innerlooper

What is city policy on heavy trash and construction waste? Seems to me that contractors are not supposed to leave their mess at somebody's curb for city. Who do you call when some enterprising folks unload in your 'hood? 311? 911? Three letter agency? Fugghebaboutit? These guys were unloading, for this weeks pickup.....

Karst is usually associated with carbonate rocks, which are pretty scarce around here.

Um, I don't have a dog in this fight but today there were lots and lots of parked cars pinching off Bissonnet (much like Dunlavy all the time actually) near the dreaded hi-rise site, and I wonder if this is part of the new "dirty tricks"---I mean "you ain't seen nothing yet" campaign..... Must be a beech not to get traction in district court and have to take it to the streets.....

Actually owning and managing rental property is a brainer. Flipping houses successfully just means watching your dollars to make sure you aren't just being someone's free general contractor for six months. Rentals involve The Human Factor, dealing with professional deadbeats, liars, slobs, animal breeders, absconders, substance abusers, cheats, hostage-takers, free-spirits, and other assorted flotsam and jetsam of society. Yes stay at or above the Lower Middle Class if possible, that helps reduce the hassle factor, and you can do a lot of background checking, but in the end you will learn a lot about human nature that they don't teach in school or portray in the media. Dallas has an online eviction index available, but not here. Texas is pretty landlord friendly. You can get a constable to show up and move them out relatively easily. That doesn't happen in "progressive" cities like SF and NY and Boston. You just have to hope that they haven't trashed the place too badly. If you can factor in your time, and the aggravation of dealing with the occasional a##hole, then knock yourself out. Doing the numbers like mortgage, insurance, and taxes, is the easy part. Leigh Robinson's book Landlording is still in print and was updated in 2010 (the cover art though hasn't change in 33 years). He was in the rental trenches in Berkeley where a Nice Free Place To Stay is a Human Right, and he made it work there, so it is possible. He offers this one great tip: go see where they are living now. That will tell you what they are going to do to your place. And meet the gentle Pit Bulls and the couch-surfing brother they forgot to mention. To be fair there are lots of fantastic renters out there who keep places tidy and pay on time. Its a puzzlement why they have not bought, but its a fact, they exist. Happy hunting.

Thanks. I should know better and should spend time there but S-L is so.....random and confusing. I like old fashioned fora like here.

They're moving a lot of dirt at 1440 Studemont (near Arne's). HCAD comes back to Kroger...... Apologies if this is somewhere else on HAIF.

Roam you might want to wait another 6 months before doing anything more (assuming return of normal rainfall in 2012). We are in a historic drought and there has been unprecedented movement in soils and foundations all over town. Also in adding yard drains and ending the ponding under the house you may have inadvertently affected the equilibrium moisture conditions there which resulted in soil movement. You may very well have to adjust components to the new normal. As far as chemicals around the old house are concerned, you have your chlordane (probably injected around piers at some point), your pentachlorophenol and creosote (painted or sprayed on beams and floor joists by helpful termite companies), and various now-banned bug sprays and dusts. I remember when Southland hardware sold both penta and creosote, in the mid 80's. And you can still score the occasional box or bottle of DDT (see photo) at a yard sale where the ancient widow has been moved to the nursing home. I wonder if at some point an affordable parts-per-billion analyzer will become available to homeowners to see just what is floating around inside their historic swankiendas. Not to mention the lead in your paint; and the asbestos in your window glazing compound, friable heat duct insulation, and drywall mud. Don't ever do major sanding of drywall compund that was installed before 1980 without taking precautions. The solution of course is to move to a new high rise. Just don't lean on the glass railings.

My bad for not searching sw@mplot first. Thanks for the heads up.

Thank you for the info. Lets see if they put back the same rail design.

Every last rail being removed. This is a shot of rail at an upper floor during construction.

Thank you for the help. i should have found this on my own.... 2727 Kirby balcony work:

OK upon closer inspection, they are changing out balcony railings. I guess all of them. Ouch. I have some pictures but cannot figure out how to place them here. I'm not an IT person and can't find a sticky on the site that says "here is how to add photos." I see the image icon but it asks for URL. Thanks in advance.

Noticed big scaffold at 2727 Kirby. Bld is 2 years old? Anyone have info? Thanks

Niche, to change the subject slightly, how many "missing" bathrooms are there in Harris Co.? Comparing listings on HAR with HCAD there seem to be quite a few, esp in older neighborhoods. What if HCAD offered a bounty of $10 for every extra toilet on HAR? Wouldn't be a living but not bad beer money.

