Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Tuesday, July 09, 2019

We Buy Houses Hummer vehicle

We Buy Houses Hummer vehicle

I suppose the military imagery is appropriate.

Over the past couple months, the Wall Street Journal had published a number of articles about house flipping and how increasingly it's a phenomenon driven by larger corporations backed by financing from Wall Street firms.

-- "House Flipping Is Back to Pre-Crisis Levels"
-- "Zillow Ramps Up Home-Flipping"
-- "House Flipping Is Back to 2006 Levels. Should We Worry?"

I think of this kind of system as a form of what urban sociologists call "reproduction of space."  They are referring to the process of neighborhood and place change, and what some people call gentrification.

But it is also about neighborhoods and places and at the scale in which they are "relevant" and integrated into the production, development, marketing, and sales system.

In the context of residential real estate, I call it the regional residential housing landscape.

What it means in a practical sense, is whether or not a particular neighborhood is on the radar, is in demand, at a larger scale.  How a neighborhood in Capitol Hill or Bethesda, Arlington, or Alexandria will be considered equally by certain demographics, who wouldn't consider Mount Rainer, Hyattsville, or Deanwood.

Similarly, I witnessed this with H Street revitalization c. 2003-2004.  Once the city released a plan for the commercial district's revitalization, major real estate information and brokerage firms like Marcus & Millichap went in and compiled information on every property.

Once the district's data was organized and available, it became one more node or distinct "submarket" in a regional/national/international real estate property development system.

With national firms active in flipping, houses will get necessary rehabilitation, but this process will also result in a significant upward repricing of neighborhoods.

And a change in the nature of the actors, from one-off actors to more organized players.

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3 Comments:

At 10:20 AM, Anonymous charlie said...

FT also had a piece on how the CRE is now very nationalized and local players (Growth Machine!) is marginalized.

Been looking for the cite.

In terms of flipping and companies moving in, I'd say zillow is less about flipping and more about being able to move a house in a few days. Hold it for 60-90 days to do the clean up/painting/light renovation and then resell it.

(Although functionally that is flipping, no?)


Works well in areas with a lot of new residents moving in.

 
At 11:36 AM, Anonymous Richard Layman said...

would like that cite...

with the proviso that in significant markets, regionally focused players still have scale and can be big.

e.g., Akridge and JBG are pretty much "local". So is Douglas Dev. although he has stuff up to Frederick and down to Richmond.

But they use all the same techniques, have financing.

Bozzuto is active in the Mid-Atlantic. Kettler more than just the DC area, but they don't operate on a national footprint.

... wrt Trump and real estate, I use the example of the contrast between his operation and Brookfield. One is professional, organized, able to act quickly, does good work, has and access to lots of capital. The other is seat of the pants, no systems for management, works with whatever bottom feeders they can find.

... cf. I loved the twitter message from Trump about how unsuccessful the NYT is, how they lost big time on acquiring the Boston Globe (many other chains made similar mistakes around the same time).

It'd be just as easy to tweet about the AC bankruptcies, Plaza Hotel, Trump Shuttle, USFL.

If I were political in that sense, I'd do a tweetstream just featuring the stories of the people and businesses who got f*ed by Trump, Trump business failure, etc.

 
At 1:13 PM, Anonymous charlie said...

try these on for size:

https://on.ft.com/2S6ljRc

https://on.ft.com/2S7NOhp

 

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