Looped In
Houston Chronicle reporters Marissa Luck and Rebecca Schuetz talk to the region's developers, deal makers and dreamers about all things Houston and real estate.
Episodes
September 12, 2023 • 39 mins
Office buildings in the South can be notoriously cold in the summer months – or at least that’s what a majority of women would say who jokingly refer to offices in the summer as “women’s winter.” This year as more companies return to the office amid record heatwaves and requests by ERCOT for Texans to reduce electricity usage, we ask why office buildings temperatures can feel out of line with the outside temperatures. We talk to St...
Mark as Played
August 28, 2023 • 32 mins
A group of volunteers that, for nearly two decades, has offered free meals four evenings a week outside Central Library has recently started getting fined for breaking city law. The 2012 law, which limits giving free meals to those in need, has been deeply controversial and had gone largely unenforced for over a decade. Food Not Bombs volunteers say the ordinance goes against their morals and hope it will be deemed unconstitutional...
Mark as Played
August 15, 2023 • 38 mins
Description: The recent demolition of a $24 million historic home by Astros owner Jim Crane renewed conversations about the preservation of the iconic River Oaks neighborhood. Since its founding in the 1920s, the high-income Houston enclave became a quiet retreat from the rest of the city where the wealthy invested in building beautiful, architecturally significant homes. One by one though, many of these historic mansions are getti...
Mark as Played
August 1, 2023 • 30 mins
After much political wrangling and not one, but two special legislative sessions, the Texas legislature has finally agreed on a property tax relief bill. It has something in it for all property owners -- not only homeowners, but also investors and businesses -- and legislators argue that it will trickle down to renters. Austin bureau reporter Jasper Scherer unpacks the bill and what comes next to Marissa Luck and R.A. Schuetz.
Lear...
Mark as Played
July 8, 2023 • 46 mins
Master-planned communities are playing an increasingly important role in housing families priced out of urban cores. How do designers and developers go about planning the future of these massive mini cities to respond to the growing risk of climate change and housing affordability concerns – while also making these communities pleasant places to live?
In this episode of Looped In, host Marissa Luck interviewed John Saxon of Howard ...
Mark as Played
June 9, 2023 • 41 mins
Living with roommates has long been a way to save money on housing. In the past decade or so though, a new class of professionally managed roommate housing has emerged called coliving – think of -up version of college dorms. Coliving providers take the typical hassles out of roommate living while giving residents a quick way to meet new people and save on rent. While coliving in the U.S. emerged first in pricey real estate markets ...
Mark as Played
R.A. Schuetz and Marissa Luck discuss a tax break meant to create affordable housing that's in the center of some controversy. Public Facility Corporations have drawn scrutiny both in Houston (we'll hear about some tense words between Mayor Sylvester Turner and the housing authority) and in the state Capitol, where the Texas legislators are battling over how to reform the tax break as the session hurtles toward its end.
Links:
Big ...
Mark as Played
May 2, 2023 • 41 mins
The real estate sector is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions globally – and it’s not just because of the power used to electrify or cool a building. Creating and transporting all of the materials that go into a building is a huge source of carbon emissions that the industry is now trying to reel in by tracking what’s known as embodied carbon. In this episode of Looped In, we talk to Skanska USA’s Houston le...
Mark as Played
March 31, 2023 • 25 mins
Mayor Sylvester Turner is seeking City Council support for a conservation district program he and city planners say could help lower-income neighborhoods preserve their character and fend off gentrification. Critics say it may end up causing gentrification.
Marissa Luck and R.A. Schuetz speak with Yilun Cheng, City Council reporter at the Houston Chronicle, about what conservation districts would entail, why some neighborhood advoc...
Mark as Played
March 27, 2023 • 41 mins
There’s a new project proposed in the site of The Ashby high-rise, a contentious apartment tower first pitched 16 years ago that set off one of the most intense land-use battles in Houston’s history. We dive into the history of The Ashby, and provide an update on The Langley, the revised version of the project, which developers say is close to breaking ground in Houston’s Boulevard Oaks neighborhood.
HoustonChronicle.com subscriber...
