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RECON Versus Altos Research

Can someone tell me why today’s story in the Dallas Morning News, which quoted the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M, is all doom and gloom while a report from Altos Research says Dallas home prices actually increased — this from the firm’s latest housing market updates ? Altos says its ten-city composite index was down .8% during November, down 2.4% for the last three months. ASKING PRICES DECLINED IN 19 MARKETS. Viva Las Vegas NOT: November marks the eighth consecutive month that LV has posted the fastest rate of declining home prices among major markets. Cripes, you may have done better at the Black Jack table than in the LV housing market. But here’s the real shocker: prices increased in six of 26 markets with Houston up a strong 2.4% — love me that oil industry — and Dallas up .5% or one-half percent in November. (Rocky Mountain High Denver was up .9%. Must be the altitude.) Dallas, Denver and Houston are now the only markets in the nation showing three months of sequential price increases.

I’m confused.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

I agree with Tim: James Ragland’s column on Preston Hollow, where I live, is a waste of paper that Belo should not waste. We explained the deed restriction “non-issue” that Huffington was trying to “stir”. Item 11 in the deed restrictions that cover the President’s new property (properties) on Daria Place was NOT an issue in 2000. Nor were racist-toned covenants an issue when he bought the family’s home on Northwood in the 1990’s. That racist language has been illegal for many years, but because it was written into legal documents, the graphs could not vanish. The Texas legislature passed recent legislation that enabled homeowners to amend racist language in deed restrictions, which is why many home associations chose to alter them. Real estate reflects history, and truth be told our history is loaded with discrimination… and garbage. Until the 70’s, women could not obtain mortgages or buy homes on their own. They couldn’t even obtain credit cards in their names. We were considered our husband’s chattel. I would not be surprised to find deed restrictions somewhere saying it’s illegal for women to own property — unless they reside in the back-house kitchen.

If Ragland’s point was to give a thumb-nail sketch of Preston Hollow, then I suggest you find a copy of Eva Potter Morgan’s “Preston Hollow”. Preston Hollow was briefly incorporated as a town after an election on November 18, 1939, the voting taking place in the real estate office of Mr. Ira P. DeLoach, also the man who hired Ebby Halliday. Her name and company now occupy what was the town hall of Preston Hollow, the “little white house” at the corner of Northwest Highway and Preston Road. Initially the notion of incorporating PH into a town was controversial, the heart of the discussion being fiscal concerns and higher taxes with annexation. But it was one of humanity’s most basic dilemmas — sanitation — that united Preston Hollow with Dallas while the Park Cities would remain the Golden Bubble in-between:

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Meanwhile, Back in the Real World: 802 Salmon Update

HUGE progress has been made on the rehab–and lots of difficult decisions on green and energy efficiency features.

My favorite restoration: the dormer.  Check out the before and after! 

And what a smart thing to add to the daylighting in the house by adding a light well from one of the dormer windows down to the front entryway!