Houston-Dwellers, I need advice!

[randomoutburst]

Another vote for living close. If he will be in a real graduate program, he will be busy enough without a long commute to the suburbs.

Like a lot of cities, you can have a sketchy neighborhood next to an expensive neighborhood in Houston. There's also a large variation in comfort levels and what people consider sketchy. Look at the discussion about Fry's Electronics out by Sugar Land for a great example.

If he gets into Rice, you should at least look at apartments close to the rail line, assuming you don't want to live in the university's graduate student housing for various reasons. (guns)

Not only that, but married housing isn't going to offer what we need - a place to tutor in-home, and a pet-friendly environment. The guns are as important to us as our dog - if one isn't welcome, the other doesn't matter because it's a deal breaker for us. :)

Thanks for information from everyone thus far! Please keep replying; I'm taking all the suggestions into account as I read them. Living closer is preferable, but cost might keep us from being able to do that. Part of the problem is that we need a dedicated room in the apartment to use for our tutoring business and many cheaper apartments don't offer what we need in that respect, and/or they do not allow pets. We also need a ground floor apartment to accommodate our gun safe. Yeesh. I've found only 12 complexes that allow pets over 25 lbs (ours is 40 lbs), have a floorplan we need on the ground floor, and aren't charging an arm and a leg.

Really, I would prefer to rent a small house or condo, or even a townhome...but having an apartment means maintenance is taken care of, we'll have lower utility costs, and won't have to worry about maintaining a yard. Once he's done with grad school I am sure we will look at settling down permanently and can consider an actual house at that time. And maybe even one out of the city. :)

[Carry-a-Kimber]

If he is considering Rice or UH, I would look at Rice Village for renting. Very upscale neighborhood with rent that is comparable with any other inner loop locale. I am an Inner Looper and my wife and I both work outside of the loop. The only time we have to deal with traffic is when we get on the freeways on our days off. I don't know how ppl deal with inbound traffic on a daily basis. Nothing wrong with the neighbor hoods East of Downtown either; Eastwood and Idylwood are both nice neighborhoods and still have reasonable housing prices if you are looking to buy. I have lived there for 4 years and other than the occasional missing flowerpot have never felt crime is any worse than anywhere else in the Houston area.

[Tass]

Stay away from anything on 290. Don't get me wrong, I grew up in the Cypress area and have lived here for 40 years. That said, you will spend the majority of your commute stuck in traffic. There are only 2 times the traffic on 290 isn't a nightmare: the week between Christmas and New Years and Super Bowl Sunday. That's it.

Congrats to hubby and good luck on your search!

Tass

[PBratton]

Sugar Land!!! Fort Bend County!

[tacticool]

If I understand right, you run an in home tutoring business. If so, you should also factor in your expected student base when choosing a location. But either way you have time before you know where he'll be going to school.

[Carry-a-Kimber]

Also might want to check out Montrose, its close to Rice, UH, St Thomas, and TSU. The rents there aren't high and a lot of places are pet friendly. If you do decide on something inside 610, I would suggest you steer clear of apartment complexes and try to find a duplex or 4-plex. They are typically less expensive, bigger, and don't draw in criminals like the big complexes do.

[tacticool]

It's also worth driving through neighborhoods looking for "FOR RENT" signs on houses. With a slow real estate market especially. Although it's technically illegal to discriminate, I suspect a married Rice graduate student might be a more attractive tenant than a family of six with questionable immigration status.

[RHenriksen]

I did something similar when I was an undergrad Economics student at UH. Drove up & down the streets in the Heights, looking for garage apartments. Every house with one got a flyer in their mailbox - a 'WANTED' poster (garage apartment, for college student, no parties/drinking/drugs, housebroken, etc; if your apt is for rent *or you know someone who has one*, please contact me at 713-555-1212)

It's also worth driving through neighborhoods looking for "FOR RENT" signs on houses. With a slow real estate market especially. Although it's technically illegal to discriminate, I suspect a married Rice graduate student might be a more attractive tenant than a family of six with questionable immigration status.

