Ross

The sibling that wants to pay can file a partition action to force the non-paying sibling to sell their half. The paying sibling will then own the property, or it will be sold and the proceeds split. But, I am not a lawyer, and I may be completely wrong. Talk to a real lawyer for the details.

On Google Earth, it says 10/27/2012 for the imagery date for my house.

If society chooses to take him out of circulation, then society gets to pick up the cost.

Which oil company owned stores are you thinking of? ExxonMobil has sold all of their stores in Houston, Valero isn't an oil company, but a refiner only, Shell stations were sold several years ago, and there aren't that many other oil companies with stations.

Who is the holier than thou dweeb with the beard, and why is he qualified to make decisions on someone's home?

SW corner of Voss and the freeway was the building with Red Adair's offices.

The North Side of Gramercy is in Southside Place.I sort of wish we had bought the house we looked at there in 1998.

Forget the tea shop. How about a bagel place. The Greater Heights area is a bagel wasteland. In fact, I think there is a bagel exclusion zone North of I-10. This insanity must stop! Forget the tea shop. How about a bagel place. The Greater Heights area is a bagel wasteland. In fact, I think there is a bagel exclusion zone North of I-10. This insanity must stop!

Why do all the plats show Allston as 70 feet wide? Do we need to tear down some encroaching properties?

I saw that and started thinking that Illinois must have strange sales tax laws. In Texas, you pay the tax based on where you use the goods, or where they are delivered. Not where the office happens to be. You could have your office in Wink, and still pay Harris county tax on deliveries to IAH.

That sounds like a good case of terroristic threats. Or, a good way for her to get shot. You do not point a firearm at someone who is legally on the street.

Washington is important because it's the main route I take driving East or West through that part of town. It's an easy way to get from TC Jester to anything between there and Downtown. Does anyone really think rail construction would be beneficial to the businesses that are on Washington now? Would rail really help access to the existing businesses, or would it make it so hard to get to them, no one would visit?

Nobody sane wants rail on Washington. There's not enough room, and it's too important as an East-West route to screw it up for 30 years while Metro attempts to build rail.

That just means a city CAN regulate land use. It doesn't mean a city should, or that a city will fo a good job of land regulation. In fact, it's my view that city regulation should be avoided entirely for esthetic items, and should be restricted to life safety and infrastructure issues. Want to preserve an old building? Great! But don't try to force your neighbor to fit your idea of what a building ought to look like, especially if you do it after the fact.

They were all over. Lots of the Valero's you see were 7-11 stores.

luciaphile, the rules you mention apply to the entire city, and were driven mostly by uniform code changes. The Historic Districts were driven by those who think their esthetic values are better than their neighbors, and that certain parts of town should remain embedded in amber, regardless of the desires of the other property owners. The City should have zero interest in the appearance of a structure, as long as the appropriate code requirements are met. Appearance controls should be through deed restrictions, not ordinance.

@photo, so you think it's OK to force a homeowner to comply with esthetic restrictions AFTER they purchase a home? That's pretty totalitarian, don't you think? I like history, but don't really care if every old building in town disappears if that's the wish of the property owners. In a just world, the preservation ordinance would not have been enacted.

I don't have a problem with preservation. What I have a problem with is people who come in after I purchase a property and try to impose new rules on what I can do with that property, especially when the rules they impose are to enforce their sense of esthetics. I would have had no real objection to the historic district ordinances if there was an opt out for current owners.

I was in the Chevron station in Midtown one time when a guy came in and got all aggressive with the clerk. The clerk wasn't having any of it, and told the guy to leave. When the guy didn't leave, the clerk grabbed a bat from under the counter and whacked the guy in the ribs a few times, and then said the knees were next. The aggressive guy left shouting threats. That was the sort of thing that made us think moving to Timbergrove to raise our child was a good idea.

It is extremely expensive to bury power lines, especially on existing streets. Some streets do have buried high voltage lines, there's one that runs down LaBranch, 140,000 volts, I think. When the substation at LaBranch and Tuam was connected, they had to freeze the lines to keep the insulating oil from running out while they made the tap.

The Downtown Post Office has a lot of terrazzo inside.

Many, if not most, of the townhouses in Houston have HOA's, even though they are fee simple properties. The type of ownership doesn't really have anything to do with the existence of an HOA.

The medium tactical vehicles are more commonly called trucks. The Navy was around 600 ships in the Reagan era, so it isn't really that big now. The 3 carriers under construction will replace existing carriers when they go into service. The Navy is the main means of national defense and force projection when it's needed in a hurry, and probably needs to stay the same size as at present. I would drop the F35/F22 programs and build more F16's and F15's for the USAF, plus some more A-10's, but would transfer the A-10's to the Army, sinc eht eAF has little interest in close air support. To save money on defense, leave Afghanistan and Iraq, neither of them is a threat to the US.

I've thought for some time that any money spent fighting climate change is wasted. Better to spend on adaptation, which has a better chance of working.

Wow, the building on Austin is on land valued at over $6 million by HCAD. That doesn't bode well for the future of the structure.