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buildingunbuildingrebuilding

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Everything posted by buildingunbuildingrebuilding

  1. a quick web search yields the following: http://www.highrises.com/city_buildings.as..._keyword=dallas Not all new, not all condo, not necessarily everything in Dallas. But if someone wants to do a comparison, feel free. And you are correct that the downtown Dallas office market is still in terrible shape. Never meant to suggest that Dallas is in any way better than Houston or has a stronger overall real estate market, just that it has had more condo demand over the past several years. As has Atlanta. Doesn't make Houston a bad place- I like it or wouldn't live here- just not a condo mecca (and as investors who bought condos here 25 years ago know, buying a condo here ain't necessarily all that wise anyway).
  2. Nobody disputes a bunch of condos were built during the early '80s. Basically everything (apartments, office, retail, etc.. ) was overbuilt here then, as oil was on its way to $100 per barrell and Houston was the center of the world. And then the bust, over 100,000 people left town, and we had an overhang well into the '90s. But if we dispassionately look at the number of condos built- and their success- over the past 5-10 years, Houston lags behind its peer cites (Dallas and Atlanta, primarily).
  3. Many of these, of course, are rental- One Park Place, Royalton (originally), 1200, Mosaic (???), Dominion, Museum, Riverway, off the top of my head. And the condos have generally struggled- Mercer, Royalton, Mark, Robinhood have all been troubled. Many others never got built. If you think Houston is a great condo market, I wish you luck. But I would have a hard time recommending high-rise condo in Houston to any developer except under ideal circumstances at an irreplacable location. Many a developer has tried and most have failed. I think that's the first time I've ever seen anyone agree with you!
  4. Except that she is right. There were certainly several condo towers built in the '70s and early '80s, but there were almost no high-rise condominiums built in Houston from the mid '80s to the late '90s. Since then there have been but a handful; Borlenghi had done well, but very few others (Randall with his midrises, of course). When you look at the number of townhomes built in the Inner Loop and Galleria during the past decade, and compare that to the number of high-rise condos, its hard to say that this is a high-rise city. How many upscale condo projects have been anounced and cancelled? Obviously some of this happens in every city, but Houston has seen far less high-rise condo construction in the past decade than Atlanta or Dallas. Wishing it were otherwise doesn't change matters. Some of the anounced deals will come to fruition, but its not as if we are the only city with condos on the drawing board. It is easy to pick on Nancy or the Chronicle, and obviously they don't know everything that is in the pipeline because developers don't want the public to know about their projects until they are ready. But Nancy is more knowledgable about what is going on in the Houston real estate market than just about any reporter I have known over the past decade. She is a solid journalist, trustworthy to not burn a source, competent and discreet. And unlike some online real estate sites, her articles are clearly written and not utter fabrications.
  5. Dallas seems to have more mixed use- Victory and West Village are examples of fiarly large projects in the city, along with Mockingbird and their Galleria. Once you get out to the suburbs Southlake has an extensive town square, Legacy Town Center, Richardson is building one near transit, Frisco near the minor league ball park. This is just off the top of my head. Austin gets mixed use because they want it, and with their tight zoning and strong neighborhood groups they can better dictate development. Both Dallas and Atlanta seem to have a much more vibrant hirise condo market, although both are in danger of being overbuilt. Scottsdale (suburban Phoenix) has a rediculous amount of new or anounced condos, but Phoenix isn't really any more urban of a city than Houston.
  6. Our lack of zoning actually contributes to the dearth of mixed use project as opposed to other cities. The difficulty in getting zoning approval in some cites lets cities steer the kind of develoment they want. Here we can build whatever makes most economic sense (not that this is a bad thing), which means we go with what we know can get done and be profitable. But once land prices reach a certain level, we are seeing developers trying to get creative to ring maximum value out of sites like BLVD Place. We shall see whether it works.
  7. Anyone who knew the developer knew Shamrock wouldn't get built. Orion should have been built, but the 2 codevelopers had a major falling out and it got all screwed up. I wouldn't count out Westcreek just yet, although that is going to take some time.
  8. BLVD Place is Uptown, judging by the flying saucers hanging from the intersections. Oaks District doesn't have the UFOs hovering, so perhaps not. Considering its proximity to West Loop as well as Highland Village/River Oaks, however, its situated pretty well.
  9. Point is that with part of each site dedicated to residential and hotel there is not that much additional retail, it is at great location in cool projects, and will be a couple years minimum before the bulk of it comes online. I would expect these would be a destination. Let's not forget that Galleria is Houston's #1 tourist venue. People get excited about retail downtown, but Uptown is Houston's top retail zone.
  10. Oaks District is about 2 years out, at least. Considering they are both planning luxury hotel and residential, I would think there is plenty of retai l to go around. Both these developments will really add to the overall strength of the Uptown area- right now other than Galleria itself there is really not that much upscale retail in Uptown when compared to other cities our size (Uptown Dallas, Lenox/Buckhead in Atlanta, for instance).