[randomoutburst]

I did something similar when I was an undergrad Economics student at UH. Drove up & down the streets in the Heights, looking for garage apartments. Every house with one got a flyer in their mailbox - a 'WANTED' poster (garage apartment, for college student, no parties/drinking/drugs, housebroken, etc; if your apt is for rent *or you know someone who has one*, please contact me at 713-555-1212)

It's also worth driving through neighborhoods looking for "FOR RENT" signs on houses. With a slow real estate market especially. Although it's technically illegal to discriminate, I suspect a married Rice graduate student might be a more attractive tenant than a family of six with questionable immigration status.

I totally want to drive around the city and look for rentals that aren't online, and I'd love to put out wanted flyers, but there's no point in doing that now since we'll be moving next summer. Gotta wait until late May to do that...and I am so hoping that we can find something that works!

tacticool - Right now it's not in-home. We're renting office space, but we're renting it from a family friend at a highly discounted rate. We know we won't get that kind of deal once we move, so we're having to make it in-home at least temporarily. We are factoring in tutoring "rent" that can go towards the monthly rent, but the problem is we will have no established clients for at least the first few months. Moving in the middle of summer means we won't get students until fall, so we cannot depend on the tutoring income since it won't be reliably present. It does bump up the amount we're willing to pay per month for an apartment, but we don't want to extend ourselves past what we can pay without the tutoring income.

Carry-A-Kimber - I did look into Rice Village and there are almost no housing options that offer what we need as far as space. The one floor plan that would work is offered to Rice graduates that are in their 2nd year and beyond, so it wouldn't be available to us. Good suggestion, though!

Thanks again to all who've volunteered information and those who have wished congratulations on the graduate school front. Hubby is worried he won't get into Rice (and to be realistic, they only accept about 25% of their applicants) but I think he will. I know I'm the biased wife, but I also know him better than anyone else and I know his experience and grades are impressive. Keep sending good thoughts and prayers his way, though, because I know Rice is his dream and every little bit helps!

[sugar land dave]

Sugar Land!!! Fort Bend County!

Normally a very safe city.

[Skiprr]

Stay away from anything on 290. Don't get me wrong, I grew up in the Cypress area and have lived here for 40 years. That said, you will spend the majority of your commute stuck in traffic. There are only 2 times the traffic on 290 isn't a nightmare: the week between Christmas and New Years and Super Bowl Sunday. That's it.

Whoa, Tass. Wait a minute. That's not really true.

The traffic on 290 between Becker and Bingle is generally pretty light from midnight to 4:00 a.m. If you make the inbound commute before 4:00 a.m., you're generally pretty good.

You're spot on. While the developmental expansion growing from Houston already had major freeway arteries in I-45 north and south, I-10 west, and 59 southwest, 290 was really, originally, only a "link" freeway to join 610 and the Beltway, plus a few miles farther. Until just a few years ago, it became a rural highway before you even got to Fairfield.

Northwest has been the biggest residential development push in Greater Houston in the past decade. The same company that built The Woodlands bought huge tracts of land and developed Bridgeland, for example, and 290 was expanded as a freeway to accommodate the literally thousands of new homes being built. That's why, every year, the commute on 290 gets longer and longer...there are more and more people out here.

If you've been in Cypress for 40 years, you've seen a total change of environment, haven't you? A Cypress resident 40 years ago wouldn't even recognize the almost-urban Cypress of today.

And just wait until the inevitable expansion of the 290 corridor, regardless of what it ends up being: more lanes only, more lanes plus expanded frontage roads, or more lanes plus light rail. I'm sure it'll be much better after the construction...for a while, at least. But it will be a nightmare during the construction.

Back to the OP: RO, Seriously consider the advice about selecting an area based on the proximity of your students. If in-home tutoring is going to be a known business, the (sometimes) incredible traffic in Houston will mean (IMHO) that selection of a tutor will greatly depend upon location, unless that tutor is legend.

I think those demographics may significantly affect the selection process.

