable and not held accountable for. That's why you continue to have crime and bad social behavior without any proactive attempt to improve it or remove it. Finally, you have a city that continues to expand in endless sprawl, creating lots of retail/service jobs that are all over the place in strip centers especially. Because of this, you get all these apartment dwelling transients from wherever who come here because they know it's cheap and there will be a job somewhere. In addition to that, you get transients and illegals who know that it's easy to live a life of organized crime in Houston without being held accountable in any way.

MrFootball- I will agree that apartments suck, but you gotta have them. I'd be pretty upset, being a 25 yr old, if my only two options were to stay with my parents or buy a single family home.

[rem78]

In addition to that, you get transients and illegals who know that it's easy to live a life of organized crime in Houston without being held accountable in any way.

I doubt it's all transients and illegals who are the problem, but we do have a large crime network in the Houston area. When I attended the National Night Out for my neighborhood, the police were there and talked about the huge increase we've seen in crime, not necessarily localized to Pearland, but things that residents of Houston and the Houston sprawl need to be aware of. The officer I spoke with called Houston a major hub for drug and firearm trafficking, particularly because of our freeway network and the ship channel.

[hbcu]

they started out nice on Fondren also.....they have some huge houses backed up to some seedy complexes

[VicMan]

I believe that a lot of apartments will be built in the part of Houston bordering Pearland that is inside 288.

[brerrabbit]

I believe that a lot of apartments will be built in the part of Houston bordering Pearland that is inside 288.

I'm assuming you mean inside Beltway 8. Pearland City Council is fundementally opposed to to many apartments but the reality is they have a hard time stopping the construction of them. The one tool they have to at least make the complexes a little nicer are that they can limit the number of units per acre. What this effectively does if worked correctly with the Zoning and Planning folks is make the rental prices of the units more expensive. It eliminates density and means a developer has to charge more per unit to get a return on his project. The other hidden danger of apartments is the strain they put on a school district. The amount of taxes collected doesn't come close to paying for the numbers of kids a large project can put into the schools. That's one of the reasons that Pearland ISD was all for letting Alvin take Shadow Creek Ranch. From the outset of that development multi family housing has been in their plan and PISD didn't want to absorb those additional students but Alvin was more than willing to.

[cottonmather0]

If the current goings on out in the Sharpstown area are any indication, then yes, those apartments will turn ghetto.

I hope they limit the number of apartments they put up around the area. I tend to agree that they start off nice, but utlimatley as they get older, prices start to drop and some of the problem folks start drifting in.

I do think a nice set of townhomes/condos would be good since many people do not want the obligations of a yard and upkeep, and there are not a ton of townhome/condo options outside of the inner loop.

See, that's the deal with Sharpstown - all of those units on the Southwest side were built in the 70's and early 80's because the population of Houston was growing so fast that the city needed housing for all of the oil jobs and other workers that were rapidly being created during that particular economic boom. Most of the people filling those jobs were young and either couldn't afford houses or simply didn't want to buy a house, so these singles-oriented apartment complexes sprung up to serve them. And they all started out nice and luxurious.

But then the oil crash came and the demand for the units dried up while supply stayed constant. So prices dropped and poorer people and their corresponding troubles moved in. Then the economy shifted again, the geography of the whole city kind of shifted, and no one wanted to live in Sharpstown anymore anyway, so the area stayed poor and scummy and those units became ghettoized. By comparison, the Galleria is the Galleria and there is plenty of demand to keep rents high and complexes nice.

I'm not sure exactly what the main lessons for Pearland are from this, but avoiding overbuilding is definitely towards the top of the list. Some apartments are necessary, but not a whole lot.