  11. Personally I'd like to see them pop up in the middle of Afton Oaks. Make them wish they had rail.
  12. its almost worth it if it brings that avatar of yours back to the thread!
  13. How long until we have a new buzzword? When every shopping center with a Crate & Barrel or Linens n Things claims to be a lifestyle center, methinks its time for a new moniker.
  14. Article indicates Class A vacancy downtown is still 10%. It was 3% in early 2001, pre-Enron, Allison, 9/11, and everything else. Most of the older buildings are really not viable as Class A space, even with renovations.
  15. The downtown condo market is really overrated- there are very few sold each year. Houston is not a great condo town in any sense, but to the extent that condos work in Houston the Galleria market is far stronger. We all talk about walkable environment, you really can get that in parts of Uptown- groceries, restaurants, bars, shopping, etc. I know the traffic stinks and there are other drawbacks, but it also offers far more than downtown to the average resident.
  16. I fail to see how a condo development just off the freeway merits a comparison to the Holocaust, melodrama or not. Somehow that doesn't strike me as a way to increase the credibility of your position.
  17. This project has been a complete disaster. The 2 original developers- Day and Tarragon- had a huge falling out and blame each other for killing the condo project. I couldn't tell from the HBJ article which one is actually doing this, although it sounded like probably Tarragon. This is a neat site, but the lack of visibility could hinder the apartments. I wish them luck- at this point, they seem entitled to some.
  18. Cypress is much more of a land speculator/value adder than they are a vertical developer. They are fantastic at identifying a site, cleaning it up, creating a vision, and then selling it off to someone else who will actually develop it. I question whether they ever intended on doing much more on this site than they have.
  19. The problem with Gross' Metronexus site is access. If you are coming from south of the site, you can't access it from either highway or feeder road. You have to access from north and U-Turn under freeway (or access from back roads, which is a tough way to drive leasing traffic). The plans are to connect the feeder road accross the railroad track, but even when that happens- several years from now- by the time the traffic crosses the tracks its almost past the site (check out TXDOT plans and you will see what I mean) and TXDOT doesn't want to have people cutting accross traffic (from U-Turns) so it limits access even then. Great visibility, neat neighborhood, but until they get access figured out it will be tough for any developer to make a go. And last I heard the mall was for sale. Anyone have an update on that?
  20. When I first moved to Houston, nearly 20 years ago, like many newcomers I would get lost in this large city. The one thing that always got me oriented was Bissonnett, as it seemed with its diagonal orientation, wherever I was all roads led to Bissonnett.
  21. Our absorption is still skewed because of the hurricanes. We added an extra 20,000+ units filled in 2005 because of evacuees. As some of them left, 2006 was negative. There will continue to be more leaving, although they are leaving much slower than they came. The number I would focus on is Class A absorption- if we get 4-5,000+, that is solid growth (albeit less than construction). If we get less than this, we have a problem.
  22. Fair enough. The percentage was overall. The properties on the proposed and under construction list are updated less, as until they start leasing the key points are when/if they broke ground and when leasing starts. If a property broke ground today and no leasing until fall, no need to update every month.
  23. True. The new Class A product has really hurt some of the older Class A and nicer Class B products in areas of high construction. The Tax Credit products tend to be in areas without as much Class A product, although there is overlap in certain areas (greater Med Center, for example). The Tax Credit properties seem mostly to negatively impact the Class C and some Class B properties. While it would be nice for developers to exercise some restraint on Class A, the capital markets tend to do that eventually. The Tax Credit development scares me more. Not only are many of these products struggling, they really hurt the older properties and that decay can drag down a neighborhood more than the new Tax Credit property improves it. The state really needs to reevaluate where they incentivize developers to build Tax Credit properties.
  24. O'Connor is on a 30-day survey cycle, so theoretically every project gets updated each month. They actually post the update date now, so you can see how close they get. Its typically between 80-90%. But you are right, both of them occasionally miss properties. Its nice to have access to BOTH services, but even then some things are still missing!
  25. ADS and O'Connor classify projects differently. ADS breaks out separately properties that are leasing and open but not finished, while O'Connor tracks whether they are open and leasing but does not have a separate category for that. Because of this, you also get more detail on projects under construction from O'Connor. And your ADS list is, I believe, a quarterly list. O'Connor shows them under construction because its updated real time and hence more current. Anyway you slice it, quite a bit of units. Houston is about the easiest market in the country for apartment development.As mentioned, some of the proposed projects won't get built (at least this year), but most will. The flip side of the Houston development coin is that since it takes much less time to get a project approved, the market responds quicker. You don't have projects that have been in predevelopment for 2 years that you are afraid to pull the plug on because of all the invested time. We get overbuilt quicker than most markets, but we get back in balance quicker (albeit our balance is at an occupancy rate a few points below most everywhere else).
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