Also consider that many of the large apartment management concerns routinely prohibit a business that is operated out of the apartment. 'Course, it's hard to ever detect--nor do I think they care much--if somebody, say, sells eBay stuff. It's the visitors in-and-out that they'll dislike and enforce. Plus, with a lot of apartments, the students and parents will face constant access issues through either guards or gated entry.

This may be the most favorable economy in years for lessors of private homes. I would think there would be a lot of negotiation wiggle room by motivated home owners for qualified lessors. It's very tough to sell a used home right now, and owners who want to keep the house may be agreeable to anything that approximates a break-even proposition. That might be less expensive for the same floorplan requirements than an apartment.

[randomoutburst]

Back to the OP: RO, Seriously consider the advice about selecting an area based on the proximity of your students. If in-home tutoring is going to be a known business, the (sometimes) incredible traffic in Houston will mean (IMHO) that selection of a tutor will greatly depend upon location, unless that tutor is legend.

I think those demographics may significantly affect the selection process.

Also consider that many of the large apartment management concerns routinely prohibit a business that is operated out of the apartment. 'Course, it's hard to ever detect--nor do I think they care much--if somebody, say, sells eBay stuff. It's the visitors in-and-out that they'll dislike and enforce. Plus, with a lot of apartments, the students and parents will face constant access issues through either guards or gated entry.

This may be the most favorable economy in years for lessors of private homes. I would think there would be a lot of negotiation wiggle room by motivated home owners for qualified lessors. It's very tough to sell a used home right now, and owners who want to keep the house may be agreeable to anything that approximates a break-even proposition. That might be less expensive for the same floorplan requirements than an apartment.

It's been my experience that parents don't mind driving 10-15 miles away from the school to get their kid tutoring, but obviously closer is better. I've also seen a shift away from "chain" tutoring services like Sylvan and Kumon because of the fees they charge. I don't think finding students will be a problem - in fact, I think I may get more students than I've ever had up here considering the limited number of schools in my current area.

I know some apartments actually have it written in the contract that you can't do business out of the apartment, so I will have to be mindful of that. I'm not likely to have more than 2-3 students in a day, and most complexes allow visitors to call residents for gate access so I don't think it would be a huge problem. Still, a rented home would work better than an apartment. Problem is, we don't want a lawn to maintain and we like the apartment idea because the complex must fix broken things. When you rent a house, it's more likely that those repairs will be our responsibility, not the landlord's. Plus utility costs will be much higher. My husband is leaning much more towards an apartment while I could go either way. You did bring up good points for a rented home, though, so perhaps I can sway him. :)

[RHenriksen]

It's been my experience that parents don't mind driving 10-15 miles away from the school to get their kid tutoring, but obviously closer is better.

I don't know what traffic is like in your area, but 10-15 miles means different things in, say, Los Angeles than it does in Midland, Texas! Ditto for Houston rush hour traffic.

[¿Qué?]

Also consider that many of the large apartment management concerns routinely prohibit a business that is operated out of the apartment. 'Course, it's hard to ever detect--nor do I think they care much--if somebody, say, sells eBay stuff. It's the visitors in-and-out that they'll dislike and enforce. Plus, with a lot of apartments, the students and parents will face constant access issues through either guards or gated entry.

This may be the most favorable economy in years for lessors of private homes. I would think there would be a lot of negotiation wiggle room by motivated home owners for qualified lessors. It's very tough to sell a used home right now, and owners who want to keep the house may be agreeable to anything that approximates a break-even proposition. That might be less expensive for the same floorplan requirements than an apartment.

Make sure you rent a house without a HOA or where the HOA doesn't prohibit home businesses. Some of them are very restrictive in what is and isn't allowed.

[Carry-a-Kimber]

Just as a referance as to what rents are going for in my neck of the woods. A remodeled duplex a few doors down from me put out a for rent sign today. It is a 1 bedroom with a study, 900 sqft apartment with a fenced backyard and is $500 a month. They have a lawn service and utilities would probably be less than $200 a month. It is close (<15 minutes) to both UH and Rice.