TheNiche

Gentlemen, don your mutton chops!

I suggest you purchase a powerwasher with an atomizer. Make the sidewalks, the path to the front door, the porch, and the brick trim pop! Might also be of use getting rid of all that green algea on the back fence. Sometimes the little cosmetic details, esp. on exterior, make a big difference.

Bingo. The big institutions don't really seem to mind paying excessively large sums for land. If they've decided to put something somewhere, they'll make it happen. So land prices right near the TMC are just ridiculous.

I agree that now is a good time to own a complex in Houston, but I strongly suspect that the health of our market is more attributable to economic performance than to tighter lending practices.

The redeeming points about this neighborhood are 1) absolutely stunning skyline views from 3rd or 4th floor, 2) closer to downtown than Rice Military, Montrose, or River Oaks, and 3) lower-priced alternative to Midtown.

Um, we're talking about primaries here. I just noticed that some of the questions used took aim at the whole party rather than actually helping to determine what the differences between candidates were and how they reasoned those differences. There'll be plenty of time for partisans to fire verbal broadsides at one another after we actually know who's been nominated within their parties to run for President. But that's a matter internal to each party.

Black-on-Black Violence Guys were one of those curious questions that made me raise my eyebrows. It isn't exactly a hot blip on the issues radar screen, you know. ...and I just saw a commercial for a CNN special that'll focus on that topic. Seems like they just used the question to give themselves a subtle plug.

How big a lot do you need? Just looking at land prices on a per square foot basis, it's hard to beat Acres Homes for the mix of reasonable cost and large lots. If you haven't had a chance, check out the Art Guys' compound up there...really neat. But if you only need something that's pretty small on which you can go vertical, I'd suggest you stick to the East End, Greater Third Ward, or Near Northside.

Job growth rates in every major market in Texas is significantly higher than the national average. Houston is no exception. On the average, I don't think our land prices are going to decline. But on average, the U.S. land market is clearly less tight than it had been, all without having had too much of an effect on us yet. Averages are often misleading. Where are you looking for land? If it is an area where the predominant consumers of undeveloped land are developers that develop communities with home prices below $150,000, land prices are likely to decline because there are fewer construction starts. If it is an area where home prices tend to be over about $225,000, construction starts in that range have actually continued to increase, so land prices will likely continue to rise. If you're looking at the inner city, it gets more complicated, but just keeping the discussion on single-family lots, I think that'll remain a good investment.

Hadn't caught more than bits and peices of the other YouTube debates until tonight. Before this, I'd thought of it as an interesting concept. My opinion has shifted. It is my position that CNN puts on the YouTube debates as a gimmick, signalling to the masses that they can ask questions directly of the candidates rather than relying on a very few of the 'talking heads', who so often are unwilling to ask the tough ones because they don't want to scare off potential future interviewees. But it is in practice a false signal. They put on a cartoon from the Houston Chronicle's Nick Anderson as a question...they allowed a journalist (of sorts) to ask a question, rather than a 'regular joe'. ...and I think its safe to say that Nick Anderson is on the left. Even if he lived in a state with a vote that mattered in the Republican primaries, he wouldn't be voting in one. His opinion will matter...eventually. But should it now? And I'm not saying that it was a bad question, either, but certainly the intent there was to get a jab in at the Bush presidency. They also apparently put on a question from someone who is a chair of some gay issues committe on Hillary Clinton's campaign. A political activist gets publicity. Background check, anyone? And just by profiling a few of the other submiters and questions, it was pretty clear to me that a few of the other submissions were from folks with an opposing ideology targeting the political party rather than trying to flesh out the character of any particular candidates. It was also pretty apparent that certain issues were heavily targeted while others were completely left in the dark. No questions on economy, housing, or energy. Pocketbook issues were almost entirely off the table, hit upon in secondary discourse. Social issues were pretty much it. Good for Romney, Huckabee and Hunter, bad for Thompson and, to a large extent, Ron Paul. To be perfectly clear, I have a lot of very serious criticisms about traditional debate formats as well, and I like the essence of the concept of the YouTube format except that it is so easily hijacked by submitters and is still influenced by a soft-handed approach to selection of questions, or alternatively creates opportunities for subtle influence such as by giving more airtime to certain candidates than others, giving some candidates easy questions and others the not-so-easy ones, or picking the issues. If I had more faith in television viewers to see through the smokescreen, I wouldn't mind so much, but sadly I've often found that the best way to get a sense of which way public opinion is headed is to get drunk. Scares me.

Show me a country with productive output, I'll show you excitement.

