Houston Strategies

John Arnold on Houston, real impact of lowering min lot sizes, HTX attracting tech, TX #1 attracting businesses

 A few smaller items this week:

• Texas attracted more relocating businesses than any other state, report finds

"More than 25,000 establishments relocated to Texas from 2010 to 2019, bringing more than 281,000 jobs with them and resulting in a gain of nearly 103,000 jobs for the state, data compiled by the Federal Reserve Bank shows.

The report said Texas appeals to relocating businesses for a variety of reasons, including its central location in the continental U.S., access to multiple large cities and business-friendly environment...

However, research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that attractive economic fundamentals — like low taxes, low regulations, a growing population, a relatively lower cost of living and less union activity — are far more important than incentive packages when businesses make location and expansion decisions."

• Salim Furth at Mercatus: "How much are #Houston's different lot sizes in different eras showing up in real houses for real people? Here are single family houses built in the 22 years before reform, and the 22 years after - same scale." When minimum lot sizes shrank, a whole lot more small-lot houses got built because that's what the market wanted.

• WSJ: Tech Hubs Are Losing the Talent War to Everywhere Else. Interesting excerpt:

"Founded in Houston, Cart moved its headquarters to Austin in 2021, only to return to Houston in November.  

The company moved to Austin to hire software developers, says co-founder Remington Tonar. But Cart is a logistics company as well as an e-commerce services provider, and its leaders found the company’s rapid growth required a bigger city with a larger and more diverse talent pool, including skills that go beyond just software development.  

“If I’m looking for front-end software devs who can build beautiful tools to perform one task, a place like San Fran or Austin may be better,” says Tonar. “But if I need people who can integrate digital and physical systems, Houston is a lot more attractive, because people are coming out of logistics and energy.”  

"Most stories about reducing homelessness mention Houston.

Most stories about housing affordability mention Houston.

Most stories about new housing models mention Houston.

Most stories about zoning mention Houston.

All these issues are related."

(mic drop ;-) 

Labels: affordability, economic strategy, economy, home affordability, homelessness, land-use regulation, rankings, tech, zoning

posted by Tory Gattis @ 7:58 PM