Real Estate Round-up

Location, location, Facebook: Realtors embrace a new social network mantra

CityCentre is building new office space after its current supply leased up rapildy.

Photo by Ralph Bivins

The methods of marketing real estate have evolved since the prehistoric Realtor planted the first “for sale” sign in a front lawn of a caveman’s home.

The classified ad in the newspaper is old hat. And every real estate project and virtually every Realtor has their own website. Realtors have been talking about blogging for years.

What’s new? One of the trends really catching hold lately is using social media for real estate promotional purposes. Real estate professionals are using Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin to reach customers and clients.

If you’ve seen The Social Network — the new movie about the creation of Facebook — and read about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, then you know this whole social media genre is an amazing phenomenon. But it’s gone far beyond the friendly communications for keeping up with friends or finding a Saturday night date. Social media communications is now a business thing, too.

In a ranking of industries, the real estate business ranks 28th in the usage of social media for business, according to “The Social Industry Report,” a study prepared by Netprospex, a database marketing company.

In the use of Twitter, real estate ranks 13th as an industry. (Not surprisingly, funeral home companies come in last among the 50 industries ranked by Netprospex. Advertising and marketing firms, the banking industry and search engine firms rank highest.)

Real estate is a match for social media marketing because touting opportunities, generating new business and supporting new projects is vital to the real estate industry.

"For real estate, it may not be as important as location, but for buzz, Facebook is pretty darn important," says David Goswick of Goswick Social Media, a Houston marketing firm that specializes in social media. "The advantage of social media is that it is fast, inexpensive and the results are measurable."

The Uptown Park retail center, one of Goswick’s clients, has gone from having 2,000 Facebook friends in June, to over 6,000 friends today. The Galleria, the big gorilla of local Facebook marketing, has over 20,000 friends. Some projects that haven’t focused on developing their social programs have only 200 friends.

The “friends” of the real estate projects, particularly shopping centers, are bombarded with messages about new store openings, special events and the like. Goswick says making Facebook status blurbs relevant is the key to gaining new friends. Just tweeting to say “blue is my favorite color” won’t cut the mustard.

Iglesia de Visibility

Owning a big building that thousands of people see every day as they drive by is the next best thing to having a billboard.

Pare de Sufrir, a multi-cultural Christian church, has selected a highly visible location for its new church building. The church will be built at 6101 Southwest Freeway, near Renwick Drive and Westpark, where the freeway makes its big curve to take people to the southwest and the Fort Bend frontier.

The 46,000-square-foot Pare de Sufrir building will have a stylistic, modernist design with a tall glass entry, says architect Bin Yu of Ziegler Cooper Architects, which designed the structure.

The church will have an 1,100-seat worship center, 200-seat chapel, offices and an 11-bedroom residential complex for ministers and ministers-in-training.

Construction of the project will begin this fall and should be complete in 2011, Yu said. And yes, the church’s sign with be lit with LED lighting to make sure it’s visible at night to drivers on the Southwest Freeway.

Pare de Sufrir may be one of the most visible churches on the Southwest Freeway. But there’s no way it can surpass the visibility of the massive Lakewood Church, which occupies the former Compaq Center on the north side of the Southwest Freeway at Edloe.

CityCentre Building More Office Space

Houston hasn’t had many bright spots in its office market lately. But CityCentre is the exception.

Midway Companies is preparing to build a pair of six-story office buildings in the west Houston mixed-use project, located near the intersection of the Katy Freeway and the Sam Houston Tollway.

The existing office space in CityCentre has leased up rapidly, so naturally, Midway is ready to build more.

“The leasing velocity we’re seeing is pretty incredible in a down market," says leasing agent Michael Anderson of Colvill Office Properties.

The new office buildings will have 33,168 square feet of ground level retail space with 250,000 square feet of office above. That’s been the standard in CityCentre — stores on the ground level with offices and apartments on upper levels. The formula has worked well at CityCentre, which has an impressive collection of restaurants tenants including Bistro Alex, Ruggles Green, Sur La Table, The Tasting Room and a Cyclone Anaya.

If there are any doubts about mixed-use projects working in Houston’s suburbs, a visit to CityCentre should cure that.

Ralph Bivins, former president of the National Association of Real Estate Editors, is editor-in-chief of RealtyNewsReport.com.

