Results tagged “houstonassociation”

Good morning, Houston. Imagine it: a penthouse apartment in the Galleria area, complete with your own personal dome. Nice — and did we mention it's free? Or at least it is for one guy who's been squatting in the attic of an Uptown business: According to KTRK, he's set up a pretty sweet pad, with cable, a flat-screen TV, surround sound, air conditioning and a bathroom. It's a pretty sweet deal for the guy,...

Good morning, Houston. Pardon us, but we seem to have lost our phone number. Can we borrow yours? Yeah, we know — it's lame. And apparently we're not the only one with a bad pickup line: Houston is the country's 14th best city for singles, according to Forbes magazine. We lag behind Dallas-Ft. Worth (No. 9) and Austin (No. 12), but we're far ahead of San Antonio (No. 28). On the bright side, Houston...

More information in the story of Sonoma, the giant mixed-use development being planned for a two-block site in the Rice Village: The Chronicle reports that the city has released the appraisals for the 2400 block of Bolsover Street, and there's a little bit of variation between the two — about a half-million dollars' worth, to be specific. The appraisals — for $913,171 and $1,460,340 — pertain to Lamesa Properties' plans to buy that stretch of...

Good morning, Houston. Seems like it's getting harder and harder to smuggle a ton of pot around these days — just ask the 37-year-old Houston man who was arrested at a Falfurrias border checkpoint Monday after agents found 2,537 pounds of marijuana in the tractor-trailer he was driving. A border patrol dog sniffed the stash out as agents were determining the man's citizenship: He turned out to be an American citizen, and the pot...

Houston City Council passed amendments to the current preservation ordinance that will make it easier for residents to designate neighborhoods as historic districts, and a two year building permit penalty if any historic landmark or structure in a historic district is demolished. For district designation, there will need to be a 51% consent of property owners, down from 67%. The permit penalty will prohibit the city from granting building permits for a site where a...

Could perception of HISD's merit-based bonus program get any worse? Yes, of course: Today, most of the district's principals will be getting bonuses, with Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra taking home a whopping $67,000 in extra pay. As you might imagine, the news isn't sitting well with teachers and staff members who already feel slighted by the bonus scheme. At least 250 principals — that's 83 percent of the principals in HISD, according to the Chronicle —...

A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-backed plan to clean up Houston's air doesn't go far enough, according to a suit filed yesterday by a local environmental group — in fact, the group claims, changes in the local air-quality rules would actually allow industries to pump more smog-forming pollution into the air. The proposed revisions to the clean-air plan were submitted by the state of Texas and approved by the EPA in September. They shift the...

So things are looking pretty good for the local real estate market: Last month, the average single-family home price in Houston topped $200,000 for the first time. The average price for a single-family house in May was $204,005, up 8.2 percent over last year's average, the Houston Association of Realtors reports. Meanwhile, the median home price in Houston also reached a record $152,000. (In case you're wondering, yes, that is much less than the national...