Houston Neighborhoods - which areas are seeing improvement?

[Mark Sewell]

I hear a lot about various parts of town that are undergoing gentrification.  This ward, that ward... Indy Heights, Acres Homes, Sunnyside, etc.  You do see some new small MF going up in some of these areas, but I really never have gotten a good idea of what is really going in where.

So I had a bit of downtime to play around, so I fired up Redfin and just played with some parameters. I selected Harris County, SFR under $225K and built in 2017 or newer. Figured OK, this should provide at least some indication of new affordable housing going in around town. I expected to see maybe some little pockets of activity in certain areas...

You can clearly see some new stuff going in there in Acres Homes in 77088.  Sunnyside is a larger area and less concentrated, but it is clearly happening there.  And Settegast has something going on there in 77028. 

The new build activity in Acres Homes intrigued me. They are putting in these $1175 sf houses, selling for $145k-$150k and, and somebody is renting them for $1200. Pulled the MLS data to check on it, and it isn't just 1-2 houses. Cannot imagine these are cashflowing - maybe they are banking for appreciation here? Figuring this gentrification from Indy Heights is going to continue to push north?

[Shahriar Khan]

@Mark Sewell almost all the new build in Acre Homes are using Land Bank aka free land and buyers have 20K govt down payment assist to buy thus price is lower. Sunny side is being built using retail priced land thus price is higher  . And they all are building less then 70-80/SQFT which isnt possible unless you have a team of your own.