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That is a novel concept. Most everywhere else, condo developers will usually need a certain percentage of pre-construction sales just to get the financing they need. These guys built on spec and probably got less favorable financing deals. So, it would totally make sense that they would let the cost of carry run up just to time the market. And this must have been their strategy considering that they have sold a measly 4 out 20 units with a substantially complete building. Even that Morrison Heights thing has done a better job getting units sold prior to completion.

The theft stats did spike, but the other stats are just starting to creep in the wrong direction. There is no big crime spree. But, this is definitely the time for HPD to keep this area from becoming a hot spot. I have heard that CM Cohen has received a lot of complaints on crime and HPD is supposed to be adjusting patrols to give the Heights more attention. HPD did catch all of the guys who robbed the Denny's over by Memorial Park and I-10. HPD is actually a pretty effective police force once they get on it. The problem has been that they have looked the other way in the Heights and blamed residents' carelessness for the increased property crime.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Tension-follows-rash-of-home-invasions-by-masked-2293056.php There have been a couple of incidents of people getting followed from the Kroger at 20th and robbed in their driveway. And there were a bunch of driveway robberies in Oak Forrest. But, this sounds more like the perps are looking for a big stash of cash. It sounds a lot like what the perps in the article above were doing a few years ago.

http://blog.chron.com/foodchronicles/2013/09/torchys-to-offer-free-breakfast-tacos-to-heights-customers-sept-26/?cmpid=rrhoustontx Torchy's opening with free breakfast tacos. Article says that Torchy's will have a full bar.

http://www.1111studewoodplace.com/1111_Studewood_Flyer.pdf The flyer for some additional retail/office space at 1111 Studewood says that Los Cucos is coming in addition to another Piatto location.

https://www.facebook.com/HoustonCrimeAlerts This one has been pretty good about getting out the word on crime in the Heights even though it is open to all inner loop neighborhoods. There are also "nextdoor" boards for the east and west sides of the Heights that are pretty good tools for communicating with neighbors about suspicious vehicles, etc. HHA is too slow to get anything done to expect them to take advantage of social media. They have done a decent job communicating with HPD and CM Cohen about the rise in crime. The folks who really need to get on social media are HPD and the constables. Why in the world wouldn't they set up FB pages/message boards with residents or have some sort of text message alert for residents? I mean, I can find out what Miley Cyrus is doing just about every minute of the day via Twitter but have no way to find out that the police are looking for an axe murderer down the street from me. I have heard about some other cities that have had a lot of success enabling 911 to receive pictures via text. Police are able to get a photo ID of a perp in real time instead of just a verbal description. All the HPD/Constable patrol vehicles are already set up with lap tops.

Most of the crime in the Heights that has been part of the recent spike has been the kind of crime that avoids any chance for confrontation with a homeowner or resident. Crooks in Houston know that there is a good chance that homeowners are armed. Thus, they are primarily doing smash and grabs with vehicles late at night, b/e on a residence during the day when no one is home, or raiding garages and porches when no one is around. My point is that when you let this kind of crime thrive, it is only a matter of time before the hard core hoods get word that there is little police presence in the neighborhood and you see a rise in more serious stuff.

The giant tract between 25th/26th Nicholson/Rutland is owned by Height Block 39 LLC. The Ashland Square property is owned by 501 Heights, Inc. They look to be separate and distinct entities as best as I can tell. Unless the folks behind Ashland Square have purchased the tract to the larger tract to the south, it would be a bit too soon to presume that Ashland Square is going to be anything other that what it is advertised to be. Rohe and Wright are pushing the envelope a bit with their pricing, but they do build very high end stuff. I also think Ashland Square is pricing themselves a bit optimistically, but that is what builders do. But, there is a night and day difference between W. 26th and W. 18th. The road noise from 610 is significant on W. 26th, but hardly an issue on W. 18th. The Rohe and Wright houses will be close enough to everything on 19th street that you can walk there without breaking a sweat. W. 26th is far enough that on hot days you would have to jump in the car to avoid arriving at Torchy's all torched by the sun.

