HeightsGuy

Groovy, will they have wall-to-wall shag carpets (which are coming back in style;)?

I'm sorry if my use of "yuppie" offends you. I myself am 1/2 of a yuppie sub-group called DINK. This topic was extensively discussed last summer after an article regarding the trail was in the Chron: Bike Trail If memory serves, there were some comments in the paper from people who lived on Nicholson who opposed this. They were quoted as saying there would be a danger of bike riders being run over while they backed up out of their driveway. The astute chronicle writer neglected to ask them why they built a driveway over someone else's ROW instead of on Herkimer where they belong, but that's another story. Another comment was regarding the beautiful trees that would be cut down. Once again the astute chron writer neglected to ask what type of tree, of which the answer would be chinese tallow, which are nothing more than very large weeds. So yes, I am still a little angry over the delay. Construction should have already started.

That's just great. Aren't the "issues" between 16th and 19th coming from rich yuppies who built new homes with garages that exit onto the city ROW thinking it's some kind of private alley that the city shouldn't touch with a stinky bike trail that will attract vagrants?

Trees For Houston would love to hear from you. They do a lot of the tree plantings you see around town. They are my favorite environmental non-profit: Trees for Houston

Update - the tanks are coming out. Drove by this morning on the way to work and there is a digger on the property and two tanks are out of the ground waiting to be hauled off. I guess the prices have gone up enough to justify the costs. And by gone up I mean ridiculously so: Right around the corner on Nashua between 14th and 15th on a subdivided lot: $384,900 Around the other corner across from Park on Prince development on a subdivided lot: $349,500 Down the street on 14th between Dian and Beall street on a subdivided lot: $459,000 And finally on the corner of 14th and Beall, corner lot being sold as "land value" (ha!): $295,000 That's just a sampling. Do an har search on 77008 with the subdivisions of either heights annex or clark pines and you will see the crazy prices. And it looks like they are selling, so who am I to judge.

My view is that it's not so much an issue of a Middle Eastern or Muslim corporation taking over (to me, a corporation is a corporation is a corporation) operation of these ports, it's that it's a government-controlled corporation taking over control. I would protest a government-controlled corporation of ANY country taking control of operations of US ports. I think the dissenters in Congress and elswhere need to articulate that, and take the whole "Muslim" equation out of it. All that does is inflame things even more, and it's Bush as much as anyone fanning those flames by saying anyone against this is an "Islamaphobe".

Editor, have you made any changes today? The site is far faster than I remember it being as of late.

Did you really just tell me to STFU????? Unreal. Who are you, and where are your manners? A beer may very well be singular when you're at lunch during the workday when you have to go back to work. However, "a beer" is not "a beer" when it comes to hunting, fishing and golf. It's right there in the men's handbook, haven't you ever seen it?

I'm a Texan just like most of you are, so, thinking like a Texan, a lot can be explained by one thing: beer. Cheney said he had a beer a lunch. Right. Who has ever had "a beer" at lunch on your day off out in the country at a ranch after spending the morning walking around. That is the same lame excuse heard 500 time a night by police officers as they make drivers walk an invisible line and count backward. Sorry, no such thing as "a beer". Once you make the assumption they were all drinking, everything else falls in line. If the VP has beer on his breath, he's not going to talk to a deputy, press, or anyone for that matter until the next day. That said, it's all ridiculous. If he wasn't drinking it's an accident, and if he was drinking, you'll never be able to prove it, and, still, it's an accident. I have issues with the way the current administration handles things and think the dems would do a better job, but I don't think there's a person out there that thinks this was anything but an accident. Time for the press to drop it, it was funny for a day and made for a great episode of The Daily Show Monday night, but now it's getting old.

Pretty sure he's referring to Rothko.

I'm with Midtown, the whole thing looks like a home-grown Jenny Craig. Let me know when El Rey opens another location, then I'll be interested.

It's your imagination. If anything, the pace has picked up in the last 6 months, but mostly below 18th Street. Park on Prince has really just started, and I believe they are building sold units only, not the other way around. You may not have noticed because it sat for 4 months after the fill dirt was brought in and the driveways poured. Elsewhere, there is new stuff being sold as soon as it's built. The large tract at 18th and Beall just started land activity with new for-sale signs after sitting for over a year, and about 20 homes have been built and sold on Prince, Dian and Nashua between 13th and 15th since the announcement of Park on Prince. However, where I do see traction slipping is in the +$300,000 catagory. Too many greedy builders that think the area can support nothing but expensive homes. That's just not the case. Homes less than $250,000 are being sold like M&M's. What your seeing with the houses in the OSB stage is that finishers aren't keeping up with framers. I am particularly impressed at the pace of framers these days. Frames these days are going up in 4-5 days.

