mpbro

It would be ironic if you had to pay a lawyer to write up the contract to enforce the buyer's agent kickback...

If you are a buyer, why are you trying to get a kickback from the buyer's agent? You're not even paying realtor fees.

Such a strategy doesn't give your agent any incentive at all to get a good price for you. An agent who would enter into such an agreement with a client would simply want to close as many deals as possible.

The desire to get a kickback and the desire to find a skilled negotiator are at cross-purposes. Either find an agent who gives a kickback (because they probably aren't very good), or find a skilled negotiator. I suspect you'll save more money with the skilled negotiator.

Well the SBISD community is pretty solid, highly educated and very upper white collar, which usually translates to kids having expectations put upon them, which translates to higher scores in the school. So in the next 10 years I don't see SBISD slipping any.

I guess I worry more about encroachment from nearby areas. Encroachment could mean an actual deterioration of a given neighborhood or rezoning of a given school district. For instance, I notice that many of the HISD schools south of Buffalo Bayou seem to be really bad. It would be a shame to buy an expensive house and get re-zoned to one of those schools! This is an impossible question for you to answer, I realize, but I'm interested in speculation. ;-)

Appreciate the assistance of all you Memorial-area mavens. Here is another question: How "safe" are the SBISD schools? By "safe", I do not mean the physical safety of the kids, but rather, how likely are the current "exemplary" schools to maintain that distinction over, say, the next ten years?

For old time's sake, I was looking at Roberts and Poe elementary schools, which are south of and north of Rice U., respectively. Roberts is exemplary, but Poe is now just "acceptable". I recall that Poe used to be excellent. What a distressing development for the residents of Southampton, whose property values are no doubt suffering as a result.

Thanks!

McMansions don't have "carriage houses" or "motor courts"!

Hello again...I was browsing har.com again and came across a "lot value" listing, 15000 sf lot in Bunker Hill Village. This looks almost exactly like my previous house in Southgate, but I digress.

The list price divided by lot size pegs lot value for a 15000 sf lot at $45/sf. Is this location solid? I couldn't find any obvious faults with it. If so, then you could probably assume a 20000 sf lot might go for ~ $40/sf, or $800K. This seems to roughly jive with what I see in the listings. (A breath of fresh air relative to $150/sf land values!)

Any comments?

yeah, I linked that one in an earlier post. I like that street and we looked at one on there last year. The only draw backs that I see is that it's a single family residental street that is wedged between a townhouse/condo area and Some Tealwood condo townhomes. Ultimately, backing up to Ethan's Glen and being close to Gessner, hubby said no to it.

But I loved that Rice and some great little shops were across the street. I love being able to walk to stuff. It makes being a Foodie more fun, because you can share a bottle of wine and walk home. We do that at Bistro Provence all the time.

There are some neat things that come up on Hollow ( across Memorial from there) from time to time that look awesome.

Oh, my bad--I'm sure I looked at it when you sent the link earlier. Too much stuff goint on.

I thought of a question last night that I wanted to ask you, and you allude to it here--you say that there is plenty of stuff within walking distance (restaurants, shops, etc.). Are there any places along the Buffalo Bayou corridor that are better than others in this sense?

That was one thing I did like about Southgate--you could walk to the Village easily, although the streets weren't great for walking (narrow, bad/no sidewalks, traffic).

You guys do a great job of selling the area--thanks so much for the information. It seems like I need to get some boots on the ground if and when this thing goes forward.

Here is a home on Paul Revere that looked interesting. Any thoughts about the area?

I don't mind at all paying lot value for a home. It's the only way you know for sure that you didn't overpay for the structure. My father-in-law has a philosophy that I like: buy the crappiest house on a great street. To give you some perspective on where I'm coming from in terms of price/performance, take a look at what $900K buys you in Mountain View, CA. (For those not wanting to click, it's a 3/1, 1200sf home built in the 1920s on a 4500 sf lot, with middling public schools). A Houston "tear down" on a 1/2 acre lot is veritable luxury compared to something like this!

Who knows, land values on the west side may crater, but if they did, I suspect they'd crater everywhere in Houston. For all intents and purposes, the Energy Corridor has become "downtown" for the worldwide energy business, and it won't go away, even if oil prices crater. This wasn't the case in 1978. You look at things like the good schools, the park, the big lots, and it seems to me that all the chips are in place for this to be considered a "nice place", which should keep land values high for quite a while. Who knows, perhaps some "culture" may eventually make its way out there. Over the past five years, I've noticed a steady trend of the strip malls in W. Houston going upscale.

