Houston 2015

Want to talk about your favorite places besides Kansas City? Post any development news or questions about other cities here.
flyingember
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by flyingember »

Here's why I figure hundreds of thousands of homes are impacted

https://twitter.com/JeffLindner1/status ... 4902760448
70% of Harris county covered with water
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Highlander
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by Highlander »

pash wrote:
Highlander wrote:Simple compaction of recently deposited sediment on a passive margin coastal plain results in significant subsidence.
Listen to this fucking geologist. What a nerd.
You are just envious that I get paid for playing in the dirt
Last edited by Highlander on Fri Sep 01, 2017 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Highlander
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by Highlander »

flyingember wrote:
Highlander wrote: I have several friends that did not have insurance and had 8' of water in their homes - needless to say, they stand to lose a lot.
I can't imagine 8 feet of water.

If you're in a single story home and water got 8 feet high that's basically a complete rebuild of the house down to the studs. There's going to be tens of thousands of homes where the repairs are more than the home is worth and hundreds of thousands where it's more than can be afforded. A gut job job and rebuild, mold remediation and contents replacement can easily cost $100k. A third of a new home cost to repair isn't unrealistic since there's the cleanup portion to pay for too. 8 feet of water just causes damage quicker, it doesn't take long for 6 inches of water to wick behind walls and do major damage.

Houston construction prices will skyrocket due to demand. To get priority access will mean paying more, pretty basic supply and demand.
What's ironic is most of the construction industry in recent years is Hispanic. Recovery will be tied into immigration efforts at the federal level.


The delays caused by having more work than can possibly be done in two years, many homes will sit empty for an extended period. Termites and carpenter ants will start to move into many homes. There will be more copper theft due to opportunity.

It will dramatically impact resale value just with people looking for proof of flood repair work and demanding savings because of damage due to water.

This flood is going to empty a lot of older and poorer neighborhoods and create a lot of tear downs. Many people will just walk away, moving elsewhere and lose their home. I expect banks to own a lot of properties. There will be a lot of opportunity for flippers to buy cheap.

The water will also kill a lot of marginal trees that are still standing, and the removal of a single tree can cost $5-15k at the best of times. There's going to be a booming tree removal business in the city for some time. Imagine how many trees have been killed and will come down and damage roofs in the coming years.

I would expect a 10-15 year impact from this flood before things return to a 2016 norm and some areas this will accelerate the trends already in place in Houston of tearing out older homes and putting in apartments and town homes.
It's going to be pretty crazy there for a long time. I'm not sure how many homes will be salvageable. Not many I suspect that had significant amount of water for all the reasons you stated. What's different about this flood is that so many upscale high dollar homes were impacted which is a bit different than the norm where the poor folk take it on the chin in the low lying areas.

The other big loss, one that is more temporary but still with a big price tag will be vehicles. I have no idea how many were ruined - I suspect it could anywhere from ten thousand to one hundred thousand. I saw lots of pictures of street flooding with the streets full of cars even though the houses on the block were spared. That's going to create some demand in the market.
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by earthling »

Will be interesting to see what the coastal Texas population change will be within a year.

Here is New Orleans history after Katrina. Would expect Houston area to take a hit too but maybe not by as much and maybe a faster return unless much of Houston's major industries move elsewhere, especially white collar employers...
https://www.recenter.tamu.edu/data/popu ... irie%2C_LA
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by brewcrew1000 »

This is like the 3rd flood in the last 3 years, the last 2 were not even from Hurricanes. Houston is simply not a sustainable city and I really think it needs to shrink or re-engineered to help stop flooding (Bring in the dutch for christ sake) I could see Houston Population take a hit but I think it will be subtle. What I think happens is that a lot of energy companies end up relocating to Austin, San Antonio or Dallas and it will slowly eat away at Houston's population.
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by pash »

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Last edited by pash on Thu Sep 21, 2017 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by flyingember »

Highlander wrote:The other big loss, one that is more temporary but still with a big price tag will be vehicles. I have no idea how many were ruined - I suspect it could anywhere from ten thousand to one hundred thousand. I saw lots of pictures of street flooding with the streets full of cars even though the houses on the block were spared. That's going to create some demand in the market.
I saw 500,000 affected cars mentioned somewhere
Last edited by flyingember on Fri Sep 01, 2017 5:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by flyingember »

Dupe
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by FangKC »

The economy will not only be affected by companies that consider moving out of the Houston area, but also companies that will decide not to relocate there in the future, or expand their employment base if they are already there. This may not have so much to do with whether their building was affected, but that they aren't willing to put their employees at risk of losing their homes in future weather events.

If you employ 1000 people in your company, and 200 of them suddenly lose their homes metro-wide, that is going to affect your company drastically. Those employees are going to be less productive for weeks because of the emotional strain of their home situation. The stress of repairing a damaged home, or suddenly have to find another place to live, can lead to substance abuse and divorce. That's assuming your staff have flood insurance. If they don't, they may not even have the money to repair their homes, or afford to find another one while paying a mortgage on their damaged house. They may have to walk away from their house, and let it go back to the bank, and file bankruptcy.

The company might also start losing key employees who seek jobs elsewhere because they don't want to risk going through another flooding event. Workers' spouses might start pressuring them to look for a job in another, safer city.
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Re: Houston 2015

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FangKC wrote:The economy will not only be affected by companies that consider moving out of the Houston area, but also companies that will decide not to relocate there in the future, or expand their employment base if they are already there. This may not have so much to do with whether their building was affected, but that they aren't willing to put their employees at risk of losing their homes in future weather events.

