Public restrictions on ownership are government restrictions on what you may do with your real estate. Some of the common types of public restrictions on ownership are taxation, eminent domain, police power, and escheat. One thing we talked about in class was zoning. Zoning involves dividing an area into zones where each zone has a specified use. For example, you can't put a factory in the middle of a neighborhood. So it's interesting to hear that my hometown of Houston, TX does not have zoning. Dr. Peterson brought this up in class, so I decided to do a little bit of investigating.
Houston does not have official strict zoning laws. However, they do have quite a few rules about real estate. Below is a good article that sums of the Houston zoning myth.
The article basically says that without the zoning laws, Houston is still separated into sections...but these sections are driven by economic factors instead of actual strict laws. The developers in the area create very thorough deed restrictions as well and don't want to lose any potential profit in the future. So although there's not zoning in the traditional sense, there are plenty of rules that keep things organized in Houston.
You would think that not having zoning would hurt property values, but in fact, the two small cities incorporated within Houston (Bellaire and West University) that actually have zoning have noticed that their property values do not climb as quickly as those in rest of Houston. If you'd like to read more on Bellaire and West University, I've pasted a link the article below.
No comments:
Post a Comment