You know, all that really concerns me is GDP per capita and climate. For GDP: US is #2, Norway is #1. For weather: US has it all, Norway kind of blows. ...no offense intended if anyone is from Norway.

You might want to negotiate your next lease before you accept, so you know what the rent hike will be when your current lease rolls over. If its got a better view as well as the better floorplan, you might end up paying for it eventually.

Yes. http://www.endeavourcondo.com/

Letting aside that the neighborhood that this discussion is actually centered around is actually directly south of downtown, not east, I think you're underestimating the long-term potentials for both the East End and Third Ward. Look at what Rice Military and the areas around Washington Avenue were like 20 years ago...even 10 years ago. And look at what Fourth Ward was like even five years ago. It has gotten to the point at which land prices in Rice Military, the Heights, Montrose, Midtown around River Oaks, etc. are just too high to accomodate the full spectrum of market demand for it, so that many households get priced out of those areas but still want to live reasonably close to the action and be able to afford a nice new home with nice finishes. With more households and better demographics, things change. Memorial Park is unique; there'll never be another one. But the south/southeast side is influenced by the nearby Herman Park and can also draw from the large MacGregor Park, while the East End has a large Mason Park; each of these have bayou frontage. Buffalo Bayou Park is nice, but with each passing year trails and landscaping are added along the wide rivers that flow through the East End. River Oaks Country Club has a golf course; the East End has the Gus Wortham Golf Course and is getting a new clubhouse. Rice Military has essentially no influence from local universities; the Third Ward has both UH and TSU, and UH has an aggressive expansion plan with intentions to create more on-campus student housing. Rice Military has easy access to I-10 and semi-easy access to the 610 Loop, depending on whether its rush hour; the East End and Third Ward have essentially no congestion and have access to I-45, US 59, and SH 288. There'll never be a Galleria area type office and retail cluster along the East Loop, but to the extent that housing prices are just too high to support many households that want to live in those areas and to the extent that the East End and Third Ward already have essential neighborhood infrastructure and is getting more such infrastructure than more stable neighborhoods, it is evident that this area has a future within a very reasonable time horizon.

I have seen this plan before, I think from the FTA. It doesn't make a great deal of sense, though, in large part because the networks centered in Florida and north Texas don't connect to reasonably close parts of the network that runs up the Gulf Coast and Eastern seaboard.

The lowest price I could find on HAR for a sold unit was $188,900; it went pending on the same day it was listed. The lowest priced unit currently listed is $194,900. And these were the smaller floorplans.

The counterargument could be made that the laundry list of donors for Discovery Green, where no one donor even got naming rights, means that the publicity has to be shared and is less potent. Say that the Kinder Foundation, a $10 million donor to Discovery Green supported by Kinder Morgan, had instead bought about 21 quarter-blocks (or any equivalent land area totalling 7.65 acres) in the east downtown warehouse district at an average cost of $30 per square foot, then donated the portfolio to the Parks Department on the condition that the first word in the name of each developed park be "Kinder"? The cost would be approximately the same as the Discovery Green donation, yet they'd be securing extremely strong brand identification throughout in an up-and-coming essentially unnamed neighborhood, while at the same time bringing media attention directly upon themselves and the neighborhood and ensuring for the branded neighborhood's enhanced vitality. In my mind, that approach beats the ____ out of the near-anonymity of a Discovery Green contribution. Taxpayer funds may have been worth it, but the cost/benefit calculus is not nearly so simple. While Discovery Green has undoubtedly influenced the location of new development, those developments are only being built because they are supported by market demand. For instance, had Finger's Park One not gone forward, those that will live in it would likely have spent an equivalent amount of their income on housing elsewhere in the City. It is unlikely that many of this type of households would move outside of the City of Houston, but undoubtedly there would be some leakage. Likewise, downtown hotel occupancy warrants new hotel construction. If not near the new park, it would likely have occured elsewhere within that submarket. The same goes for downtown office space. And brerrabbit is correct to point out that funds not allocated to Discovery Green could've been allocated elsewhere, and that would've stimulated property values in those areas. -------------------- Personally, I'd suspect that the medium- and smaller-sized corporate donations and the public investment into Discovery Green were worth it, although something on the order of Kinder's donation is perhaps excessive. What I'm not clear on was whether the donations and investments were maximally productive, or if they might've had a greater impact if spent on some other portfolio of parks projects.