I have a seemingly odd question -- I'm a big fan of big trees, and in my limited arboreal knowledge, big trees like well-drained, sandy soil, like what you find around Memorial Park (or anywhere on the natural levee of a sizeable river). How are the trees in the area you describe?

Thanks

KatieDidIt--I am liking these houses you are describing and showing. Seems like the "price/performance" ratio is pretty good out there. I'll pass on the 6000 sf house, I'm afraid!

My daughter is all of 20 months. By the time HS rolls around, let's hope I'm retired. ;-) If we can get a good elementary school, we're in business for the next ten years.

The thing that amazed me, in my time living in Southgate, was that it was never, ever quiet. We were far from any freeways, but the ambient noise level was bad. Maybe it is better out in this area?

Scott08--when I was a kid, i always loved those low-slung mod houses with circular drives and huge trees. No idea why.

Thanks again...

Great info, KatieDidIt--exactly the kind of stuff I am looking for. Need to go now but will think over all you have said...

Guys,

Thanks for the info. Price is always an issue, but for the sake of this educational discussion, assume it is not. ;-) I prefer older, 1-story homes. Frankly, the less updated, the better. Looking to pay for land, find some hidden value (i.e., insurance) in the structure. We played that game in Southgate, and it worked well.

Here is a listing I thought looked about right. Seems real secluded with a 2/3 acre lot, and certainly not new!

Katie, it seems like most of the areas you discuss are outside BW8. What do you think of the area between 610 and BW8? What do you think of the 5 "Villages"? Too snooty?

I am familiar with Hershy Park, and I think it's the gem of W. Houston. A good-sized lot backing to the Park would be nice.

Thanks again.

Hello HAIF,

I've been in California for a year now, and alas, we may be returning to Houston. We used to live near Rice U., but this time we're aiming for somewhere in the Energy Corridor, focusing in the Memorial area. I am somewhat ignorant of the scene there, and I know there are many here who can educate me.

I'm looking for solid areas where large (>15000 sf), secluded lots are the norm. A place where I can go for a walk with my family is a big plus. Good public schools are appreciated.

Say that you follow Buffalo Bayou from the Tanglewood area all the way to, say, Eldridge. Can I find what I'm looking for at all points along the way? How do land values change? What is the general feeling of the important neighborhoods?

Thanks!

the chron's out with the latest info on home prices/sales. see where your hood falls.

HCAD used to release individual sales from HAR for the previous year, but thanks to a recent TX legislature bill, they cannot. This is HCAD responding to the question of whether they'd be releasing 2007 data:

Irritating--you can't have sales, unless you are exercising your legal right to protest, in which case you CAN have sales. You can't have it both ways, folks!

I think a lot of people are underestimating salaries..

Wage inflation in the oil industry has easily exceeded 8% since 2004, especially at the entry level. In 2004, an M.S. geologist with no oil industry experience might start at $65K at most oil companies. Now, good people are easily fetching $90K, and you hear cases of starting salaries in excess of $100K. Companies are adjusting wages twice-annually and adding all sorts of perks to reduce attrition. A friend of mine (recent PhD graduate in geophysics from Stanford) is starting at $115K at the supermajorest of the supermajors. Companies that might hire 1-3 new college graduate geoscientists per year are now hiring 10-20 per year. Most of these people are buying townhouses and homes.

When the big hiring push started in 2003-4, most oil&gas related companies were about as lean as they possibly could have been. The staffing levels and inefficiencies haven't reached the bloated levels of the early 1980's, but having seen both sides of this game, the lambs will go to slaughter someday...big question for Houston RE is when.

that whole affordability index thing seems outta whack to me...

You can say that again! The first year was tough, and I believe that we used some 0% credit cards as short term financing to get us through property tax season. In the end, though, it worked out pretty well for us. We had a home in a good location and got a lot of sweat equity (plus solid appreciation) out of it when we sold. My wife ended up making more than I did when she left B-school.

We have a child now, and let me tell you, the economics have changed considerably.

I have to say, though, that in Houston, the rent-vs-home price ratio is not unreasonable. When we moved to Houston in 2004, equivalent rent on the $350K house was $1400-1700. When we left in 2007, it was $2000-2300. In this tiny sample set, I'd say that rent more or less kept up with home price appreciation.

To give you some perspective, in Silicon Valley, rents are roughly similar to Houston. You might pay $2500/month to rent a house in Sunnyvale that would sell for $800K. Proposition 13 has skewed things greatly--property tax caps encourage people to not sell, and thus many landlords have an extremely low cost basis--but still, something has to give.

There's a good supply of drywallers from Mexico, as it seems to be one of the major construction trades (lots of stucco!). If you're willing to work with a "non-traditional" contractor, I suspect you'd get good work at a reasonable cost.