You are by no means the first person back there. What's back there now are investors that have no qualms about owning rat shack rentals, and long-term investors that have the money and patience to wait on their payday as there are no quick turnarounds back there. I believe the payoff is out there, but it's a long way out.

Are you looking to buy for yourself or flip? If flip, don't believe the hype on the Saturday morning infomercials. There are too many amateurs in the field driving up the price of foreclosures to make any money on them. Also, with interest rates so low, it takes a lot to actually get to a foreclosure, and it usually means there is something terribly wrong with the listing in the first place as in Hyde Park's example.

The only thing going for the 5th Ward is that it's close to downtown. As far as gentrification goes, the 4th and 6th wards are sandwiched between desirable locations. The 5th Ward does not have that "luck". There is nothing beyond the 5th Ward except more of the same as you continue northeast. The same could be said of the 3rd Ward and southeast, but Eastwood helped to anchor the area over the years, and there was always and continues to be a thriving community to the southeast even if it doesn't look exactly desirable to investors.

A good one for the Heights? Please re-read the CYA guide, I'm sure it didn't say you could get away with a statement like that.

What do you mean by free? Nothing is free. 3% of a $200,000 home is $6000 the last I checked. I wonder where the seller would come up with that kind of money? Surely they wouldn't factor that into the sales price, would they;)?

Sorry to burst your bubble PureAuteur, but I drive through that intersection almost daily. It's clearly marked. However, always fight a non-speeding traffic ticket with a trial by judge. Costs you almost nothing except time spent, and Houston cops are notorious for not showing up. Another spot in the Heights that gets a lot of activity is on Shepherd just north of I10 going over the bridge at the RR tracks. About once a week at the bottom of the bridge police will set up shop with 2-3 cruisers and a cop with a handheld radar gun. I've seen up to 6 cars in a row waiting to get their ticket as people tend to come flying over the bridge easily 15-20 mph over the limit of 35 mph.

It does beg a question..... Editor, why doesn't 6th WardMemorial Heights/Rice Military have it's own board? Not enough activity?

Red and Dal, re-read my post, I meant to say buyer's agents instead of RE agents as a whole. I do think RE agents provide a valuable service for those who need it, but I think most of that is acting as a seller's agent. Buyer's agents do me no good. I don't really care that I have access to the forms, as a buyer I want access to the listings. I would much rather pay a lawyer $500 an hour to act on my behalf with the contracts than paying someone with a RE certification 3%, or even worse giving 3% to the seller's agent "acting" on my behalf. I've always had a lawyer at my side when I buy houses, and I hate that I have to pay out of my pocket for them while giving 3% to someone that doesn't make a sound on my behalf the whole time I am there. Dal, you're right, the MLS database is proprietary. I fully understand that and agree they are under no obligation to open it up. However, someone out there will build a free MLS eventually that will match the current one. As I stated before, once that happens it's only a matter of time til buyer's agents go the way of travel agents and full-service brokers.

That is the quote of the day. The Internet should have by now effectively neutered the real estate agent profession in the same way it neutered the travel agent profession. The Internet is about information, but somehow the real estate industry has managed, to date, to keep the keys to the MLS out of the average person's hands. It's only a matter of time til someone out there reinvents the way homes are sold using the Internet. RE agents can argue til they're blue in the face at how much of a service they provide, but, if every for-sale property was listed in a central database with full access to everyone, there would be no need for buyers/sellers to give 6% of a sale to a "circle" of people who call themselves experts. Build honest parity into the MLS, and watch how far that 6% drops under competitive pressures. Don't believe me? Ask an ex-travel agent (who is now in a new line of work because they were priced out of that industry) what happened when people figured out they could book their own vacations through the Internet.......

Not likely. UHD fits a specific need. It's for people going back to school long after graduation, not 18 yo HS grads. If you want the classic college experience (such as dorms/frats/etc.) UH Central is 5 miles away.

I saw the Target banner, it's flying on an old fake oil derrek looking structure, it's says July 06. Ty and his bullhorn needs to show up soon cause there's looks to be a lot needed before then.

Oh, whatever, that's like saying I can't call myself Rob because my birth Certificate says Robert. 49ers of the Gold Rush got the name because the migration was in 1849, and the 76ers are named that because Philly was the center of the Revolution that if you didn't know was in 1776. The fact that the "49ers" already were a noun when the football team took the name does not discount the fact that at some point someone started calling the 1849ers the 49ers. When Philly came up with the name, they went ahead and shortened Spirit of 1776ers to 76ers up front. The fact that Houston didn't do this to begin with does not stop us from calling them the 36ers, or the Sixers for that matter.