I have no doubt that it is true that you perceive my discourse as rude. My truthful perception is that I've done nothing that is rude and that your excessively-sensitive perception of me is counterproductive. This is why I advise you to grow a thicker skin. I issue the advice on my own authority; it is your prerogative whether or not to take it. You misunderstand my criticism. Newspaper articles are hearsay. The survey question is hooey for all the reasons cited, with the underlying issue being that the question does not adequately allow for conclusions to be drawn. I consider the survey question and the article invalid on the authority of reason. I fail to see why one person's invalid findings need negate my own opinions, which are independent of those findings. By the authority of my own independent observations and reasoning. Btw, the majority of our transit (extant and planned) has already been implemented. Busses. I agree. I'm not a very good Libertarian because I'm not an Anarchist. Those people scare me sometimes. My problem with your presentation was in fact that you weren't being assertive. If you have a point to make, get out with it. I'm not sure why you seem to believe that I have a superiority complex of some sort; I don't make comparsions between my person and yours or anyone else's because such statements really and truly are entirely unproductive. Just give me your premises and conclusions. I evaluate and criticize them on the basis of reason, not on the basis of who has put it forward.

Heh, heh, no, the idea of the elipses was to continue to sentence between individuals. And thanks. I hope he lives forever...but I hope for lots of things.

Depends upon the survivability of my grandfather. He's a walking, living, breathing, cancerous miracle--so say the doctors. We all think its the attitude, which just can't be thwarted. But we know that reality will eventually catch up with him. If he's gone, the center of mass and/or interest probably shifts to Galveston. May even make the changeover this xmas if grandparents aren't capable of staging the event.