You could always do it yourself--it's fairly simple work, though one of my least favorite of the trades. I put up an interior wall about 15 feet in length and did the drywall on both sides over a day or two (lots of waiting for the stuff to dry). But it's definitely not a value-added thing to spend your time doing--find the right guy and you'll not spend much.

How do people afford to buy $300k+ houses on $80k annual income or less? Do they live on that much credit for their house and their possesions? Do they save anything at all?

Hmm, seems that $300K on $80K salary is right on the cusp of affordability (3.75x). I think the traditional definition of "affordability" was something like 2.8x annual income, but someone can correct me. If you bring in a 20% down payment, your cost of money goes way down (no second mortgage).

When I moved to Houston, we bought a $350K house (20% down-->$275K note), and I was the only wage-earner (not much above $80K then). My wife was in business school and we were doing some renovations to the house. As I recall, we were slightly underwater in terms of cash flow. If I hadn't been paying tuition and fixing up the house, we'd have been saving a little bit, but not much. We felt as if our situation was risky, but we were pretty sure that my wife would be gainfully employed after finishing school.

In California, you have people earning $80K who are sitting in $700K homes...tick...tick...tick...

Found this through drudge...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/348...html?source=rss

Thoughts?

flipper

Or just let Bernanke and company reduce the principal on your loan!

How do you guys find out how much a home is sold for? I checked the zillow for some homes in Houston and it did not give the sale prices for any of them. I also checked the domania and few other websites with no luck. Please help.

VoxProperty.com has historical sale prices, going back several years. A realtor can provide the same information, and also more recent sales. Good luck.

Zillows says we are 300k more than what we bought it for, Vox says we are 200k less than what we bought for it. Hope HCAD sees VOX, not Zillow!!!!

Wow, sounds like you got a pretty sweet deal. Why do you think you are coming up so low? Being surrounded by expensive newbuilds will do it.

Zillow just takes a universe of comparable sales, automatically adjusting the comps such that they "match" the target property. The zestimate is a weighted average of these comps. Having developed my own tool, I can tell you that the lack of actual public sales data is a problem in Texas. HAR releases the previous year's sales to HCAD, so it's not hopeless in Houston, but the comps are a bit "old". You'll find that zillow (and other tools) perform pretty well in areas where the land values do not change rapidly (in (x,y)) and where structure attributes are similar (age, quality, etc.).

Inside the loop Houston breaks this model. If you move two miles in any direction from West U., land values can decrease by 50% or more. You have mega mansions and junked bungalows next to one another. For older homes of the same age, one structure may be worth ten times another structure if one is crappy and the other is fixed up. It's really hard to get a computer to unravel the "true value".

I actually spent a lot of time with the guy who runs blockshopper.com in improving my automatic valuation model (AVM). They licensed it for use in St Louis. Since moving to California, I don't update voxproperty often, but I recently got around to updating the Houston comp tool. For shits and giggles, I would be interested to see how it performs on your properties, relative to zillow.

To use the tool, go to voxproperty.com, find the target address, and click on "Comparable Properties". Here is an example.

Buyer backed out! We wouldn't agree to a HUGE repair allowance for them to rewire the whole house with romex (some plugs are still 2 prong), and replace all galvanized plumbing with copper.

Another offer coming in allegedly...

flipper

Jesus, sounds like you got some flippin' nuts on your hands. On a < $300K house, what's the point of doing all that work?!? Good luck with the next buyer. As you said, if you want new wiring in that zip code, they need to find a builder.

Despite my lack of updating the blog, we managed to finish the house.

HAR Link

flipper

Congrats on another project finished.

I like the look of those French doors from the inside. They looked like black enamel, but the caption seemed to indicate stained wood. Either way, the dark accent looks nice.

Has the market slowed down in Houston at all? Out here in California, things are still going strong in select locations in Silicon Valley.

Thanks for posting. I plan to protest. But every sales-data sample I see shows that I may acutally be undervalued.

Not sure what my protest grounds will be now. I need to rethink my approach.

Well, luckily the assessments lag actual sales in most places. If you can just show that your assessment is higher than a peer property nearby, you're good.

Unfortunately, I don't display the feature that lets you compare to other houses, even those that didn't sell. It's still there, but hidden from average users. That is what you need for tax protest. I just ran out of gas on development for this site. A great feature would be a little button that says "prepare my tax protest" and just made a graph and spreadsheet of peer properties with a lower assessed value.

HCAD played a funny trick on me. So state law caps tax increases at 10% per annum. HCAD increased my land value by 20%, then *decreased* my structure value such that the total assessment only increased by 10%. My structure value went from $89K to $30K! Unfortunately, land values are not protestable--only the structure value is.