Back Talk Lakewood/East Dallas

Housing starts fall -- what does that mean for our home prices?

The news this morning that single-family housing starts in the United States dropped 5.3 per cent to their lowest level since 1991 was not encouraging. Neither was a report from the National Association of Realtors that its index of future home sales unexpectedly dropped.

So far, we’ve managed to avoid most of the bad news associated with the housing collapse. Has that changed? I’ll have an answer in my August column, which will look at home prices in East Dallas and Lakewood in the first six months of this year. It’s a follow-up to the piece I wrote in January, looking at home prices in this area over the past five years.

And a bonus: It will also link to a chart with five-year home price data for the 20 ZIP codes that are in our four-magazine coverage area. The numbers, compiled by the indefatigable Ron Burch of Coldwell Banker, are quite intriguing.

Technorati Tags: home prices,Dallas,Lakewood,East Dallas

Forest Hills home tour this Sunday

Anyone driving through Forest Hills recently would notice there are a lot of homes for sale. If you are in the market for a big beautiful home in one of Dallas' prettiest neighborhoods — a woodsy, shady, eclectic community right near White Rock Lake — and you've got a $350,000 to $1,500,000 budget, then there's a home tour this Sunday you must attend. The "Fabulous Forest Hills Home Tour" is 2-4 p.m. Sunday, July 20. Get over to the Forest Hills hood (bordered by Garland, Lakeland, San Cristobal, and Highland) and look for the yellow balloons. Addresses are listed after the jump.

Commerical property in Dallas: Let's end the 'secret' valuation process

If commercial property owners paid more taxes, residential property owners would pay less — as much as $90 million less annually: That's pretty much the bottom line in the ongoing debate over whether commercial property sales prices in Dallas County need to be publicly disclosed. The DMN offers a lengthy and informative story about the issue, which is expected to be acted upon during the state legislature's session next year. And the whole issue gained momentum as a result of Dallas' taxpayer-owned downtown convention center hotel land purchase — the city offered to pay about $40 million for eight acres of property that was being assessed at about $8 million (five times less than what the city is paying to buy the property).

Just imagine if your home tax appraisal increased by five times next year because the appraisal district figured out it had undervalued the house for awhile: I suspect we'd all have something to say if that happened to us. And it won't happen, either, and not only because the appraisal district can't raise taxes on a homestead that much in one year. It won't happen because sales prices for residential property are virtually always publicly available, allowing the appraisal district to come pretty close year after year to proper home valuations.

In-town living: It's trendy now and getting trendier

The "trend" stories promoting "in-town" living as a solution to high energy prices have officially begun: Steve Brown offers up a starter story in the DMN about a few residents who have moved closer to where they work to cut commutes and save money. One couple moved from the White Rock Lake area to downtown to be closer to a job, while another downsized from a 3,900-square-foot house in North Dallas to a Cole Avenue townhouse. The story focused primarily on people moving downtown, but that's only a fraction of the story we're going to start seeing. As Realtor Jeff Updike is quoted saying: "Selling, buying and moving is a big financial decision, so people won't have the knee-jerk reaction many have had in changing to a more fuel-efficient car. Now the investigation process has begun, and we have seen a tremendous increase in calls regarding the cost of urban living, homeowners associations, DART rail stations, etc." Over time, all of this will be great news for those who already live inside the LBJ loop, because home prices will start increasing more quickly here once the economy rights itself. It will also be great news for people already living near retail/restaurant/office nodes, because residential living close to those places will be the hottest thing going pretty soon.

Starbucks, Starbucks everywhere

We had a brief item last week when Starbucks announced it was closing 600 stores and letting 12,000 employees go. One reason? The slowing economy, which has reduced demand for a $5 cup of coffee. But several experts said the chain was also overbuilt –- horribly, woefully overbuilt. Said one analyst: "They probably made some poor real-estate decisions. ..."

 

Which got me to thinking: How many Starbucks do we have in this part of town? So I checked: There are 18 in our East Dallas and Lakewood magazine delivery area, including six in a cluster along Greenville Avenue from Mockingbird to Northwest Highway.

 

Guess that is horribly, woefully overbuilt.

