Houston Home Sales Hit All-Time Record

By Ralph Bivins

Houston home sales hit their highest monthly sales total ever in May, establishing a new record of 7,794 home sales in a single-month, the Houston Association of Realtors reported.

The May sales total, up 28 percent over May 2012, shattered the previous monthly record established in June 2006 when 7,688 single-family homes were sold in the Houston area, the realty association reported.

“The market isn’t just red hot, it’s white hot,” said Shad Bogany, chairman of the Texas Association of Realtors. “The Houston market is one of the best in the country.”

Low mortgage rates and strong job growth have generated a boom of home selling over the last two years in Houston. The city’s economy has been expanding, adding over 110,000 new jobs to the Houston economy over the last 12 months.
Home prices hit new records in May. The median home price was $188,000 in May, up about 12 percent from May of last year. It is the highest median price on record, the Houston realty association reported.

Ralph Bivins, Editor of RealtyNewsReport, Named Winner in NAREE Journalism Competition

HOUSTON – Ralph Bivins, editor of RealtyNewsReport,  has been named a winner in the “Best Commercial Real Estate Report” category of the National Association of Real Estate Editors 63rd Annual Journalism Awards.

Award winners in 25 categories were selected by a panel of expert judges from the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.

Bivins’ article about the sale of the Exxon Mobil skyscraper in downtown Houston for CultureMap.com received a Bronze Award in the national competition.

Judges provided this comment about Bivins’ work for CultureMap: “This breaking news article focused on the purchase of the Exxon Mobil tower in Houston. It is a great example of an explanatory story that shows the possible ramifications of a purchase of this magnitude.”

The award ceremony took place at the NAREE Annual Real Estate Journalism Conference in Atlanta last week.  Daniel DiClerico of Consumer Reports won NAREE’s Platinum Award for Best Overall Entry and Nancy Keates of the Wall Street Journal took the Gold Award for Best Collection of Work.

The National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) is a non-profit association founded in 1929.

Shad Bogany’s Radio Show Moves to 1360 AM

HOUSTON — The Real Estate Corner, Houston’s long-running real estate radio program, is now broadcasting at a new spot on the dial, KWWJ AM 1360. It airs every Tuesday from 6:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m.

“I’ve been preaching the gospel of real estate over the airwaves for 23 years,” said the show’s founder and host, Shad Bogany, of Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Gary Greene. “The station has changed, but my mission to educate the public on all aspects of home ownership remains the same.”

Bogany, 2013 Chairman of the Texas Association of Realtors, created the radio program in 1990.

Ralph Bivins, editor of RealtyNewsReport.com, has been a guest on Bogany’s show on a number of occasions.

Shorenstein Buys Exxon Mobil Tower for $50 Million

By Ralph Bivins

HOUSTON – Shorenstein Properties has acquired the 45-story Exxon Mobil building in downtown Houston for a redevelopment that will restore the property to Class A status.

The Exxon Mobil building, located at 800 Bell at Travis, was built in 1962 as the headquarters of Humble Oil & Refining, a predecessor to Exxon Mobil.

The sales price was not disclosed. As part of the deal, Exxon Mobil, the seller, agreed to lease back the entire building until 2015, when it will relocate its employees to its new 385-acre corporate campus on the far northern suburbs of Houston, not far from The Woodlands.

Shorenstein’s renovations may include linking the building into the downtown tunnel system which connects many of the skyscrapers and hotels in downtown Houston.

The 1.2 million square-foot Exxon Mobil tower and its seven-story garage cover two downtown blocks.

The price paid for the building was not disclosed, but people in the real estate community said it was around $50 million. By comparison, the 1.8-million square-foot Shell Plaza in downtown recently sold for around $550 million.

“We purchased this property markedly below current replacement cost, which gives us the opportunity, once the current user vacates, to employ all our company’s core skills in capital transaction execution, redevelopment, leasing and operations to increase the property’s value by establishing its long term position and further enhancing its reputation in the market,” Douglas Shorenstein, chairman and CEO of Shorenstein Properties said in a written statement.

San Francisco-based Shorenstein owns dozens of office buildings across the nation including two others in Houston near the intersection of San Felipe and Loop 610: the 28-story Five Post Oak Park building, which is across the street from the St. Regis Hotel, as well as the 21-story 2000 West Loop South tower on the freeway’s west side frontage road.