If you employ 1000 people in your company, and 200 of them suddenly lose their homes metro-wide, that is going to affect your company drastically. Those employees are going to be less productive for weeks because of the emotional strain of their home situation. The stress of repairing a damaged home, or suddenly have to find another place to live, can lead to substance abuse and divorce. That's assuming your staff have flood insurance. If they don't, they may not even have the money to repair their homes, or afford to find another one while paying a mortgage on their damaged house. They may have to walk away from their house, and let it go back to the bank, and file bankruptcy.

The company might also start losing key employees who seek jobs elsewhere because they don't want to risk going through another flooding event. Workers' spouses might start pressuring them to look for a job in another, safer city.
I don't think many companies will move - at least not as a direct result of the flooding. Too expensive. What I could see is that key employees look elsewhere for work because they don't want to make the investment in a home in Houston or choose not to rebuild their damaged homes. Those that have houses that were not flooded, however, will see their home values increase as people will want to buy a house in a proven flood free area. Houston wasn't for everyone even before the flooding (it certainly wasn't in my top 500 places to live in the US) and if people are not tied down with home ownership which many will now avoid, they might be more willing to bolt when the hassles of a life there catch up with them. Most companies have a built in attrition rate from people who think they can tolerate Houston but after a few years decide they need to get out - I can see that perhaps accelerating.
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by earthling »

Meanwhile Hurricane Irma is now being forecasted with higher chance to hit E Coast according to various models now that high pressures are building in Upper Atlantic to keep it moving west. Any forecast over 3 days should be taken with grain of salt...
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A few Euro models show it could still move out off coast but most are more coastal than not now. A few others put it near Florida Panhandle to Mobile AL on Gulf side as west most scenario...

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Re: Houston 2015

Post by earthling »

Very interesting analysis and explanation of reading Irma models as of today...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSh1nbQ ... e=youtu.be

Mentions "Ensemble" models indicating direction towards Carolinas to Mid-Atlantic, but analyst cautious of any model over 5 days is speculation. Meanwhile Euro says it still has chance to stay off coast and swing out to sea.

Weather nerd chat about storm here, Florida in play too now, every hourly update seems to put Florida more into potential play...
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/hurri ... r-antilles

This is just a speculative possibility, a really ugly one. Looks like a galaxy chasing another with the tail of the first feeding other. A tropical disturbance has a chance to form behind Irma (would be called Jose)..

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Re: Houston 2015

Post by earthling »

edit: moved Irma to new Hurricane Thread.
http://kcrag.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=20370

Back to Houston in this thread...
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by earthling »

Jobless claims forecast after Harvey expected to hit pretty high...
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/storm- ... 2017-09-07

Will be interesting to watch employment and labor force for Houston area and Gulf cities once Aug/Sept data appears.
https://www.bls.gov/regions/southwest/t ... on_msa.htm

And then there's potential impact of Irma on FL coming.
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by bobbyhawks »

earthling wrote:Jobless claims forecast after Harvey expected to hit pretty high...
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/storm- ... 2017-09-07

Will be interesting to watch employment and labor force for Houston area and Gulf cities once Aug/Sept data appears.
https://www.bls.gov/regions/southwest/t ... on_msa.htm

And then there's potential impact of Irma on FL coming.
It will be interesting to see a year or so from now how things evolve as companies reassess where they place jobs based on climate change. Conservatives may be skeptical of the scientific consensus, but it will be interesting to see the decisions made since real money is on the line.
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by flyingember »

One of the final events that drove the stockyards out of Kansas City was a flood.

So the change could be quite extreme.
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by Highlander »

bobbyhawks wrote:
earthling wrote:Jobless claims forecast after Harvey expected to hit pretty high...
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/storm- ... 2017-09-07

Will be interesting to watch employment and labor force for Houston area and Gulf cities once Aug/Sept data appears.
https://www.bls.gov/regions/southwest/t ... on_msa.htm

And then there's potential impact of Irma on FL coming.
It will be interesting to see a year or so from now how things evolve as companies reassess where they place jobs based on climate change. Conservatives may be skeptical of the scientific consensus, but it will be interesting to see the decisions made since real money is on the line.
I don't think companies even consider climate change as a factor when it comes to location. It's not an issue of whether or not they believe in the science or not, most simply don't look that far out into the future on those types of decisions particularly when moving to more unaffected areas cost a tremendous amount of money. In the cash strapped oil industry in particular, I don't see those moves being made.

Additionally, Harvey wasn't a particularly Armageddon type storm. It came onshore as a class 4 hurricane, something the Texas coast has seen plenty of times before and the last 9 years (since Ike) had actually been very quiet on the Texas coast in terms of hurricanes. What made Harvey unique was the lack of any strong frontal activity to pick it up and move it along so it just sat over the same area for days. Most of the damage it did to Houston was as a waning hurricane and tropical storm. Not really the central point for a convincing argument for hurricane intensity being augmented by climate change.

The bigger issue for me would be a growing reluctance for individual employees with everything to lose to want to invest in homes and the community with frequent threats of flooding and a very unfavorable insurance situation. Like I've said before, Houston is not an easy place to live and a lot of transplant professionals do it reluctantly because of the size of the paycheck in the oil industry. I can see the flooding issues being the scale tipper for a lot of those reluctant people. But if those folks hold a, lets say degree in petroleum or chemical engineering, they could very well end up being underemployed elsewhere.
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Re: Houston 2015

Post by flyingember »

I don't think they used to but will need to more.

The insurance industry will be who drives this. If you can't get business insurance in 500 year floodplanes it can change the economic equation of location.

Major disasters can also change the money equation for someone. If you lost everything in a flood you might not be opening a business again, so there's probably less small entrepreneurs in cities with disasters.
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