April 8 was a special day in Texas as most major cities were able to experience the solar eclipse. CCISD was actually off from school so Ty hit the road to Austin with his friends, while Susan and Zach stayed home to watch it from our front yard. We dragged out our zero gravity chairs, mixed some cocktails (non-alcohol for him of course), fixed some snacks, and reclined all the way back. Although it was pretty cloudy, we were able to catch the entire show, on and off through the clouds, and with and without our eclipse glasses. Some places in Texas were fortunate to have good weather and got to see the very rare total solar eclipse and the famous ring of fire. I am so glad I was able to experience the eclipse with Zach this time, because the next total solar eclipse that can be seen from the United States will be August 23, 2044, which is over 20 years from now. I hope that Zach and I will be able to see it again together. He’ll be 31 and yikes, I’ll be 72!
The Houston Chronicle reports that the population in Houston has spiked in recent years, leaving popular cities like New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Here are some interesting takeaways from the article:
The Houston metro area, encompassing 10 counties with over 7.5 million people, saw a population increase of nearly 140,000 between July 2022 and July 2023.
This growth rate in Houston translates to a new resident approximately every four minutes, making it the second largest gain in the U.S. after Dallas.
In contrast, the country’s three largest metros—New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—experienced population losses.
The Houston area has regained over 150% of the jobs it lost during the pandemic, indicating a recovery plus a 50% increase in pre-pandemic job numbers.
Metro areas such as Chicago and San Francisco have not yet regained all the jobs lost due to the pandemic, while New York has only just managed to recover its lost jobs.
Harris County, within the Houston metro, saw nearly 42,000 international migrants in the year, the highest since at least 2016 and the second highest in the U.S. after Miami-Dade County.
International migration was the primary driver of population growth in Houston, accounting for nearly 40% of its total growth last year.
Harris County also experienced the largest natural population increase in the U.S., with approximately 35,000 more births than deaths during this period.
The first two weeks of 2024 was pretty action packed! Koh left for Adelaide, Australia, being hired by a professional paracyclist from Japan to help coach him at a big competition Down Under. CCISD was off the first week in January and Joe’s University of Texas was off until this week, so Susan lucked out with both Joe and Ty home to help watch Zach and run the house. Exciting news for Ty was that he competed in a large 81 team competition on January 5-6. He not only won 1st place in the 126 pound category, but he was also named as the Most Outstanding Wrestler of the entire tournament. We were very happy for him as that is a big accomplishment!
Susan went to Washington DC Jan 10-12 to attend her first NAR Leadership Academy (NARLA) session. She joined 20 other realtors from all over the United States (and one from Guam) for a 10 month journey into developing and enhancing their leadership skills and competencies to someday lead their local, state, or national realtor association. To be selected for this program is an honor and getting to meet such inspirational colleagues from Vail, West Palm Beach, Atlanta, San Francisco, Peoria, Billings, etc was so fun and interesting.
The real estate industry is currently facing a multi-front assault from consumers and regulators across the U.S. And while it remains to be seen what will ultimately happen, the industry is increasingly bracing for major disruption.
Sitzer | Burnett Sitzer | Burnett has been the highest profile case lately because it went to trial in October in Missouri and the verdict was recently reached. A jury ultimately ruled in favor of the homeseller-plaintiffs in the case, agreeing that the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and various large franchisors conspired to keep commissions high. At issue was NAR’s cooperative compensation rule, also known as the Participation Rule, which requires listing brokers to make an offer of compensation to buyer brokers in order to submit a listing to a Realtor-affiliated MLS. The jury awarded $1,785,310,872 in damages, which, under the law, will be automatically trebled to $5.356 billion.
In the days following the verdict, several ‘copy cat’ lawsuits have come out, including a suit against Texas Realtors, HAR, MetroTex, ABOR, and many other real estate companies and even individual agents. Although NAR just lost the Sitzer Burnett case, it is not named in this suit. The target is only state and local associations saying they are guilty for overseeing compliance with the NAR MLS rules. Potentially, this lawsuit could seek class action status and represent home sellers in Texas from Nov 13, 2019 to present, who used a local association’s listing broker and paid a buyer’s agent commission. NAR defended the current system of cooperative compensation, stating it benefits both sellers and buyers by allowing homes to be sold for more, providing more choices for buyers, and facilitating transparent and efficient marketplaces. NAR emphasizes the value Realtors bring to clients during the complex homebuying process.
This is my opinion only, but if we change the current system where sellers pay their listing agent and their listing agent splits their commission with the cooperating buyer’s agent, then what system will we go to? Will we follow New York, where sellers are committed to paying their listing agent and will now pay the buyer’s agent directly? Will we change to a Colorado system where the seller often pays their listing agent and the listing agent is in the middle, representing the seller and just helps the the buyer (with no buyer’s agent)? Will we change to a Japanese system where the seller pays the listing agent and the buyer pays his own agent? There are many options of what the system could become after these lawsuits are worked out.
Elon Musk, the guy who started the Tesla car company, is doing some really big things in the state of Texas. He’s building a gigantic factory near Austin called Giga Texas. This factory is so huge that it covers 8 million square feet of land, which is about the size of 139 football fields! It’s going to be where they make some of Tesla’s cool cars like the Model Y and the Cybertruck. They’re planning to hire around 10,000 people to work there.
But that’s not all. A Tesla subsidiary registered as Gambit Energy Storage LLC has built a 100-megawatt battery energy storage project in Angleton. Huge-scale batteries are needed to store the electricity produced by wind and solar.
Building these big factories doesn’t just create jobs at Tesla; it also brings in a lot of other jobs and money to the area. In fact, experts predict that because of all this, about 50,000 jobs will be created, and Texas will make over $3.6 billion more money every year. So, it’s not just about making cool cars and batteries; it’s also helping the Texas economy grow.
