Houston Strategies

Top rankings mania, United HQ, jobs, zoning, Texans, and more

The smaller misc items have been piling up faster than usual lately...

• The 2012 8th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey has been released, with Houston once again held up as a paragon with a very affordable 2.9 ratio between the median home price ($160k) and median income ($55k).  That certainly beats ratios around 6 for the major coastal cities and even much worse for international cities like Hong Kong, Sydney, and Vancouver.  
• Houston stomped Silicon Valley in 2011 tech job growth.  Hat tip to Josh.
• Houston poised for greatness in 2012 according to The Street.

"Throughout the economic crisis, Houston has been the buttoned-down older brother to Austin's hippie slacker. 

While college-boy Austin coasts by on education and arts, Houston shrugs off the cool kids, goes to work every day with its buddies in the energy industry and does what it can to keep unemployment below 8%. Unlike Austin, though, Houston doesn't have to drop its home prices to draw new blood."

• Houston stays ahead of US housing downturn
• Houston ranked as the world's 19th-fastest growing metro area, and the fastest in North America, and with the fastest growing wages.
• Texas is #2 in this interactive chart of competitiveness, behind North Dakota, of all places.  I think I'll stick it out here...  ;-)
• Quote of the week from a Wall Street Journal article on zoning in NYC: 

"Zoning became a game for poker sharks."

• The Chronicle editorial board picked up on the WSJ middle-class jobs story I covered last month.  A good strength of Houston.
• I came across this quote about the United-Continental merger and choice of HQ in a Fortune article.  Based on this and what I've heard about the radical decline in Continental service since the merger, I think I can safely say that they royally screwed up this merger picking Chicago for the HQ over Houston.  It not only raised costs, but helped the much lower regarded United culture win out.

"To be fair, there are some initial benefits to combining operations. Merging headquarters and slashing management costs does help the surviving airline, although it can be limited. For example, United has had to hike the pay of Continental employees by 20% to 30% to entice them to move up to Chicago from Houston, a person close to the company told Fortune. The bizarre reason to remain headquartered in such an expensive city, even with tax breaks, shows that airline mergers aren't always rational."

Finally, I'm a couple weeks too late in sharing this, but it's still pretty cool.  In retrospect, the lyrics at the 3:16 point were poorly chosen.  Oh well.  Next season is looking good.  Go Texans!

Labels: affordability, economy, growth, headquarters, home affordability, rankings, zoning

posted by Tory Gattis @ 8:08 PM