Real Estate Round-up

The wrecking ball sets up Downtown's future & Houston's top hidden real estateinvestment

The best investments in Houston? If you are looking for a moneymaker, you mightwant to try something boring: a warehouse in Houston.
The old Sheraton Lincoln hotel, 711 Polk in downtown, is being demolished.
Photo by Ralph Bivins
Newland is developing four master-planned communities in the Houston area,including Cinco Ranch.
Brookfield Properties is tearing down the hotel to make a parking lot.
Photo by Ralph Bivins
The Beatles spent the night at the Sheraton Lincoln in 1965.
Photo by Ralph Bivins

The wrecking ball is chipping away in earnest now. Downtown’s old Sheraton Lincoln hotel is going away.

By this time next year, the Sheraton Lincoln will be replaced by a surface parking lot.

Wait a minute! This is downtown Houston. Isn’t land like this supposed to be extremely valuable? Only a parking lot?

The Sheraton Lincoln, 711 Polk at Louisiana, sits on a half-block of prime property, across the street from the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

It’s only a three-minute walk from the Sheraton Lincoln demolition site to the Heritage Plaza office building, which just sold for a whopping $325 million.

So, it only makes sense to ask the owner of the Sheraton Lincoln site a question or two.

Is this it? A flat parking lot is the highest and best use for the Sheraton Lincoln site?

A parking lot is a viable use, for now, says Paul Layne of Brookfield Properties, which owns the Sheraton Lincoln property and several major office towers in downtown.

But 10 years from now, who knows? Maybe an office tower could be erected there.

“Long term, it is an excellent building site,” Layne says.

Brookfield also owns the Total Plaza on the other half of the Sheraton Lincoln block. Brookfield will develop three levels of underground parking on the hotel site and with the surface lot, there will be 330 parking spaces created.

The Sheraton Lincoln opened in 1962 and it has been closed down since 1988. Many developers have examined the 29-story building, trying to come up with a viable redevelopment scheme for condos, offices or a new hotel.

In 2007, David Songy of Atlanta-based Songy Partners made a run at redeveloping the Sheraton Lincoln, announcing a $100 million plan to transform it into an Omni hotel. But that was before the nation fell into a recession and financing for new projects vanished.

For the foreseeable future, Brookfield will concentrate on the eight-month process of demolishing the hotel. Implosion was not feasible, because of the building’s close proximity to the Total Plaza building new door. The removal of the hotel will give the occupants in the Total Plaza some great views of downtown and Brookfield will build an elevator to connect the parking lot to the neighboring office building.

The Sheraton Lincoln was developed by the Lincoln-Liberty Life Insurance Company, a firm led by former U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen. The hotel, developed prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, offered service to African Americans, as Bentsen demanded, when integration was not common.

The Beatles stayed at the Sheraton Lincoln in 1965 when they made their only appearance in Houston.

Who’s Number 1?

Newland Communities, a major force in Houston’s homebuilding business, has been named national Developer of the Year by Builder and Developer magazine.

Newland is developing four master planned communities in the Houston area: Cinco Ranch, Telfair, Summerwood and Eagle Springs.

The magazine noted that Newland’s Cinco Ranch was the top ranked community for new home sales in the nation. The San Diego-based developer has master-planned communities across the nation.

It was a pretty good year for awards for Newland. Its Fish Hawk Ranch in Tampa was named green development of the year by the National Association of Home Builders. And the Greater Houston Builders Association named Telfair, a Sugar Land project, its community of the year.

Who’s Number One? Part Two

Looking for a sexy real estate investment that’s going to make you a lot of money? Sure, you’d like it to be a chateau in Europe or a villa in the Caribbean.

But if you are looking for a good investment, you might want to try something much more boring — a warehouse in Houston.

Grubb & Ellis just ranked Houston as the No. 1 market in the nation for investment opportunity in industrial real estate. Los Angeles was ranked No. 2, followed by Oakland and Dallas/Fort Worth, according to the Grubb & Ellis Investment Opportunity Monitor.

Houston’s oil and gas sector and activity at the Port of Houston make Houston’s warehouse market a promising place.

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

unspecified

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