BY JAMES T. NORMAN CONTRIBUTIONS CASSANDRA JENKINS
The cause
What’s next?
Housing starts
The last few acres of land for a city are typically the hardest to develop, Wyly said, as the easiest land is typically what gets developed first, making land with more challenges the last to see work. Despite this, the last 15% of land for Pearland will be critical to making the city sustainable for years to come. As part of that, Pearland officials are looking to approve the city’s newest comprehensive plan in July, which will help map out the remaining undeveloped land. Friendswood officials gave a similar answer in an email. With roughly 2,000 acres left to develop, the goal is to lessen the tax impact on current residents and pair complementing developments, like commercial and multifamily, together. Meanwhile, Manvel officials are creating the city’s first strategic plan, which is expected to wrap up in early 2025 and will help guide officials how to use the city’s land. “People want to move to Manvel, and as I talk to them ... they love seeing all the green space,” Davis said. “They love not experiencing traffic and congestion.”
As Pearland approaches build-out, the number of houses being built is slowing down at a “signifi- cant” pace, Wyly said. “I think a lot of communities, as they approach build-out, those [housing] numbers are going to kind of settle,” Wyly said. For Manvel, the number of homes under construction has increased in the past decade or so after remaining fairly stagnant for much of the 2000s, data shows. Davis said many of the new residents coming to Manvel are coming from places like Pearland. Fewer homes being built around the area com- bined with a desire to stay in the general vicinity is causing many to come to the burgeoning city. “We don’t want to do something because it’s the way [other cities] do it,” Davis said. “It’s our job as public servants to prioritize [what residents want].”
Pearland
Manvel
Friendswood
3K
2.5K
2K
1.5K
1K
616
0.5K
215 110
0
2000 2005
2010 2015 2020 2023
SOURCES: CITIES OF FRIENDSWOOD, MANVEL AND PEARLAND/COMMUNITY IMPACT
Zooming out
developments, he said. Those developments are now wrapping up, which has flooded the market with new units in some areas. In the three submarkets Apartment Data Services tracks that make up the Pearland and Friendswood area, there are more than 3,600 units across a dozen projects either recently built in the past year, under construction or proposed, data shows. “Occupancy went up, rents went up and financ- ing was still low. … That [created] a 50-year high in construction,” McClenny said. “It’s definitely more than we’ve ever seen.”
The increasing number of apartment projects in the Greater Houston area is tied to more than just certain cities’ development goals, Apartment Data Services President Bruce McClenny said. Across the area, apartment projects are being delivered in droves, McClenny said. This in part has to do with the post-COVID-19 economy, which has seen new units being leased “like we’ve never seen before,” McClenny said. That, combined with the market reopening in 2021-22 following the peak of the pandemic, created a surge of pitches for apartment
“An important piece of keeping communities at an affordable place is the taxable assets you have on the ground. This last 15% [of land] we maybe make sure they’re denser to share across the community.” VANCE WYLY, DIRECTOR OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, CITY OF PEARLAND
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