Pare de Sufrir is making a bold move with its new design.

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housing news

Houston ranks among top 10 U.S. cities for mobile home living

Photo by Brian Wangenheim on Unsplash

Manufactured homes have come a long way from the "trailers" of the past, according to StorageCafe.

As Houston residents navigate the city's fluctuating real estate market, manufactured homes – also known as mobile homes – are gaining traction among potential buyers seeking an affordable path to homeownership.

A recent housing study found Houston ranks among the top 10 U.S. cities with the largest mobile home inventory. Texas, as a whole, has the second-highest share of manufactured housing in the nation.

StorageCafe's housing insights report analyzed the supply of manufactured housing inventory, average sales prices of new manufactured homes, and compared pricing trends against the median value of all housing units (regardless of construction date) across all 50 states and 100 U.S. cities.

The report's author hails manufactured housing as "a cornerstone of affordability" in the country, with just under 8 million mobile homes representing about 5.4 percent of the U.S. housing supply.

There are 776,232 manufactured homes in Texas, the report found, which is 6.2 percent of the state's entire housing stock. Houston is home to the 8th highest number of mobile homes in the nation, at 10,953 units.

Here's how the rest of the top 10 shakes out:

No. 1 – Mesa, Arizona (29,335 units)
No. 2 – Phoenix, Arizona (20,564 units)
No. 3 – Jacksonville, Florida (15,393 units)
No. 4 – Largo, Florida (14,131 units)
No. 5 – Tuscon, Arizona (14,128 units)
No. 6 – San Jose, California (11,668 units)
No. 7 – San Antonio, Texas (11,208 units)
No. 8 – Houston, Texas (10,953 units)
No. 9 – Los Angeles, California (10,622 units)
No. 10 – Sunrise Manor, Nevada (9,952 units)

Why manufactured home living is gaining popularity
Affordability is of the main reasons Texas residents are turning to manufactured home living. The average sale price for a mobile home in Texas was $112,500 in 2024, or less than half of the median sale price for all Texas homes ($313,200).

The report specifies that the cost for a manufactured home does not include the cost of land in the same way that a conventional home does. Depending on zoning and local laws, residents who own a mobile home either lease the lot their home sits on, or they have to purchase a lot outright.

"Most manufactured homes sit either in parks (land rent, higher exposure to rent hikes or park closures) or subdivisions (you own the land)," the report said. "In some communities, resident-owned cooperatives (co-ops) allow homeowners to collectively purchase the land beneath their homes. This setup provides stability and protection against rising lot rents, which can otherwise affect those living in privately owned parks."

Nevertheless, StorageCafe maintains that the generally lower cost of a manufactured home still makes it a viable path to homeownership. Affordability is especially crucial for younger adults like Gen Zers and Millennials who also don't want to "compromise on quality or independence."

"Today’s younger buyers value flexibility, efficiency, and minimal maintenance, and many are drawn to simpler lifestyles that align with financial freedom and mobility," the report said. "With the rise of remote work, more Millennials and Gen Zers are exploring the idea of living affordably in smaller, well-designed spaces, often in communities with shared amenities or scenic settings that were once thought to appeal only to retirees."

Manufactured homes have also experienced a "glow up" in recent years, the report added. Most manufactured homes have open floor plans, "stylish interiors," and come equipped with modern amenities like smart-home technology and energy efficient features.

"As a result, they’re no longer viewed as a fallback option, but rather as a savvy, forward-thinking path to homeownership for cost-conscious Americans of all ages," the report said.

Mobile home living elsewhere in Texas
Other than San Antonio in Houston in the top 10, there were 12 more Texas cities that ranked among the top 100. El Paso came in at No. 16 with 7,089 mobile homes in the city, and Laredo ranked two spots behind with 6,785 units.

Here's how other Texas cities fared in the report:

No. 20 – Dallas (6,195 units)
No. 21 – Austin (6,184 units)
No. 22 – Fort Worth (6,069 units)
No. 29 – Corpus Christi (4,823 units)
No. 34 – Pharr (4,409 units)
No. 48 – Arlington (3,818 units)
No. 60 – Mission (3,207 units)
No. 65 – Bryan (3,063 units)
No. 67 – Edinburg (3,407 units)
No. 98 – Denton (2,441 units)

housing market housing report storagecafe texas manufactured housing houston