Fact #1

It’s not too early to tell and it is provable, through Dallas Central Appraisal District Records, that the best way to protect the value of your structure, of your home, is to enact an NSO.

Our opposition has stated that "all experts agree" it's too early to tell the impact an NSO has on a neighborhood. They quote Ms. Tama Cole of Briggs-Freeman, a local real estate agency where Ms. Cole works as a commission sales agent: ‘When you buy property, much like a car, the house immediately begins to depreciate because of age. The only appreciation is in the land. If the land is restricted, making it hard for builders to construct new houses and make a profit, then your land will not appreciate..."

They are cherry picking information to make it appear that they have “facts” and “experts” on their side of the argument. They state a simple fact; all structures begin to depreciate the moment after they’re built, but it’s not too soon, as their “experts” claim, to draw conclusions about structure depreciation in a pre-teardown and post-teardown neighborhood.

We have a perfect example in Santa Barbara, less than 0.5 miles from the border of our neighborhood. Look at the Market Value graph for 4020 Santa Barbara:

Notice how as recently as 2006, their structure was worth $124,000 and their lot was worth $30,000. Today, that structure is worth $21,470. This structure is listed as in Fair condition, as it was in 2006 when it was worth $124,000. The only thing that’s changed is that the builders moved in, started buying up houses, scraping them and building 4,500 sq. ft. houses (on average).

Now look at the house of one of the folks who sent you the latest AGAINST flyer, It's Jack Ormberget's house at 7309 Bennington:

In 2006 the structure was worth $127,840 and the lot was worth $50,000. Today, as Ms. Tama Cole predicted, the structure is worth less; $120,760. But that is far more than any of the older structures on Santa Barbara. Yet Jack's house is nearly the same as 4020 Santa Barbara, slightly larger, but listed in the same Fair condition.

What has protected the value of his structure? Our neighborhood is not yet the target of teardown speculators. You can look at any street or neighborhood that’s gone through what Santa Barbara has – a little farther away, look at Vanderbilt, or Sondra, or Lake Circle – and see the same phenomenon. As soon as the builders move in and the land becomes worth more, the structures are rapidly depreciated, discouraging any investment in that structure, and turning the entire neighborhood into nothing more than deteriorating Scrapers. I learned that term when I called Dallas Central Appraisal District and asked an appraiser why I was seeing such rapid depreciations in the Market Value histories. Scrapers was his term for what those homes have become.

When you’re over on Lake Circle, go down to the 6500 block and look at the Violation citations posted on the now overgrown scraped lots directly across the street from 3,500 & 4,500 sq. ft. homes. Some of these lots are still owned by builders who apparently can’t afford to keep them mowed. Some are now owned by banks. You can look that up at dallascad.org, too.

When the builders move in, the spirit of neighborhood goes out the window. The streets becomes nothing more than a money trench to be mined for profit. Regardless of the best intentions of the people speculating on teardowns, the bottom line is always money, and if the economy goes south, it is the residents, not the builders, who are left looking at the overgrown, vacant lots, all scraped with the best intentions.

What happens in a teardown neighborhood is that the neighbors who have spent time and effort to make their homes attractive and modern and well maintained are the first to be penalized, because their homes cost too much to attract the builders who specialize in teardowns. Those builders are business people, and they pay as little as possible for their lots. So, the neighbors who have improved their homes are the ones left to deal with the dirt and dust and trucks and racket and lunch trucks blaring their horns and everything that comes along with living in a teardown neighborhood. And as an added bonus, they get to watch the value of their structures plummet over a two or three year period, until no matter the condition of their structure – which I like to call My Home – all it’s worth is the dirt that it sits on.