Baboon Pirates

Scribbles and Scrawls from an unrepentant swashbuckling primate.

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Location: Texas, United States

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

The Big Reveal (For Real!)

No, I Don't Have Some Form Of Terminal STD...

Man, after all that buildup of the last few weeks, I wish I could reward y'all with a magnificent uber-post.

Fact is, it ain't all that dramatic.

Unless you're living it...

To put the whole thing in a nutshell, I'm being evicted from my home of the last 12 years.

Now, that may sound harsher than the situation actually warrants, but that's the way I feel, especially given the particulars. 

For a long time, this part of Houston (Spring Branch) was pretty stagnant economically.  In the past 4-5 years, though, expansion in the Energy Corridor and gentrification expanding outwards from the Inner Loop have caused property values to rocket upwards.

Landlords with houses they could hold onto and rent out for very modest rates have been finding themselves with properties worth 3-4 times what they paid just in land values.  In many cases, the houses on the land were a drawback!

So, all those little pier & beam houses in E. Spring Branch built in the 1940s & 50's, and the brick-on-slab ranchettes from the 1960's in W. Spring Branch that you could buy for $30-60k are now selling upwards of 250-300K.

All through the area, you're seeing the old frame houses being torn down and replaced by a bank of 4-5 multi-story condos, or the little brick homes on large lots being replaced by McMansions selling for just shy of a million.

In my case, the lure to cash in has outweighed sense & reason.  Well, that's my view of it...

So, I'm now in the house-hunting game, with all that entails.

More stories to come...