Uptown Apartment Market

[rps324]

The apartment resident profiles everywhere are suffering right now. There just aren't that many "renters by choice" left and the most qualified ones can get a special & a great rate at new(er) construction, so why lease at the fluffed up 30+ year old place?

[MidtownCoog]

Which is why I cringe ever time I hear about a new "luxury apartment" builiding going up on Allen Parkway, Midtown, etc.

[rps324]

The market is not absorbing those new units overall. In many threads they talk about any old, deferred maintenance apartment complex as being poorly managed. This can be a result of market conditions, not just poor management.

I did a contract job last year for a friend trying to fill up an older Galleria area property near Winrock. I pushed out people like the cross-dressing heroin dealer who parked his Harley in the breezeway, the young blonde dancer who was a white slave to the Ayrian brotherhood, (did I mispell that?), primarily because the brotherhood member who came to live with her had a murder conviction. the homeless yuppie that looked clean cut, probably because he would alternate between living in a vacant and shacking up behind the panel by the dryers in the laundry room,I could go on & on. In addition to cleaning out that, you had an exodus of good, stable, quiet residents who were always leaving for either a home/condo purchase, or a newer property with more amenities. You have owners running the property in the red and barely able to make the note and payroll, so forget any rehabs. The money has to come from somewhere. then you might turn around and lease 10 apartments, but one would cancel, three would turn out to have felony convictions, another was being evicted from where they are living now, and the rest have terrible credit, maybe one or two with broken leases from 3 or 4 years ago.

Mid 90's you wouldn't have taken the last 5. Now, they look pretty good on the bell curve. I had this problem in the middle of the Galleria area. Can you imagine what apartment managers in places like Sharpstown & Fondren Southwest have to deal with?