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H-Town

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    Perry Homes Midtown Developments Article

    in Houston and the Media

    Posted

    Check out the article...it's too long to cut and paste, so try this link:

    http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/current/feature.html

    This link will be outdated after next wednesday, 3/2/05

    I posted a permanent link in a related thread here.

    Also in that post are links to 2 sidebars from the article; one about Perry's political donations, and one about alternatives to Perry-type homes.

    Informative and interesting reads!

    Shoddy Home Construction Standards

    in Houston Real Estate

    Posted

    Good read in this week's Press about shoddy home construction, Perry, and inner-loop development: http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2005-02...ture_print.html

    It contains 2 sidebars; one on Perry's political donations, and the other regarding alternatives to Perryesque construction: http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2005-02-24/sidebar.html

    http://www.houstonpress.com/issues/2005-02-24/sidebar2.html

    The beginning of the article:

    He called them "the little houses." They were the shotgun shacks and decomposing Victorians, the flophouses where the panhandlers crashed and the drug dealers weighed rock. Along the crabgrass yards of the Fourth Ward slum, they bred the kind of crime and poverty unheard of in Rich Agnew's Clear Lake subdivision. Yet walking the narrow streets with a realtor, Agnew could hardly see them.

    Instead, he saw uniform brick facades reminiscent of new row houses in old London. Sidewalks striated to resemble cobblestones led him past young shrubs planted with cookie-cutter precision. The realtor ushered Agnew through the door of a new model town house, one among hundreds sporting vanity rooms, granite countertops and shiny wood floors.

    An uppermost window gave Agnew and his wife a glimpse of the downtown skyline. The middle-aged couple imagined an exciting life of freedom from their commute, lawn mower and energy bills. But they wanted this lifestyle without the chaos of inner Houston's urban hodgepodge; they feared losing the programmed, suburban feel of the Perry Homes neighborhood where they had raised kids.

    And that's why Sutton Square, one of Perry's new urban versions of the suburbs, was almost perfect.

    "We liked the appearance of the homes that they built," Agnew says. "And we were really sold on the fact that eventually Perry would buy the rest of these little houses and build town homes."

    Since the building boom hit inner Houston in the late 1990s, thousands of home buyers have made the same leap of faith. Lured by gentrifying neighborhoods, better nightlife and rising property values, they've moved from distant culs-de-sac into the shadow of downtown, often paying more than $300,000 for skinny slices of wood and brick in new urban villages. Perry Homes is on the leading edge of this trend, advocates say, seeding an urban renaissance one foundation at a time.

    The company promises that its homes will be solid, care-free, efficient and economical.

    Agnew's new town house was all of those things -- for about a year. In 2002, cracks appeared on the floor of the garage and in the house's bricks and mortar. A pipe in a bedroom wall sprung a leak. Nails poked through tilting drywall, and off-balance doors wouldn't stay open. Thrown up in the span of a few months, Agnew's building was supposed to be warranted from major defects for a decade. But Perry Homes refused to fix most of the problems.

    Agnew's real name has been changed; he hopes to sell his house someday, and is afraid his public identification would make that impossible.

    Perry Homes agreed through a spokesman to accept a list of written questions for this story but responded a week later that it would not be answering them.

    "There's no more trust for Perry Homes, as far as I'm concerned," Agnew says.

    Customers aren't the only ones who've lost faith in Perry. Other Inner Loop residents feel equally betrayed. They've escaped the bland suburbs only to see downtown's old oaks felled and bright cottages toppled. They describe a campaign to whitewash the city's anarchic soul. They call it Perry Homogenization.

    New Condos

    in Houston Real Estate

    Posted

    Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, but I'm new and still learning the ropes here. I've also done some searching of past postings, but I still can't find a direct or concise answer to my question.

    I'm wanting to buy a condo (preferably a flat, and preferably in a high or mid-rise), either inside the Loop or near the Galleria--ideally something in the Midtown, Memorial or Allen Parkway corridor, or around the Galleria area. I'm in no immediate rush to buy anything, but if I could get something by the end of 2005, that would be great.

    Shoddy Home Construction Standards

    in Houston Real Estate

    Posted

    I remember reading something about Robert Perry of Perry Homes being the #1 donator to political campaigns in Texas and his big agenda was doing away with arbitration and lawsuits against builders, or something to that effect.

    Yup: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na...-home-headlines

    Texas homebuilders are big contributors to Republican political campaigns.

    In the 2002 election cycle, Bob Perry and his wife, Doylene, the owners of Houston-based Perry Homes, gave $4.2 million to Texas candidates and their political action committees, including $905,000 to the Texas Republican Party.

    Dubbed by the Dallas Morning News the "most influential man in Texas you have never met," the reclusive Perry gave three times more money to state politicians than anyone else in 2001-02.

    A longtime friend and ally of Karl Rove, President Bush's political strategist, Perry also gave most of the money that funded this summer's ad campaign by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacking the military record of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry.

    As a homebuilder, Perry had plenty of allies in winning a business-friendly state government. The group that has given the most money to Texas politicians

    King Fish Market On Richmond Ave.

    in Katy and Points West

    Posted

    Bummer, I never did make it over to there, either!

    I remember once when King Fish Market was sponsoring the Houston Restaurant Radio Show on KSEV (I think!) and the owner/manager said that they first person to call in and correctly give the restaurant's slogan would win lunch for two. Some bonehead called in and asked if the slogan was "Sell it or Smell it"? The moderator for the call-in show just broke up and the owner/manager just got mad. I was laughing so hard I never did pay attention to what the correct answer was. Anybody out there know it?

    I used to eat there all the time...it was worlds better (ambiance-wise) than the I-10 location and had outdoor seating. I didn't even know it closed until I tried to go there yesterday...anybody know what happened?

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