You think it’s hard selling a house these days? Try unloading a subdivision. And not just any subdivision, but one with few if any completed homes and a weedy patch where the swim-and-tennis center was planned.Houstonians who rode out the mid-1980s oil depression are very familiar with these failed subdivisions. My recollection is they started appearing in 1983 or thereabouts, and they didn't start filling in again for at least 10 years. Many of the nicer subdivisions up on FM 1960 were wastelands, and now you wouldn't know it.
We have proto-zombie subdivisions forming all over the west side now, along with dozens of new, never-occupied strip shopping centers. How quickly people forget.
8 comments:
I have a friend that moved from Richmond to Houston a couple years ago. I was appalled to find out that she and her husband are having a house built for them there. Good lord woman! You could have dealt for far more house than you'll be able to build.
Maybe she talked to a builder who convinced her that those houses with the For Sale signs weren't really for sale.
Seriously.
About 20 years ago, one of my friends moved to Dallas for a job, and his wife was desperate to buy a house. They "got an agent", but it wasn't a formal buyer's agent; this was a sellers agent who just hooked them in.
So "their" agent showed them a few houses and said they better get an offer in quick. I told him he was insane! There were hundreds of houses (almost all the same floor plans, in fact) for sale in that part of North Dallas. Look at the signs everywhere!
"Oh, but the agent said that here they leave the signs up a long time even after they're sold, so they're not really for sale." A bald-faced lie from the agent, but this dumb friend could not be cajoled into calling *any* of the numbers on those other signs! What can you do?
In fact, it got worse. He had the bad luck of being outbid on the first house they wanted. A bidding war! In those times! Folks in the office couldn't believe it.
And so their esteemed agent brought them to another brown-roofed 4/2 house, almost the same as the first. My friend's wife was so upset about being outbid the previous time that she immediately offered 5% above asking!! Needless to say, the sellers (once they picked themselves off the floor and thanked God for the windfall from these fools) sold it to them ASAP!
I still wonder if the "bidding wars" were between the agent's own clients.
OT:
California won't accept its ownIOUs.
On CR today, there was a comment that referenced the zombification of Detroit. Talk about blight!
I watched the video on this post and it stuck with me all day. Hard to believe this is America.
As a high school kid I do remember that the zombie subdivisions were a great place to take a sweetie out to neck.
You sure could film one hell of a horror film in that part of Detroit.
I think it should become a huge urban paintball park.
I think they're perfect subdivisions it's exactly what I wanted to read in order to increase my knowledge.
I really like the stories about Zombies, I would like to be an actor and participate in one of this kind of films , I really like it, thanks for sharing!
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