 

Technorati Tags: Starbucks,store closings

Henderson Avenue: Cierra closing

I drove along Henderson Avenue this morning and noticed "closing" signs in the front windows of furniture and decor store Cierra, which is based in Austin. The Henderson store is the only location in Dallas. Andres Properties, which apparently owns most (if not all) of Henderson between Central Expressway and Ross, already has signs up in the window as well, looking for a new tenant.

Of course, accompanying all of those signs were plenty of "sale" signs. I didn't have time to pop in and find out what deals there were to be had, but plan to soon.

Whole Foods update: Demolition continues

If you haven't driven by the soon-to-be Lakewood Whole Foods lately, you haven't missed much — at least from street level. However, our eye high in the sky has been keeping tabs on the progress so far, and we've watched most of the innards of the old Minyard's hauled out of the building by Bobcat, loaded into dump trucks and hauled away. The old HVAC units on the roof are gone, too, so it's safe to say things are on the move with the reconstruction. No front facade changes yet other than punching out the original doors and windows. And no word from Whole Foods on any update to the construction plans, which were scheduled to be completed in January/February 2009.

Meanwhile, nearby at Belmont and Abrams, no action on the piece of land next to Wachovia, either. The sign is gone, and in talking with a neighborhood guy who was interested in leasing the land for a restaurant but couldn't even get a return phone call from the land owners, it appears they've simply tired of talking with small-timers and have tucked tail until the Whole Foods opens in hopes of attracting a national-scale franchise at that point, once traffic and visibility have increased at the corner.

Density and White Rock Lake: The pieces are all starting to fall in place

Two interesting things to note on the area development/economic front:

One, the 7-Eleven store at Knox & Travis — one of the chain's early stores — is closed and the site could become a 9-story-20,000-square-foot office/retail building, which apparently would be allowed under existing zoning, according to the DMN. The store is across the street from the Highland Park Pharmacy and near the Katy Trail, but it's not typically the type of site that has a nine-story building on it — too much density on a small site, in other words.

Matthews Southwest selected to build city's taxpayer-owned convention center hotel

The council's economic development committee has selected Matthews Southwest to build the new taxpayer-owned convention center hotel, provided that a written agreement to cover the project can be worked out in the next few months. Matthews originally was pushing a hotel site south of the convention center (the Eddie Deen BBQ location) as the site for the hotel, since it apparently either owns that land or has/had it under option to purchase. Now that Matthews could be developing the city's project, it's possible they'll wind up in control of most of the available land both north and south of the convention center — probably a good thing for the city, since having one builder executing a master-plan of sorts around the center should result in better coordination of the various projects and a bigger bang for the buck for the city. This was Woodbine's plan, too, given its apparent stranglehold on Reunion Arena, as well as ownership of the Hyatt, Union Station and other land in the area. Matthews has some experience building a convention center hotel (Toronto) and has always appeared to be a reputable operator with at least some interest in the city's well-being (that can't be said about every developer in Dallas), so I like the choice. I still think, though, that we're going down the wrong path by building the hotel with our money, rather than working a deal where Matthews (or whichever developer) had some money in the deal, too.

Convention Center hotel update: Looks like it's high time to pick a developer, maybe today

Well, you have to hand it to the council's economic development committee: When that group decides to get moving on something, they can sure crank out the decisions. First, they spent $40 million for the convention center land while almost simultaneously deciding that we should spend another $500 million to build and own the taxpayer subsidized hotel to be built on it ourselves. Then, after taking a couple of weeks off, the committee just last week targeted Reunion Arena to be closed — and will soon probably schedule a visit from the wrecking ball. And then, after taking a couple of well-earned days off, the committee may be back at it today: Apparently, enough research has been done in the past month or so to determine which of four competing developers should have a crack at the $500 million hotel project. Makes me wonder: If these part-time council reps with no obvious commercial real estate experience are so quick to pull the trigger on decisions that involve perhaps $600 million of taxpayer money, why can't they be just as quick to fix the potholes and figure out ways to find enough money to keep the swimming pools open longer? Heck, they're taking longer to figure out a name for Industrial Boulevard. Guess that stuff isn't as much fun as spending big-time money.