Category: News

Lennar and Icon Announce Visionary 3D-Printed Homes Underway in Georgetown

Posted on by Sarah

GEORGETOWN, Texas, Nov. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Lennar, one of the nation’s leading homebuilders, and ICON, a construction technologies company pioneering large-scale 3D printing, announced today that construction on the largest community of 3D-printed homes is underway and reservations will begin in 2023.

Situated north of Austin in the city of Georgetown’s master-planned community of Wolf Ranch by Hillwood Communities, a Perot company, the 100-home community combines innovative robotics, software and advanced materials to create homes that are technologically advanced, environmentally sustainable and architecturally striking. Each Lennar home in Wolf Ranch is co-designed by the renowned architectural firm BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group. Prices are anticipated to start from the mid-$400,000s.

“We are very pleased to partner with ICON and BIG in building a first-of-its-kind, printed home community that combines innovative designs with sustainable features at an affordable price,” said Stuart Miller, Executive Chairman of Lennar. “Given the housing shortage that persists across the country, it has never been more important to innovate in order to find new methods of construction that will enable greater design flexibility and greater production at affordable prices.”

Click to read more at www.prnewswire.com.

Midway and Arc Capital Partners Acquire Sabine Street Lofts

Posted on by Sarah

A joint venture between Midway, the privately owned, fully integrated real estate investment, development and management firm, and Arc Capital Partners, the real estate owner and investment manager known for mixed-use urban infill investments with strong and beneficial impacts on communities, has acquired Sabine Street Lofts, a 198-unit, Class-A, loft-style apartment community located near Downtown Houston on Buffalo Bayou. Tom Fish and Jonathan Paine with Walker Dunlop represented the joint venture in financing the transaction.

Located at 150 Sabine Street, Sabine Street Lofts benefits from its accessibility and direct access to the revitalized Buffalo Bayou Park and is immediately west of Downtown Houston. Completed in 2001, the institutional-quality asset features large one- and two-bedroom floorplans with an average size of 1,017 square feet, approximately 100 square feet larger than the average apartment in Central Houston. Unit amenities include granite countertops in kitchen and baths, 10-foot ceiling heights with exposed ducts, in-unit washers and dryers, stained concrete and wood flooring and private balconies or patios. Community amenities include gated entrances with immediate access to the Buffalo Bayou trail, a fitness center, two resort-inspired swimming pools, outdoor fireplaces, expansive sundecks and pet-friendly amenities. Plans are underway to renovate the property, investing capital specifically into the common areas and project amenities that all residents can enjoy.

Additionally, many of the units will be converted into workforce housing as part of Midway’s MPact program, a new initiative within Midway’s property operations division. Aligning with the firm’s values to be purposeful and community-driven, MPact seeks to support those who are making a difference in our communities. Designed for professionals earning around 80% of the area median income, MPact will provide quality housing to those who have dedicated their careers to serving others.

Additional Midway properties that offer MPact units include Braeburn Village, Villa Del Prado and The Laura, which will debut in 2023 as part of Midway’s future East River mixed-use development.

OwnProp Continues Expansion – Enters Houston Market

Posted on by Sarah

The Web3 Technology company fractionalizes investment in 22-story Class A property

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Peter Rex, founder and Executive Chairman of Rex, announced that OwnProp, a Rex company, is continuing its recent geographic growth by expanding its offering to Houston, Texas. This news comes on the heels of OwnProp’s recent expansion into Atlanta. OwnProp is a tech platform democratizing access to high return and cash flowing commercial real estate deals by fractionalizing assets using blockchain technology.

The Rex Company expands to Houston.

“With OwnProp’s technology, we’ll continue to make real estate investments just like this, more accessible,” said Rex.

“OwnProp has successfully closed offerings for hotels, multifamily apartment complexes, commercial office spaces, and now will be offering a 22-story Class A property located in the prestigious Uptown district of Houston,” said Peter Rex. “With OwnProp’s technology, we will continue to make real estate investments just like this, more accessible,” said Rex. Click to read more at www.finance.yahoo.com.

SHM Architects Signs 12,000 SF at the Meadows Building

Posted on by Sarah

Transwestern Real Estate Services (TRS) announces SHM Architects, PLLC, a Dallas-based design firm, has signed a new, long-term 12,218-square-foot lease in the historic Meadows Building at Energy Square, a 170,000-square-foot office building located at 5646 Milton St. The firm moves to the top floor of the building, relocating from the Knox District. Transwestern’s Michael Griffin and Ethan Minter represented the tenant in lease negotiations.