Politeness is not a requisite for correctness. If you were offended for any reason whatsoever, I offer no apology; just the constructive advice that you might want to suck it up, grow a thicker skin, and move on. What I do apologize to you and other HAIFers for is that I somehow overlooked your response. I was out of town, but it was nevertheless my mistake. Excuse me. Newspaper articles support nothing. They are one person's edited interpretation of another person's interpretation of facts. They are unavoidably just cases of hearsay. But when the basic facts are suspect on account of that surveying techniques are intentionally flawed, it's just a big steaming pile of hooey that gives way when stepped in by unsuspecting interlopers. We are still not in disagreement, I think. My preference is that roads be tolled, paid for by private concerns in a competitive market; it would still stand to reason that transit would receive funding from private sources, but it would likely be much less than at present, and I'd be A-OK with that. For practicality's sake, I believe that eminent domain still needs to be available, but in all other respects, it should be a market-based solution with no involvement whatsoever at the state or federal level. Let the larger entities concern themselves with inter-city and inter-state commerce, and only with that, and even then, only insofar as powers of eminent domain are concerned. Now having said the above, I recognize that a pragmatic approach to the system as it is demands a lot of highway funding. It is terribly difficult to justify large amounts of funding for mass transit if you just play it by the numbers...and I'm not just talking about public finance, but also about ridership and congestion issues. You talk about businesses that were eliminated as a result of the Katy Freeway reconstruction, but make no mention of the millions of square feet of office development in the Energy Corridor or of the new retail development along I-10 that undoubtedly wouldn't be supportable without the added capacity. Yes, all that new development is a result of "car-centric" policies as you define them, but is that really such a bad thing? And although you claim that diversifying transport options will reduce gridlock, I can (and have in numerous other threads) offer many observations related to both bus and LRT that would indicate that poorly-implemented transit actually causes congestion. On the whole, I suspect that it is largely a wash. And the vast majority of Americans think that the war in Iraq is mismanaged. That doesn't necessarily translate to that all such people would agree upon the best approach to the management of the war. The fact is that I think we need better land-use planning to guide development in the Houston area. "Better" is of course subjective. My ideas aren't in the norm will never be implemented, but I'd be lying if I answered that I thought that we didn't. I suspect that the 22% that answered that we didn't need better planning are those that didn't understand the question, those that are either satisfied with the status quo on such an issue no matter what is asked of them, those that understood the true intent of the survey question and answered that they were satisfied because people such as yourself would misinterpret a truthful answer. While there are undoubtedly a small subset of voters (which aren't the group represented in the survey) that have particular special interests, you seem to ignore the possibility that someone would vote based upon principle or aspiration. I'd also like to point out that the question referenced the "Houston area", not the "City of Houston". There is a very big difference, and the fact is the Kleinberg doesn't even interpret his survey area in the same way that the Bureau of the Census does, the same as the Houston-Galveston Area Council does, or along any other standard or political geographies. If you're going to discuss issues such as zoning, implemented at the municipal level, you need to reference a corresponding population. I accept that it is your opinion that Houston is ugly. I've spent a lot of time over the last several weeks in Austin and Dallas, and I'm not inclined to disagree with you. But as sure as I'll sacrifice a pretty face for the remainder of a girl's person--lame though I may be by many peoples' standards--I'll sacrifice a monotonous Dallas or an uber-Bobo Austin for Houston's sincerety of form any day of the week. That's my take, and you don't have to agree. Moreover, I think that it would be disingenuous to imply that 70% of the population holds your position. The survey question just isn't specific enough from which to draw meaningful conclusions. The governments comprising the Houston area largely do not plan for the future. That doesn't translate to a lack of future planning. Take our many Master Planned Communities as an example. They are large expanses of land that are most frequently outside of municipalities' control, as such being unzoned and completely autonomous, even required to establish their own utility districts to be paid for by the future residents of these places. And the results we see are The Woodlands, First Colony, Cinco Ranch, Shadow Creek Ranch, South Shore Harbor, Clear Lake, Kingwood, Fairfield, Bridgeland, Sienna Plantation, et al. By their very nature, they must be planned. They add value by promising prospective builders and residents that their neighbors will be compatible or at the very least known, at the very outset. But these are the epitome of successful planning, by virtue of the sales volume immensely popular to the local populous, yet they do not conform to your preferences almost at all. Unfortunately, local governments just aren't as effective. When they forumlate plans, many suburbs eliminate multifamily options almost altogether to appease a tyrannical majority (fearful of crime and traffic) at the polls, but then grant variances willy-nilly to developers in a first-come-first-serve basis so that there oftentimes isn't really any effective planning or certainty about what'll be built behind an individual's back fence when it all plays out. Dallas has had a bad run of it because on top of these issues, there were incidents of corruption. Excellent local cases in point supporting my argument include League City and Sugar Land. If local governments had a spine, you might have a good case to make. But insofar as they can't seem to get it together, it seems altogether dubious that zoning has a positive effect. I'll admit that there are exceptions, of course, such as West U or Southside Place, where the voters are demographically homogenous and the land area is small enough that 'special interest' voters comprise the majority of the voting population. When it comes to urban governments, the outcomes also aren't necessarily desirable. For instance, a central city might zone particular multifamily submarkets for lots of new apartments and condos, but totally neglect to zone multifamily in other neighborhoods where there is also demand. While such a policy implemented in a neighborhood such as our Midtown could cause very rapid transformation of its built environment, the substitution effect for apartments not built in other parts of the urban core wouldn't be 1:1 for additional units built in Midtown. Likewise, on account of so little land being made available, and it being so concentrated, its price will skyrocket. Those prices get passed on to the eventual tenants; if they aren't then developers lose money; if developers are going to lose money, they won't build. Such a policy also ignores where the real job growth is occuring, often taking residential units away from the new jobs and resulting in longer commute times. ...and as with the suburban example provided, there is still opportunity for numerous variances and even corruption. Speaking of land prices, since they are based upon the present value of all income from the land's use, there is a mechanism in place that regulates urban land use without government intervention and by the highest and best market-supported use. Do bear in mind that I'm not disrespecting your preferences or those that think like you. But I'm not in favor of cutting such people special favors, especially when market-driven land use planning is already providing for options that cater to such persons. Its not transformational, it is scattered, but if these projects under development prove to be successful, there will undoubtedly be copy-cats. Those greedy developers that you so readily poo-poo are on your side; they want for there to be another kind of product to build; all because it is they that want to build it...if you can support it.

I'm late to the debate, but I'd like to insert the point that the TMC has more dining options than what is actually visible from street level where Chipotle is. There are in fact a half a dozen other Starbucks locations throughout the TMC, for instance, in addition to the one on Fannin next to Chipotle. And there are a whole lot of delis and fast food places that are scattered all over the place. A couple years ago, I catalogued every single retail establishment in the TMC, and it was quite an extensive list. You'd never have thunk it unless you actually walked the whole place, though, because those places just don't have the street-level visiblity or signage like they do in typical business districts. But...this is the TMC, and it is controlled by the Texas Medical Center, Inc. So what would occur in a market-driven environment cannot be expected. Jax, I'd suggest that you take a few hours and do some exploring. There are plenty of options, sometimes below-ground, sometimes three or even four stories up. And most can be accessed without going outdoors.

There are three factors that ensure that foreign investors will continue putting money in U.S. real estate: 1) many believe that the dollar is about to bottom out, and if they've got money tied up in Dollars while the value stabilizes or begins to increase relative to their own currency, then they can make money just from currency transactions, 2) many nations have currencies that are pegged to the dollar or are heavily dependent on dollar-denominated oil production, eliminating or significantly curtailing currency risk, and 3) we're the default investment-of-first-resort for a lot of countries that perceive us as having the most stable political and legal system.