Fort Worth Real Estate

• 27Mar

  Let’s Talk Fort Worth

  Commercial, Historic, Local Stuff, Residential No Comments
  Before Obama made it cool, the City of Fort Worth held their own town hall meeting with questions and concerns submitted by citizens. After a month of submitting comments by phone, web, and snail mail the Let’s Talk Fort Worth initiative culminated on September 25th with residents meeting in Will Rogers.

  Some of the more prevalent concerns to arise were:

  • Well maintained roads. 
  • Better Public Transportation
  • Economic Development

  I can certainly point out many under-maintained roads in Fort Worth. And these are not all necessarily less used roads. Camp Bowie, for instance, has an abundant share of issues arising mostly from the brick pavement. And it’s not all just pot holes, but also the incredible amount of water pipe break I see all over the city. It seems to often that there are streams of water bubbling from pavement, with a city water truck near by. 

  Of course public transportation is a hot item as well. There is no doubt that Fort Worth lacks adequate transportation. Kevin at Fort Worthology has been pushing for a public street car system for some time. This absolutely could be a complete game changer for this city. It is necessary. It is timely. It is exactly what we need. But as much as we need to focus on intra-city travel, we cannot forget about metroplex and statewide infrastructure as well. 

  Perhaps most relevant here is in economic development. While this can mean a great many things, including trolley systems, the comments seem geared towards commercial developments. The people clearly want “nice” retail and restaurant space. I assume by nice they mean “upscale”. My argument would be that there is enough. Perhaps we should begin to define “nice” as smart usage of space in relation to surrounding residences. More intriguing are the ideas that we do not need further commercial developments like strip malls. These we have enough of. True that many spaces may be vacant, but how intelligently are those spaces currently being used? 

  Let’s Talk first appeared in Fort Worth in 1963. Almost a half century later we need to begin to redefine ourselves and what we want from a sustainable city. It is time to grasp the fact that we must begin to change our ideas of community structure. Not only economically, but especially in infrastructure, land use, and social capital.

• 17Mar

  T&P Lofts

  Historic, Residential No Comments
  The Star Telegram ran an article for Texas And Pacific Lofts. It was so incredibly scripted I kept looking for the “Paid Advertisement” disclaimer.

  This developer has had a very hard time unloading units. Initially there were 5% discounts for buyers that financed through the developer. While certainly helpful, it was a small consolation to prices around $300 per square foot. I just never could justify such a price in Fort Worth. With time and development along Lancaster I would imagine that this will be an attractive place to live, but for now it just seems a little overpriced for what you are getting.

• 12Mar

  Digging up the Victory Garden

  Historic, Residential 1 Comment

  There is a growing concern that the world may be facing an agricultural shortage. I have heard others voice this before, but until today’s article from Jason Bradford I had never seen anyone really dissect this issue. The article, Energy Descent and Agricultural Population, takes a look at how much energy a nation consumes and how much agriculture they contribute. 

  Bradford notes that 2 percent of the US population farms for the rest of us, and that their average age is about 60. A high tech and decentralized agricultural industry demands energy to produce and distribute, which ultimately equate into passed on energy costs. When oil is expensive, your food costs more. Jim Rogers, an investor I trust a great deal claims that farmers will be driving Lamborghini’s one day soon. 

  No one goes into farming. College students are geared towards professional careers, and we are essentially losing life supporting skills. This isn’t even factoring in growing world populations which stress world supplies. 

  It seems that what we need now are foods which are produced, processed, and distributed on local levels. All of this utilizing renewable energy sources. Not necessarily to be green, but to be smart. The media is dusting off WWII era words like Victory Gardens. Prepare for that phrase to enter your lexicon.

• 09Mar

  Economics of Housing Policies

  Developments, Historic, Residential 2 Comments

  Only a few days ago we highlighted the Transition Town movement towards smart urban growth. Since then The Heritage Foundation has released an extremely interesting article which tackles the idea that over regulation towards smart growth may have spawned a good portion of the current crises. The article suggests that current housing policies are broken, and may in fact slow our overall economic recovery. 

  

  It seems logical to centralize growth and build localized transit systems that can cater to a world needing to reduce energy consumption. These issues have become evident in local land use regulations nationwide, and we are beginning to see similar policies take shape on the federal level as well. In February President Obama said “The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody recognizes that that’s not a smart way to design communities”. Presumably these would be the central policies to reduce demand on infrastructure, energy consumption, and over-inflation of property value. 

  The article suggests that studies invariably highlight that land use restrictions decrease supply of a basic commodity. A declining amount useable land then means that housing prices are forced to rise disproportionately. Among areas in which growth is most heavily managed at state and local levels we find California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona. These areas, highlighted in a Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Foundation study, held the heaviest burdens in the housing crises. A wise homeowner knows they should never become leveraged into a property that is priced more than three times their annual income. From the early 90’s forward however, we began to see families take on mortgages that may have been ten times their annual income. They didn’t do this out of pure recklessness, but because the market mandated they take on more debt than was reasonable. 

  In 2005 I remember seeing a sign for new condo’s in the D.C. metro area which announced “New Homes From the $700’s”. Being from Fort Worth, and used to numbers more like “from the $120’s”, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. And in fact, our markets have remained relatively stable because of a lack of general land use regulation. The Brookings Institution study named the category for those areas with the least regulation “Wild Wild Texas”. This category mentions almost every major metropolitan area in Texas. 

  The numbers simply speak for themselves. Foreclosures and delinquencies are highest among those regions with more stringent land use regulations and resulting price inflation. What we end up with in situations like this are substantial monetary losses at the institutional level; all of which were based on false or inflated initial valuations. Unfortunately the Proposed Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan will reward more restrictive areas with a greater share of federal subsidies. 

  A PDF version of The Heritage Foundation Study can be found here. 
  

« Previous Entries