by John Hill As an Abilene landlord who has leased property in this market since 2001, I know summer rentals move differently than in other months.  College students ask for 9-month leases that begin in August and families sign 12-month leases for a home they can rent before school begins. … Continue reading...

by John Hill An article in the Atlantic Monthly summarizes a national trend: lot sizes are getting smaller, nation-wide.  In 1978, the national average for lot size was .22 acres.  By 2015, the average lot size was 13% smaller or .19 acres. To understand the downsize in lot size, the article's … Continue reading...

by John Hill Barnett & Hill's May 2016 rental report revealed that rentals in 79601 were newer, but leased slower and had flat rents.  This counter-intuitive event cause me to dig a little deeper into the data to appreciate the impact that a new home has on rental appeal. Of course, new is … Continue reading...

by John Hill Barnett & Hill has reported rent statistics since December 2012.  Looking back over this 3-year period, we’ve observed little variation in rent prices for single-family homes in the Abilene market. To add a layer of context to this flat data, we looked at inflation and the … Continue reading...

by John Hill To ring in 2016, Barnett & Hill brings you 10 years of real estate data on single-family homes sold in the Abilene market.  Summary information is cut in a variety of ways and we tried to anticipate what you might find interesting (and if you'd like to see this data tabulated … Continue reading...

by John Hill DOES COMMISSION MATTER? The other day, a fellow real estate agent told me this anecdote: following negotiations with the homeowner, an agent lists a house for a commission fee.  As listing agent, he markets the house and his efforts are rewarded when an interested purchaser is … Continue reading...

Each year, we obtain public records through Taylor CAD to assess ownership of rentals in the Abilene real estate market. Part of this analysis allows us to identify which property owners have the strongest presence among Abilene landlords.  Too, this data, in tandem with market information about … Continue reading...

Jane wanted to play tennis with her friends, a group of children she’s known since elementary school. They chose the courts at Madison Middle School based on convenience – a campus that would have been their middle school campus prior to AISD’s 1993 boundary changes. As I drove away from the courts, … Continue reading...

In Chapter 2 of Freakonomics (which is salciously titled How Is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?), Steven Levitt takes on real estate agent word choice, asserting that, sometimes, real estate agents obscure negative attributes with vague terms when describing a listing. He offers … Continue reading...