From 2011 to 2012, B&Es doubled in the Heghts while most other crime stats continued on with a steady decline. Most of the crimes were smash and grabs from vehicles and stealing unsecured bikes from garages. HPD saw it as a problem of people being careless and leaving valuables in their vehicles and did little to step up patrols to catch the crooks. While it is certainly true that the crimes were preventable, the lack of HPD response has given the Heights a reputation as being easy pickings, following a similar pattern as the Midtown/Montrose area. HPD needs to come out in force in the Heights and make it clear to crooks that the Heights are off limits.

In markets like West U and Tanglewood, fully renovated means nothing when it comes to whether the original housing stock will bought to demo or to live in. Someone looking to build a 2-3 mil house in the neighborhood will not blink at paying 500-600k for a lot. There are currently over thirty properties in West U on the market for over 1 mil. There is nothing under $400k that is a single family home. You are making broad statements about West U v. the Heights based on a very, very narrow segment of the market that is still expensive (all of your examples are over 600k) and very hard to find. All you have done is bought into the realtor's view of the world that price per square foot is all that matters. Someone who is looking at spending 300-500k on a house has a lot of options in the Heights but has no options in West U. Thus, your argument is really nothing more than an exercise in false real estate market logic that has no foundation in reality. In short, if you cannot afford to pay over 600k, price per square foot is completely meaningless.

But you are choosing properties in West U that are very rare and are just a broken AC unit away from being a teardown and comparing them to properties in the Heights that are abundant. Thus, even if you are right that there is better value in West U, the fact is that those properties are so scarce that it is practically a moot point.

Actually, farm to table Thai makes lots of sense in Houston. A lot of Asian vegetables grow well in Houston's hot and wet climate. Eggplant, basil, chilies, yardlong beans, clinatro, lemon grass, mint, sweet potato, and Chinese kale are some examples of typical Thai vegetables and herbs that grow well in Houston. Even jasmine rice, used in Thai rice noodles, is grown in Texas.

You have cherry picked the snot out of that list from West U. Those properties are the exception in West U. Currently on the market in West U, there are 9 houses over 2 mil, 25 over 1 mil, 9 over 900k, 3 over 800k and 8 from 0-799k. Sure, it may be possible to pluck a tear down away from a builder in West U, but the vast majority of the housing in West U is 1 mil+.

http://treadsack.com/news/foreign-correspondents/ The plans now include a farm to table Thai restaurant to share the same property as Hunky Dory.

I know you are being sarcastic, but I did wonder on that thread whether Houston will ever see a trend of condo conversions. I think there is still a lot of land where you can build town homes in the high 200/low 300 range (east side, 3rd ward, etc.). But once that land starts to get scarce, you may just see a real condo market emerge inside the loop.

http://www.greenwoodking.com/images/pdf/marketreport7.pdf Not enough detail to tell anything about the demand side, but you can clearly see all throughout GK's market area a major decline in inventory and a major price hike as a result over the past year. With an average price pushing through the mid 400s, the Heights will naturally see a smaller pool of buyers because there are way more people who can afford to pay under 400k than over. So, a plateau would be expected at some point. But if inventory continues to tighten, prices will continue to move up. The new development in and around 19th street will help take away some sticker shock for people looking at the neighborhood.

I have been under my house and have seen the foundation. Yes, lots of shims and a combination of original brick and replacement cinder blocks. My house was leveled in 2005. It is still level today despite floods and droughts. I have friends with new construction and the state of the art pier and beam systems who have been dealing with cracks for years. All their builder will do is patch up the drywall and repaint. Their house is almost out of tolerances and will require a very expensive repair. Less is more when you build houses on mud. An occasional lift here, shim there, beats the crap out of having to plunk down $20k in exchange for a lifetime warranty from a company that will probably go under within a few years.

The construction trailer looks to be for the townhome construction going on just north of the site. It is called "Ashland Square" and will have something like 16 units. There was a banner for the townhomes hung up on the trailer this weekend. I would suspect that whoever holds that land is going to wait for some of the recent spurt of new construction to get absorbed by the market before making a move. The biggest problem with building out a huge site like that inside the loop is that you end pushing up inventory and competing against yourself, especially if you go dense like Uptown Homes is doing at 27th and Harvard where the elementary school used to be.

Gas station is not set up for 18 wheelers.