Mark as Played
March 3, 2023 • 30 mins
After the pandemic’s housing boom, which spurred bidding wars and drove up home prices to dizzying highs, the market has shifted. Interest rates have risen, inflation has eaten away at budgets and some economists have forecasted a recession. As many would-be homebuyers have been priced out of the market, fewer people are competing to buy. What does it all mean for Houston’s housing market in the upcoming year? Looped In co-hosts Ma...
Mark as Played
February 16, 2023 • 29 mins
Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the country with a large population of Chinese residents who have helped to contribute to thriving commercial corridors such as Asiatown near Bellaire and Asiantown near Katy. How would SB 147 -- a proposed law barring citizens and companies from China, Russia, North Korea and Iran from buying real estate in Texas-- impact the Chinese population in Houston? What effects might we see on r...
Mark as Played
January 30, 2023 • 40 mins
Nearly five months after a Houston Chronicle story about a retired couple's battle with their HOA over feeding the ducks gets picked up by outlets around the globe, the reporter gets a call from the couple's daughter. While Mrs. Rowe and her lawyer said that they had begun feeding the ducks after the loss of their daughter, the Rowe's daughter is in fact alive. How to correct a story that's gone viral, and the surprising prevalence...
Mark as Played
January 24, 2023 • 41 mins
A nationwide, $47 billion effort to prevent evictions during the pandemic is winding down, leaving tenants to cope with higher rents amid inflation. How well did emergency rental assistance, which funneled aid through local and state programs, work? Looped In hosts R.A. Schuetz and Marissa Luck interview Erin Hahn, a researcher from a tenant advocacy group called Texas Housers, who compared Houston's local rental assistance program...
Mark as Played
December 15, 2022 • 29 mins
Some homeowners in Houston are dealing with a host of unexpected environmental issues - from discovering years after purchasing their homes that their land was sinking underneath them to learning there are still cancer risks tied to old school industrial developments nearby. As Houston Chronicle’s environmental reporter Emily Foxhall departs, we sit down to discuss a few of her biggest stories impacting Houston real estate.
Neighb...
Mark as Played
December 2, 2022 • 33 mins
An ambitious $310 million transformation of the eastern side of Buffalo Bayou gets underway this week as Buffalo Bayou Partnership -- which developed the 160-acre Buffalo Bayou Park between Allen Parkway and Memorial Drive -- breaks ground on the first piece of its decade-long plan to transform the stretch of the bayou east of downtown.But the groundbreaking isn't for a project normally associated with parks and trails, for which t...
Mark as Played
November 4, 2022 • 36 mins
Houston’s East End is in the midst of massive change as the neighborhood once dominated by industrial buildings and small bungalows is turning into a hub for mixed-use developments, apartments and adaptive reuse projects. A major catalyst of the East End’s transformation was sparked by East River, the 150-acre mixed-use development by Midway rising along Buffalo Bayou waterway. We sit down with Midway vice president Anna Deans to d...
Mark as Played
October 3, 2022 • 40 mins
Meyerland, built on former rice fields in southwest Houston, was one of Houston’s earliest master-planned communities promising to bring suburban life relatively close to the city. But the neighborhood has been repeatedly ravaged by floods, with some of the worst damage occurring in Hurricane Harvey five years ago. Even though Meyerland shows us the repercussions of building in the floodplain and many communities throughout Houston...
Mark as Played
July 22, 2022 • 32 mins
In a city with virtually no official zoning, the ability to create a historic district over a particular neighborhood is supposed to be a key tool Houstonians can use to preserve the character of a place. But in the case of one historically Black community in Houston’s Third Ward, called Riverside Terrace, residents were convinced a proposed historic district would actually lead to more unwanted change – gentrification – not less o...
Mark as Played
June 23, 2022 • 18 mins
A federal program is meant to give low-income families the freedom to choose where they live. But most landlords are not interested in participating, put off by requirements such as lengthy inspection periods and the prospect that the voucher might not meet them where the market is, relegating families with vouchers to the few properties that accept the housing subsidy. The Houston nonprofit NestQuest has set out to change that.
R...
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Anna Sale explores the big questions and hard choices that are often left out of polite conversation.
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people.
A straightforward look at the day's top news in 20 minutes. Powered by ABC News. Hosted by Brad Mielke.