SHM Architects, PLLC is a boutique design studio founded in 2005 in Dallas by David Stocker, Mark Hoesterey and Enrique Montenegro. In 2019, SHM launched its first satellite studio in Crested Butte, Colorado, reflecting a sustained commitment to servicing clients across the Mountain West region.

With more than 1.1 million rentable square feet spread out over five buildings, including the Meadows Building, Energy Square recently underwent a renovation that includes a state-of-the-art 10,000-square-foot fitness center, conference center, tenant lounges, revamped delis, campus park and outdoor deck. Completed in 1955, the Meadows Building was the first suburban office tower in Dallas and originally served as the headquarters for the General American Oil Company.

Jeff Eckert, Blake Shipley, Haley Hullett and Ayanna Jarvis with JLL represented the landlord, GlenStar and USAA Real Estate.

According to Transwestern research, pervasive flight to quality continues driving asking rent growth higher in quality Class A properties. Last quarter, full-service rents reached $43.92 per square foot, up 7.6% from last year.

Dangerous Curves Ahead: An Update on the Energy Sector

Posted on by Sarah

Sector Speaker: Detlef Hallerman-Director of the Reliant Energy Trade Center at Texas A & M University

Takeaway: As we transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to a ‘green’ economy, there will be many bumps in the road, and hard lessons to be learned. The transition involves moving from a free market energy world to an energy world created by government direction and consumer sentiment…and, the underlying truth of global warming. We are venturing into unknown territory.

Bullets:

• The ‘green movement’ is creating friction in crude oil exploration and refining markets
• One camp says ‘let the free market handle the transition’ and another camp says ‘it is too urgent to rely on markets and we must guide the process through government initiatives’
• In the meantime, coal is still the dominant fuel worldwide, and new coal burning plants are still being built in some countries
• The ‘green goal’ is to achieve an 80% energy change in a few short decades; the change is indeed underway, but it will be incremental and not brisk
• We are very slowly reducing reliance on the ‘Big 3’: coal, natural gas, & crude oil
• It takes only one year in the Permian Basin of Texas to bring a well to production status; offshore and internationally it takes much longer, hence sudden shortages in crude oil cannot be instantly be caught up
• There are a lot of government programs to accelerate battery and electricity storage development, and the solar energy to feed them, but progress is slow; solar energy cannot be created at night and wind energy cannot be created when the wind does not blow. During the Texas energy crisis during the big freeze, frozen infrastructure and no wind combined to reduce electricity generation right when we needed it the most

Click to read more at www.rednews.com.

All Those Remote Workers only a 2-Minute Drop in Commute Times? Doesn’t Seem Fair

Posted on by Sarah

The move to remote work continues to shake up the U.S. office market, with office vacancies reaching all-time highs in many cities during the third quarter of 2022. But more people working from home should come with at least one positive: a reduction in commute times as fewer cars clog U.S. highways.

The problem? The commute time for the average worker has dropped since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, it’s only dropped by about 2 minutes.

That’s the finding from a report released October 31st from Yardi Kube. Yardi reported that in 2019, 94% of the U.S. workforce was commuting and 8.9 million people worked remotely. That resulted in an average time of travel to work of almost 28 minutes.

In 2021, 27.6 million people worked remotely, resulting in about 18.6 million fewer commuters. The average time for commuters to travel to work in the United States that year fell to 26 minutes.

That isn’t much of a drop, but Yardi reports that this dip of 2 minutes equals about 8.5 hours in commute time saved a year for the average commuter.

But why isn’t the drop in commute times even higher with so many more employees working remotely? Yardi points to commuter habits.

Last year, more than 126 million workers 16 and older were commuting to work each morning. The company’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data shows that across the United States 67% of these commuters leave for work between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. The busiest timeslot for the morning commute is between 7 a.m. and 7:29 a.m., when more than 18 million people leave for work, or about 14% of total commuters.

The next busiest time slots are 7:30 a.m. to 7:59 a.m. and 8 a.m. to 8:29 a.m., with 12% and 11% of commuters leaving for work during these times.

Yardi’s research finds that commuters can save a significant amount of time on their travel to work by delaying or advancing their time of departure to work by just half an hour.

Consider Chicago. If commuters leave for work at 6:30 a.m. instead of 7 a.m. or after 8 a.m., they can save an average of 17.2 hours in commute times every year. This change can make an even bigger difference in Dallas. Yardi reports that commuters here can save an average of 22.2 hours a year by leaving at those same times.

And in Austin, Texas? Commuters can save a whopping 31.4 hours a year in travel times by leaving at 7:30 a.m. instead of 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. instead of 8:30 a.m.