Photo by Vlad Busuioc
Two and a half years ago, Hurricane Harvey struck the city of Houston. Most estimates say the storm did $125 billion worth of damage. It killed just over 100 people and displaced 30,000. It’s hard to imagine how to recover from something like this, but Houston is doing exactly that. In fact, the city is thriving.
Many investors saw the hurricane as an opportunity. The first trend we saw in 2017 and 2018 was a huge demand for rental properties. People displaced from their homes, and potential buyers, in general, didn’t have the ability or the confidence to buy homes. Many of the homes in affected neighborhoods became rental properties. Meanwhile, the undamaged neighborhoods experienced an increase in property value, and home sales were actually up a year after the storm.
HistoryMaker Homes had been building homes in the Dallas/Fort Worth area for almost 60 years before it began building in Houston in 2017. Obviously, the last thing in the world you’d want is a hurricane hitting the city you just began investing and working in. And yet, the real estate market in Houston has been as resilient as the city itself. A younger Texas builder, Trophy Signature Homes, will begin building in Houston this year.
Houston is the fourth largest city in America, and it has one of the fastest-growing job markets. Unemployment is lower than the national average, and lower than that of similarly sized cities. Combine all this with average home costs below the state average, and you can see how Houston homebuilders are primed for a big year.
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