Interesting article about Houston's lack of a housing bubble (real estate, home equity)

[cheryjohns]

How Houston dodged the housing bubble | Real Estate | Philadelphia Weekly

[Lost_In_Translation]

The article is poor and very generalized.

THere are alot more reasons than jobs and under building that prevented a bubble. In fact under building could have driven prices higher just by lack of stock vs. applicants, so I'm not entirely sure that is a relevent measure on prevention of bubble inflation.

[cheryjohns]

What is true about it is the effect that the 80's had on appraisals. The loan appraisers only allowed minimal creep up, as time went by.

[Lost_In_Translation]

Originally Posted by cheryjohns

What is true about it is the effect that the 80's had on appraisals. The loan appraisers only allowed minimal creep up, as time went by.

I didn't see that in the article, just a vague mention of the '80's bubble.

I think high property taxes and limits on home equity borrowing also kept the bubble down here.

[HtownLove]

wow, a grammatical error in the first sentence.... that doesn't look promising.

Reading on...

Edit: Done reading.

The latter figures were interesting

[TimBomb]

"Houston real estate community was smarter"... I seriously doubt that.
The difference is
1) the culture, or the lack of it, especially towards the center
2) the newer, farther, better mindset
3) flooding/infrastructure issues kills older neighborhoods eventually

[Dopo]

There can't be a bubble when the prices of houses are so low.

Now, I would like somebody to give me a good intelligent explanation of exactly why houses in Houston, the 4th largest city in the country are so cheap.

[testmo]

cheap labor, cheap materials, cheap land, large amount of resources, majority of people are poor supply has got to meet a population that can afford it. houston also have a good amount of area where homes are anything but affordable for the masses. a large city that developed like houston can have that disparity

some of the oldest neighborhoods in houston are the most expensive and desirable - to the person above who said older neighborhoods are eventually killed because of flooding and infrastructure. and for older areas that did get hit they are being re-gentrified. that is far from an only found in houston thing

[Lost_In_Translation]

Originally Posted by Dopo

There can't be a bubble when the prices of houses are so low.

Now, I would like somebody to give me a good intelligent explanation of exactly why houses in Houston, the 4th largest city in the country are so cheap.

Because the land is. The houses themselves are no more expensive anywhere else in the US but the land is.

[Houston321]

The main reason the homes are cheap is because of property taxes. If you look at overall monthly payments. I have lived in several states where the prices are higher, but property taxes are closer to 1%. So in a 200K home here in Texas you are paying $400 per month more.

Also, there is also no shortage of land like in some states. I mean, on 288 about 5 minutes from the epicenter of the city, there are still cows grazing on the side of the freeway. The abundance of land drives down land cost.