All Forum Posts by: Steve Chan

The University of Houston is located close to Houston's top attractions, including the largest medical center in the world and downtown Houston. Here are the university's expansion plans through 2027 (the red highlighted buildings are new planned construction). If you're building a real estate business plan around Houston, this is something worth noting. Here is a link to the entire document: 

https://uh.edu/facilities-planning-construction/vendor-resources/owners-design-criteria/master-plans/designlab_uh_masterplanph3_20190930_forchrista_pp-_reduced-size1.pdf

Hi everyone, I listened to Grocapitus' presentation on their new development project in Houston last week and had some interesting takeaways about the Houston market. I thought I’d share them with you since I’m based out of Houston. Here are my takeaways directly from their presentation:

• -US best cities for millennials
• -Most diverse city in the US
• -Best seaport in North America
• -#2 top metro for job growth
• -#1 best hospital for cancer
• -22 fortune 500 companies, 2nd to NY
• -3.1% unemployment
• -6 out of every 10 jobs in Texas will be added in Houston through the year 2040
• -Growing 4x’s faster than the US population
• -2nd fastest growing economy in America
• -The Texas Medical Center is the largest medical center in the world
  • -21 hospitals
  • -8 academic and research institution
  • -21,000 physicians, scientists, and researchers
  • -110,000 employees
  • -170,000 operations annually
  • -Upcoming $1.5B expansion that broke ground in 2019 and is expected to be completed in 20222
  • -New campus is expected to have a $5.2B impact on Houston and create projected 30K new jobs
• -University of Houston
  • -$1B planned expansion over the next 3 years
  • -Located extremely close to the medical center and downtown
  • -New $100M college of medicine scheduled to break ground in Spring 2020

Basically, Houston is not all about oil and gas!!! My wife and I are both examples of this as I manage a medical device sales team and my wife is a registered RN.

Hope you found these notes about Houston’s future as encouraging as I did, especially in light of the pandemic that we are all trying to currently navigate.

Happy Monday!

-Steve

@Michael King we’ll definitely rent it versus waiting for the coast to clear. Thanks for your input.

@Todd Goedeke thanks for backing the rationale. Either way, we’re going to rent it as a long term rental for now.

@Ken Latchers to that point, even if the pandemic ends in a couple of months, the mindsets of travelers may last for years to come. Thanks for your feedback.

Our last long term renters did not take care of the place, which required an expensive make ready. So, the thought of having our house professionally cleaned every week seemed appealing. Plus, I know a hurdle for arbitrage businesses is to convince home owners to lease their properties for the sake of short term rental. 

Knowing that bigger arbitrage businesses have their own cleaning and maintenance staff, I figured they may be able to operate the property at a profit, even during the this virus situation that we're trying to navigate. 

Having said all of that, it seems like the consensus is to just stick with long term rental tenants. I appreciate your feedback John, Michael, and Cody.

My thought process is that an experienced operator in the area will be able to use their experience and scale to make a profit on it. To your point, we are marketing it as a long term rental right now. First and foremost, I want my house to be taken care of by the tenants. I’ve had good and bad tenants over the past 4 years, and I know how valuable a good tenant can be. 

My wife and I were getting ready to turn our long term rental into a short term rental and completely renovated our property. The place is beautiful with new french doors, new windows, and a remodeled master bath with subway tiles; however, the coronavirus changed our plans due to the uncertainty of the travel industry. We’re planning to rent it out again as a long term rental, but would love to rent it to a successful short term arbitrage business so that our property will be well maintained. Does anyone know of a short term rental arbitrage operation that might be interested? It’s an unfurnished 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 car attached garage house near The Vintage and Methodist Willowbrook in North Houston.