Thank you Niche for your analysis. You be the man. Though that 60% expense ratio seems a little high, for that place anyway. I guess my big gripe in general is with ad valorem property taxes, and how they skew (screw) the diligent middle class. Why am I penalized for wanting to live in an area where properties are cared for, where the neighbors are educated, and the nearby stores are nice? If my taxes are eight times what they would be in Acres Homes, do I get eight times the education and fire service and water pressure? A friend tried to use a relatively nice 50 unit complex in Montrose to argue down an old 4 plex he owned nearby (they have him for 375K with almost half on improvements). They told him forget it. This 50 small units is on the rolls for 1.2 million. Mostly dirt value but $70,000 assigned to 20,000 square feet of improvement. Place is almost full most of the time. Even with that 60% expenses I think they are way undervalued. Last changed hands in 1989.

Its all about MONEY and CASH FLOW. There is no way these units will be torn down. The limited parking is grandfathered. Assuming there are only 16 occupied units (I can't tell how many there are actually) at $750 a month, that is $144K a year. That is 7 years to pay off full price, according to HCAD. That is printing money my friend. Try doing that with fully assessed single family/ duplexes/ fourplexes in the 'hood. HCAD subsidizes "marginal" commercial properties by mostly taxing the land, no matter how phenomenal the business cash flow. While you, gentle homeowner/ sucker, pay the big bucks on your improvements, and your land. Do you think you could buy a place like that for only a million? Texas does not have mandatory disclosure of sale price of property. So lots of apt complexes sell privately with no hint of price to HCAD. They throw up their hands and say well we'll just go by land value. Its the golden rule. Those with the gold make the rules.

Correction.....there are new Itron remote-sense guts behind the old rusty gas meter dials. Neighbors have the same thing, new Itron devices on the old meters and old dials. This way they did not have to alert consumers as meters were not turned off, and no resetting/ keeping track of old/ new readings as had to be done with the electric meters. And presumably by not alerting public, cut down on calls from the tin-foil hat crowd. Apparently in California folks complained about the radio emissions from smart elec meters.

Yeah just a new cover.... Itron does have a retrofit remote-read dial unit for attaching to older gas meters. I see the 40 series in bad-dog yards and behind high fences. https://www.itron.co...0Endpoints.aspx

Now for the gas meters..... on my street all the old gas meters have new plastic covers on the dials....are these new smart meter retrofits as well, or just new plastic covers? The dials still look pretty old and rusty.

That's probably it. You are search champ. I just noticed he must have forgotten mine. The seal ring is in the grass and meter is from 2009. Let's see how long The System takes to figure this out.

This morning a tech went down my street (77006) and changed out all of the Itron Openway meters. These were less than a year old. Tech said "recall." I watched him do a couple and he had it down to about 15 seconds or less on loss of power. Thankfully I was not trading Mongolian uranium derivatives when my moment came. Not much on the internet about a recall. Is it time to short the stock?

Some good suggestions. I have some lighting but will add a motion sensor. Also keeping carport clear of "collectibles" seems to be a good idea. I'm just a little concerned by the boldness with which the "collector" traverses private property in the dead of night. I have several single female neighbors who don't have dogs, guns etc, just a deadbolt lock between them and potential mayhem.

Woke up at 2:45 this a.m. to find a guy going through my yard-sale stuff in the back of carport. This is at the far back of the driveway behind cars. He looks to me like a casual hunter-gatherer and not a break-and-enter man. I rapped on my window and he got the message. Didn't call cops. Even if they stopped him blocks away, there was no substantial crime, no proof of anything, and he probably knows the routine. African-American gent, somewhat paunchy, over 40, on a bike that is conveniently fitted with two white 5 gallon plastic buckets. This seems to be the same guy my neighbor chased away at sunset a couple of weeks ago so I guess I'm one of his regular stops. I thought about doing a Joe Horn but that would mean cops, EMS, lawyers, grand jurors, TV cameras, Quanell and his rent-a-mob on my front lawn, more lawyers, but no book and movie deal to pay for it all. Just 15 minutes of fame and 15 years of regret. Some of my neighbors are getting the 6' iron fence but I'm resisting. 20+ years in this neighborhood. I remember when you didn't even walk outside at night. Definitely better today. Anyone else seen him?

Thanks for the smart meter guide. Its unfortunate that they don't show actual real-time total kVa load, only maximum (the 03A part of the display cycle).

JB I am curious, looking at your chart, why do you have that spike in the morning, and then a big drop at lunch. The afternoon-evening spike is understandable. Thanks