What Makes a Neighborhood Go Downhill in 20 Years? (Houston, Sugar Land: hardwood floors, real estate)

[desertsun41]

The progression and decay of a neighborhood:

Greedy Home Builders trying to cram in more and more units per acre will build these high density human filing cabinets.....oops I mean condos. You've seen them. A 4' deep driveway, 8' deep back yard, each building an arms length apart, very unattractive floor plans, narrow streets, no tree plantings..........

Home Buyers who see nothing but new and cheap. 2 magic words: "new and cheap". Well it's better then renting right? Not so fast.

Fast forward 5 years, 10 years, 20 years later. In 4-5 years Mr/Mrs Home Buyer wants to sell and move up to a bigger home with kids on the way etc. Well they can't sell it because it is no longer a new and cheap home. It is now a used over priced Turkey with nothing going for it among a hundred other exact identical dwellings.

Soon Mr/Mrs Homes Seller gets frustrated and just puts renters in so they can go ahead and move anyway. Repeat this scenario for each unit as each seller can not sell. (Imagine your precious home sweet home being called a unit) How awefull!!!

10 years down the road you have an entire neighborhood full of tenants. Tenants who might have been good tenants at one time. But now they see that no one else gives a damn about the deteriorating conditions so they no longer do either.

15 to 20 years later you have all out slums. No owner has put any money into their places over the years, these owners no longer screen tenants because they don't care either...anyone who offers a promise to pay the rent on time is a prime candidate to rent. By now these dumps have been refied and refied some more as the owners keep on squeezing equity out by way of equity loans and 2nd mortgages.

Now the only answer is to bulldoze the whole damn place and start over with single family detached homes on a minimum of 50 x 100 lots.

[EasilyAmused]

The fast and cheap builds erupting from 2003-2007, on 5000 sf lots, on the outter rings of the metroplex have everyone nervous. Construction at it's most crapolicious.

[GrandviewGloria]

Oh Alidoremi, you obviously have not been re-educated to see things properly. Your old neighborhood did not "go downhill". No! It simply has been blessed with diversity!

Now, instead of the boring whitebread existence you once suffered there, the residents enjoy all the throbbing vibrancy of the Multicultural Wonder Rainbow!

You're seeing things like crime and noise from the eyes of one who has not been trained to see them the right way. Objecting to crime is one of the many ways that evil White racists oppress all the many colors of the rainbow that make up over 91 percent of the world's population, now.

Instead of seeing the crime, declining property values, and Hooptie Wheels, you should, instead, imagine big block parties, where people of all colors sample the many delicious flavors (like Endangered Species Bush Meat from Africa!!!) of food from all over the world. You should be seeing happy children with food running down their faces!

Instead of Boom Cars, you should be hearing the sweet voice of the Diversity Koolaid Lady, as she soothingly advises you to "drink deeply"!

[studiobtm]

Apartments and prevalent leftist thought which prefers to reward the lazy/lawbreaking/immoral/guilty and punish the hardworking/law abiding/people with integrity/innocent.

I say this as someone who grew up lazy/lawbreaking/immoral. My parents were good hippies, good communists and strongly into the occult. What a brilliant combination that was.

[elnina]

Originally Posted by Supermac34

Apartments. When they are new and expensive, no problem, but almost ALL apartments become old and cheap, then the problem moves into the area. The more apartments, the worse it gets.

I agree...

[robertrulez]

todays suburbs are tomorrows ghettos, the yuppies of today are moving into the city and gentrifying once low grade neighborhoods into heights clones

[modster]

Originally Posted by robertrulez

todays suburbs are tomorrows ghettos, the yuppies of today are moving into the city and gentrifying once low grade neighborhoods into heights clones

I guess that is the flip side to the question. Neighborhoods go in cycles, so once a neighborhood declines, what makes it go back uphill in 20 years? We see that change too.

[hsw]

Most affluent suburbs of any major city are tear-down zones w/new mansions near high-income jobs and near desirable private/public schools...and also near slums and crime (usu older apts/condos and shopping)...see same ugly stuff in RiverOaks or Dallas' Highland Pk or Manhattan's UpperEastSide or Greenwich CT....zoning or no zoning...whether ancient Northeast or newer TX w/its decentralized LA/SV-like suburban sprawl

Companies often move to new offices every ~20yrs to get latest-tech spaces: why wouldn't affluent do same in terms of own housing?

People often move up socio-economically from age 22 to ~40, perhaps moving from a cheap new apt in yuppie cities when single to a cheap new tract house in new suburbs when first have kids...to a new, bespoke house on a tear-down lot in affluent close-in suburbs like RiverOaks, etc if career advances sufficiently

And people move jobs, trade-in spouses, have kids, kids grow up and leave, etc etc....so demographics of any area (and one's own life and space needs) keep changing

And Luddite stuff like massive shopping malls of '70s and '80s (like Galleria) may become less fashionable as online shopping eliminates much mundane shopping...and online movies, books, etc eliminate need for theaters, bookstores, etc

Suspect tech/Net/mobile computing still have much to play out in transforming urban landscapes, as jobs and people can increasingly work from distant, cheap suburban locales or at home...changing commute patterns/traffic flows and need for centralized, costly office space in CBDs of many major regions...so the definition of "close in" may become far more amorphous in modern urban regions like those of TX or CA

[tstone]

Hey, I just noticed- we've been holdin' it down for about 45 years out here. And able to stay equally priced vs. the premier suburbs of Sugar Land and The Woodlands and 77079. And keep a relatively strong 20-something demographic.

Well, let's hope for another two or three.

I'm afraid about 55-60% of the voters here are against their own collective interests......

[ElectroPlumber]

Originally Posted by alidoremi

I grew up in SW Houston, went to Fondren Junior High and Sharpstown High, graduating in '81. A few years later one of my college classes required me to do some course work at Fondren, where I discovered that within a few short years (perhaps 6-7) the whole demographics of the school had changed. 90% of the kids were on free-lunch program and (as was told to me), the surrounding neighborhood (Fondren, from Braeswood south to Airport Dr.) had become mostly Section 8 apartments. I found this so sad since there were some really nice homes in the vicinity of Fondren Southwest.

I moved out of state in '86 and my husband and I returned to visit in 2009. We got quite an earful from our old friends (who no longer live where they grew up): Westwood Mall completely wasted, Sharpstown Mall you dare not shop at for fear you'll be shot, all the once nice apartment complexes that were brand new when we left are now drug/crime infested.

All of our friends have moved further out to Sugarland or Spring, to newer communities. Yet, at one time, SW Houston WAS the new community, THE place to buy a home. What will prevent the newer areas from becoming like Sharpstown or Fondren SW?

We are also in CA now. Wife graduated from Sharpstown High in 1974. Her parents lived close to HBU.

When I was courting her in the late 70's it was still a pretty good neighborhood. We used to play golf at the old country club course.

I remember that a Fiesta store opened about the time that we started seeing an influx of immigrants in the early 80's. It was also about this time that we stopped going to Sharpstown Mall because they started having security problems and it just went downhill from there.

My father-in-law's neighbors for the most part started selling their homes to the people that were moving in and that was the tipping point. After that it changed so fast that it seemed like within 7 or 8 years it was a completely different neighborhood.

I think it was a combination of affordable housing for the immigrants combined with the timing of a mass inflow at that time that changed the neighborhood so quickly.

So, to answer OP's question, when housing gets affordable in an area in comparison to surrounding areas and there is a surge in demand, the neighborhood can change real fast.