Houston utility bills are headed upward—with nobody expecting them to head in any other direction. Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that their Energy Index increased 32.9% for the year ending last month—and that was the ...
As the week ended, anyone who switched on a TV or radio or checked in on one of the financial websites was greeted with a term that hadn’t been seen before: “housing recession.” CNBC.com’s “housing market slides into a recession” ...
For anyone who owns (or plans to own) Houston real estate, last week's Federal Reserve interest rate hike came as no surprise. Even the unusual size of the raise was expected. At 75 basis points (civilians think of that as ¾%), it fell in li...
It's been a while since we've read headlines like CNBC's "Home sellers are lowering their prices at the fastest clip since 2019." Seller's market conditions have made "bidding wars" a more common topic—and for the most part, there remains a...
If you’ve never heard anything about houses made of mushrooms, it’s understandable if your first mental image is of something like a cute, top-hatted cartoon elf posing proudly in front of his bright red polka-dotted cartoon mushroom-dome...
For everyone responsible for handling their Houston household expenses, the steady barrage of inflation examples is changing long-standing buying patterns. Their own latest experiences at the gas station or supermarket are impossible to igno...
For those who keep a close watch on the outlook for Houston real estate, finding the upside amidst last week’s raft of less-than-cheery economic news was a tall order. Let’s face it: after years of buoyant tidings and record-setting Houst...
Residential real estate’s high end—including Houston’s luxury home market—was the subject of a thought-provoking assessment that appeared at week’s end. It was offered by Mansion Global—a Dow Jones publication that targets the int...
Summer finally becomes a reality on Tuesday—as opposed to Memorial Day weekend, which eager beavers in the media like to pretend was the kickoff to summer. Realists don’t agree—they believe that falling for the "unofficial start of summ...
When it comes to your own Houston real estate holdings, so long as a sense of proportion is retained, keeping up with fashion writers’ latest opinions is usually a harmless pursuit. So it was that the publication on March 31 of Betty Stef...