Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Blog Assignment #7- Real Estate Trends

      A relatively new trend that I am seeing is this idea of a home within a home, multigenerational living. Given the economic downturn and increased mortgage rates, this trend seems to help homeowners lower the cost of their mortgage and lower living expenses. You can double up your home to lease it out, co-own it, have it for long term guests or whatever the case may be. An example of this is Lennar's most recent project, NEXTGEN. As the website states, NEXTGEN homes have "a complete suite with bedroom, eat-in kitchenette and living room. It can be integrated into a home’s living space or kept as a private residence." As home owners continually want flexible living to do as they please, these homes enable them to have grandparents live with them or aunts and uncles. I think as time goes on and baby boomers get older we are going to see an increased demand for this. 















Video about Multigenerational homes: http://realestate.msn.com/video/video.aspx?videoID=51f6683a-4ec1-4d15-8461-7c0487178898&from=msnrealestate_ss

Source:
1. http://lennarnextgen.com
2. http://realestate.msn.com/8-new-home-trends-for-2012#5

Blog Assignment #6- Property Type

        If I were to invest in a property type in Sugar Land, TX in the summer of 2013 I would look into retail space. Given the boom of attractions in Sugar Land such as town center, restaurants,malls, and the Skeeter's baseball team there is a ton of foot traffic along the city. If I had to pick a specific location to put my retail space it would be in town center. According to city-data.com, town center is located in a high income area. The surrounding neighborhoods are all considered to be high income, which helps when trying to make a retail space thrive. The website also shows that the location is also almost 100% families, which is perfect for town center. Seeing as town center is full of restaurants and shops it is a great place for a family to go walking around on a Sunday afternoon. In 2007, Sugar Land alone had retail sales of $1,719,913 and a retail sales per capita of $21,716 compared to TX which had 13,016. (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48/4870808.html) I think that as long as you are bringing in a good business with great service, retail space would be a great investment in Sugar Land, TX.

Blog Assignment #5- Foreclosure

Article link: http://starcasm.net/archives/203779


       As described in our book, a foreclosure is the process of seizing control of the collateral for a loan and using the proceeds from its sale to satisfy a default debt. As you can read from the article above, this foreclosed home was owned by first round NBA draft pick Robert Swift. While in the NBA Robert made an estimated $11 to $20 million dollars. After Robert completed his career in 2011 he seemingly lost nearly all of his savings. It was due to his inability to make payments on his $1.35 million dollar home that eventually led it to a judicial foreclosure.

       The most interesting part of this article is that Robert Swift was refusing to leave the home after the foreclosure took place. A couple had bought the home nearly 2 months later and were sort of waiting around to move in because the previous owner would not leave. It almost got to the point where there was going to be a forced eviction but the former NBA star eventually left, but left behind a huge mess.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Blog Assignment #4- My Hometown

My actual hometown is Missouri City, TX but I spend way more time in the neighboring city Sugar Land so I am going to talk about that instead. Sugar Land was named after the Imperial Sugar Factories that resided in Sugar Land, they have obviously since been shut down but they are still there and really pretty to go see. A ton of people get their pictures taken there because it is just an old rustic background that looks great in pictures. Sugar Land has a total population of 96,139 people and in the 90s Sugar Land was actually one of the top growing cities in Texas having a population increase of nearly 135.47%. By 2014, the city is expected to grow by 16.92%, I am not sure where all these people are going to go but it is nice to see that the city is still growing! As of 2010 the city was made up of 44.4% white, 7.3% black, .2% Native American, 35.1% Asian, and 10.6% hispanic. Sugar Land is where everyone from neighboring cities goes to hang out. It is full of restaurants, shopping malls, stores, bars, everything. Its biggest source of revenue has been Sugar Land Town Center, this area has been a booming success and after just ten years they exceeded their investment of 55 million. The city was recently named one of the safest cities which also helps with its growth.





Blog Assignment #3 Guest Speakers

On Monday, January 28, 2013 we had two extremely fascinating people come talk to us about the development project they are working on. The two speakers were Mr. Mike Gentry and  Dr. Samuel Harrison. Both Mr. Gentry and Dr. Harrison attended Texas A&M University and were in the Corp. Mr. Gentry is now a practicing lawyer here in College Station and Dr. Harrison is a Doctor. The development project that was discussed during the lecture was based on a piece of land that Dr. Harrison's great grandfather won in a poker game. They discussed all the legality and procedures that were taken in order to sell the land. At the beginning of the process they had to dig up the land to look for artifacts and coffins but nothing was found. Had anything been found during this they would have had to shut down the project. The biggest hassle that Dr. Harrison talked about was the oil spill that had to be cleaned before he could sell off the property. There are two ways in which to clean an oil spill on a property; either Exxon can come in and do it for you or you can do a voluntary clean up. The problem with Exxon doing it is that your name remains on a list for a very long time so it could take years before the spill is cleaned up. Dr. Harrison instead did it himself and had dirt transported to the location and switched out with the contaminated soil. Once all of that was taken care of he sold the land to bucee's biggest competitor, Chicks.The most interesting thing that I heard through this lecture aside from how they dealt with the contaminated soil was that nearly 77,000 cars pass that lot a day.