Houston's biggest challenges are transportation, inequality, and affordability, according to Zillow's chief economist (Austin: real estate market, 2014)

[theone33]

Q&A: An outsider's view on the Houston real estate market - Houston Chronicle

[hsw]

Economists tend to be idiots w/no money of own (not surprisingly)

Markets solve themselves over time via prices and via choices of buyers/sellers at various prices

Cos. move high-paying jobs to where highest-paid/most talented want to live/work

Well-run, profit-maximizing cos. move lower-end jobs to cheaper, more efficient locales like TX or ThirdWorld, dpdg upon nature of work....for ex., Austin is a huge back-office town for SV cos. like AAPL: no competent, highly paid software engineer would be caught dead in Aus but grt affordable town for lesser-paid back-office guys

Best workers seek jobs/locales where can maximize own self-interest....so best balance of QOL/COL, etc

Commutes are self-solved....most productive tend to commute in off-peak hrs, both AM and PM; and can afford houses in desirable locales nr major offices

And in era of modern tech, anyone competent works from home/wherever and telecommutes when don't have physical mtgs scheduled....much of why traffic is a non-issue in SV, arguably world's wealthiest corridor but heavily populated by workaholics who work from anywhere/anytime, not needing to drive 20mis to some office at some peak-traffic hr amongst the clock-punching lazies....

BTW, laugh abt the affordability nonsense: Hou/DFW/Aus are undoubtedly the world's most efficient places to do business&live for anyone who isn't wealthy; anyone rational uses them as benchmarks of how cheap it is to build new houses/offices/factories/shops, etc etc: in US, NYC, CA, IL, MI, etc are the benchmarks of corrupt, commie places w/absurd costs/taxes for same stuff avail far, far cheaper in TX

[testmo]

I hear of workers in silicon valley commuting ugly miles and hours to get to work. If you know houston business quite a bit cannot be done by telecommuting.

[houstonfan]

with the internet and social media today, anyone and anything can have a soundbite in the media. It doesn't mean they have anything intelligent or factual to say.

[Jack Lance]

These people are here in co-operation with the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, so I don't think you can just write them off as irrelevant economist...

[Dopo]

The U.S. Has a Social Mobility Problem, But Not the One You Think - CityLab

Of all of our ideological disagreements in the U.S. over the state of the economy and how best to improve it for those struggling, one narrative has garnered consistent consensus: It's been getting harder and harder in America to climb the income ladder. President Obama has decried this trend. So has Marco Rubio.

They fear that the U.S. doesn't offer as much social mobility as it once did. A child who works hard today can't expect the same returns as her parents or grandparents once could. This suspicion is troubling – and politically potent – because it undercuts America's claim to be "the land of opportunity."

[KerrTown]

Houston is way too spread out. Those disparate business districts hurt connectivity (and thus opportunity). I'm lucky to live on the Westside, where The Galleria and to an extent Greenway Plaza are much closer to me than Downtown, but for the commuters in the east, south, or to a lesser extent north of town trying to get to those two places is a nightmare.

Plus the public transit only runs Downtown, so I would wear out my car driving the entire 20-30 miles door-to-door each way to Galleria/Greenway instead of the 5 miles to the nearest METRO Park & Ride (and the rest to Downtown on a bus without worrying about parking fees, etc). Not to forget about the bumpy roads closer towards town and other miseries of the daily grind in this town!

Plus the selling point about the cheap housing, COL, cost of doing business is eroding. Houston and Texas don't have an advantage outside of that (low prices are always an unsustainable advantage). What happens when the next hotspot pops up and business start leaving here for there to chase the next trend? Where is the sustainable advantage in this town?

[Jack Lance]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

Houston is way too spread out. Those disparate business districts hurt connectivity (and thus opportunity). I'm lucky to live on the Westside, where The Galleria and to an extent Greenway Plaza are much closer to me than Downtown, but for the commuters in the east, south, or to a lesser extent north of town trying to get to those two places is a nightmare.

Plus the public transit only runs Downtown, so I would wear out my car driving the entire 20-30 miles door-to-door each way to Galleria/Greenway instead of the 5 miles to the nearest METRO Park & Ride (and the rest to Downtown on a bus without worrying about parking fees, etc). Not to forget about the bumpy roads closer towards town and other miseries of the daily grind in this town!

Plus the selling point about the cheap housing, COL, cost of doing business is eroding. Houston and Texas don't have an advantage outside of that (low prices are always an unsustainable advantage). What happens when the next hotspot pops up and business start leaving here for there to chase the next trend? Where is the sustainable advantage in this town?

Location is a sustainable advantage is it not ? In the middle of the country on land and sea trade routs. Weather that is business friendly year round, and proximity to natural resources ? What else do you need to be sustainable ?

[Sunderpig2]

I wouldn't worry about any of that stuff. The things that need to be changed the most, can't, so why push against that mountain? Besides, who is this Zillow's guy, and why should we value what he says? Outsiders often know the least about what's going on (and this guy is supposed to be an outsider).

I'll take a long-time native Houstonian's view, knowledge, and comments any day over some armchaired, stuffy guy locked away in a building. Plus, he's been paid/funded to come up with complaints and negatives to throw around. He has to say negative things, but we don't have to listen or bother.

[lipbalm]

Originally Posted by Dopo

The U.S. Has a Social Mobility Problem, But Not the One You Think - CityLab

Of all of our ideological disagreements in the U.S. over the state of the economy and how best to improve it for those struggling, one narrative has garnered consistent consensus: It's been getting harder and harder in America to climb the income ladder. President Obama has decried this trend. So has Marco Rubio.

They fear that the U.S. doesn't offer as much social mobility as it once did. A child who works hard today can't expect the same returns as her parents or grandparents once could. This suspicion is troubling – and politically potent – because it undercuts America's claim to be "the land of opportunity."

I just think it's the nature of empires that rise and then fall. We are on the downward slope for sure.
History is repeating itself, it has happened to all the great empires of the world, and the U.S. will be no different. It's gets big, bloated with bureacracy, debt, and it just can't sustain itself anymore. Look up how Rome fell, it did not do so in one day but was a gradual erosion until it was just a shell of its former glory.