Actually, the guy who told me that bungalows are over engineered is an engineer who has spent most of his life working on repairing foundations in block and beam houses. I have personally never had to pay a penny to repair any of the original structure on my house. It is all the garbage work of house flippers that cost a lot to redo. For some reason in 1920 they could build a house frame that could last 90+ years but after 2000 they can't replumb a bathroom without putting in a fixture upside down.

People in the Heights do not tell everyone else how much better their house is. They just have pride in their homes, which most people in Houston do not as the vast majority live in stucco/hardiplank boxes that have absolutely no redeeming architectural quality. The old ranch houses in Houston are ugly. Most have very few architectural elements and are just bland as bland can be. And Craftsman homes were not the tract home of their day. There is tremendous various between craftsman homes. There were a number of different catalogs with distinctive designs. There is way more variation as a result of the catalog system because people were not tied down to a particular builder who owned the entire subdivision but was only going to build from a small set of plans. And there is plenty that is special about them. The craftsman homes were part of the Arts and Crafts movement. The Arts and Crafts movement was a reaction to the extravagances of the Victorian period while also resisting the increasingly diminished amount of design as the result of mass produced housing. Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School was essentially born out of the Craftsman movement in architecture.

The Heights is mostly craftsman. The old ranch houses do not have much of an advantage over the older craftsman bungalows. At this point, the original wiring on both should have been replaced as well as all the mechanicals, fixtures, etc. As far as framing, no big advantage either way. Craftsman bungalows have old growth hardwoods and are generally over engineered structurally. The ranches have the benefit of some more modern engineering and design, but look out if that slab starts to move. Lot size in the Heights really isn't that small compared to the ranch houses. Most ranches are on 7-8000 sq ft lot. The set back is huge, making most of the green space the front yard. Deed restrictions prevent fencing in the front yard. Thus, if you have a dog or don't want your toddler running out into the street, you are confined to the back yard which isn't that big. No big advantage on lot size.

http://swamplot.com/heights-telephone-museum-to-be-renovated-into-lofts/2013-08-29/ I was really nervous about this property getting demoed and becoming the Ashby Highrise of the Heights. Good news that it will be converted into lofts with the remainder of the property becoming single family residential.

You have picked houses that are on opposite ends of the spectrum for each neighborhood. East of Kirby is Roberts Elementary. Good school, but Poe is where everyone wants to be. Also, being in the shadow of Rice's football stadium isn't as attractive as being a hop and skip away from 19th st. So, the Southgate example is on the low end of the spectrum for that neighborhood. Most everything west of Kirby is 1 mil+. The new construction on 18th is way on the high end of the spectrum in the Heights per sq ft. It is a fancy custom builder who will put in all the high end stuff. The house will probably sell for $800k. 2900 sq ft houses from an inferior builder have been getting @730k in the neighborhood. 869k is not going to happen, but 780-800k will. Lots of great stuff happening on 19th st. adding value to that area.

The pockets of old 1950s homes around Braeswood are definitely the best value in the City right now if your main concern is schools. But there are definitely some big trade offs. The 1950s housing stock has low ceilings and very drab exteriors. If there is a problem with the old slab foundation, you are looking at a very expensive repair. While the little neighborhoods are nice and quaint, S. Main is a dump. The nearest decent restaurants/shopping are all up on Bellaire/Holcombe. Access to downtown is not very good compared to the Heights. The Heights has seen a big spike in B/Es because HPD has basically sat on their butts and let it happen. That kind of crime is more likely in neighborhoods where the lots are smaller and there is alley access to garages. More opportunities in a smaller area than in a more spread out neighborhood. But all the other crime stats in the Heights have been steadily declining for years. The number of derelict properties in the Heights is rapidly declining. In three years on my side of the Heights (WHD), two crappy apartment complexes are flipped/in the process of getting flipped, an old warehouse was demoed and is going to be 4 single family homes, and about a dozen properties that were anywhere from needing updating to just barely being able to be saved have been redone. Even the SW quadrant of the Heights is seeing a major clear out of old derelict rentals. A few pockets remain, but Rome was not build in a day. If you are just looking for the best roof and schools inside the loop for your buck, the SW corner of 610 is the best bet. But, if you have the money to pay for private school and value the amenities of the Heights, it is worth every penny.