From the Houston Business Journal: More jobs were created in Houston between January 2006 and January 2007 than in any other metropolitan area in the nation, new figures show. "The [US Bureau of Labor and Statistics] numbers show Houston on a dramatic growth trend, outpacing the rest of the nation in jobs gained," said Jeff Moseley, president and CEO of the Greater Houston Partnership. "This is great news for our region and further validates our board's vision of contributing to the creation of 600,000 new jobs and $60 billion in capital investment by 2015."
what this means for Houston real estate:
It means that there will be some growth in practically all Houston real estate sectors. After all, where are 600,000 people going to live, work, play and shop? One of the things that concerns me the most about Houston (which is probably the case with a lot of metro areas) is traffic. Downtown real estate is going to continue to increase in value so where will the majority of people (in the low to mid income range) end up looking for houses? More often than not they will probably be looking for real estate in the suburbs as property gets more and more expensive closer to downtown. (Remember, expensive is relative to Houston because you can still find decent single family homes under $200,000 within the main city limits whereas in DC, well...you'd be lucky to find a good 1 bedroom condo for that price!) So back to the topic...what this means is that there will continue to be more and more traffic! Naturally, developers and city of Houston and Harris County officials need to continue addressing the traffic issues immediately. Expand on the positive that Houston is already working on which Tory Gattis talks about in his houston strategies blog.
Personally, I think that more mixed used the development would be helpful. In many areas it is practically impossible to find places that you could actually walk to from home or work (except in the downtown areas). It'd be nice to actually walk to places without having to take a car everywhere and always have to find parking. I know that a common argument against this might be that it is way too hot to being walking outdoors in Houston, especially in the summer, but a good integration of trees would help too. (And according to Tory and the Houston chronicle, it looks like that is starting to happen too.) Only time will tell...
shameless plug: And I hope that my company can be a part of the Houston's future in the near future!
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If you want to find out more about this blog post or what Esenai (my real estate and technology consulting company) can do for you, call me at 240-441-5086 or email me. (just remove the "-spamnot" from the email address.) Marvin a.k.a. eMarv
