Looking to Buy a New Home? Houston's Master Planned Developments Top the List

A report from the HBJ (http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/)

Cinco Ranch was the top-selling master-planned community in the United States last year. And The Woodlands was No. 2. In fact, four Houston area communities ranked in the top 10 on an annual survey by RCLCO, an independent real estate advisory firm. Newland Communities’ Cinco Ranch had net sales of 887 homes during 2009 — a 14 percent increase over the 775 net sales in 2008. The Woodlands Development Co.’s master-planned community had net sales of 633 homes last year. That represented a 16 percent decrease from the 750 sales in 2008.

Newland Communities also grabbed No. 4 on the list with Telfair. The local community had 450 net sales in 2009 —up 9 percent from the 412 net sales in 2008. The Johnson Development Corp.’s Sienna Plantation rounded out the top tier at No. 10. The community sold a net 280 homes last year, down 24 percent from the 369 sales in 2008.

Year-over-year net sales declined for most of the top 20 best-selling communities, reports RCLCO, with volumes declining by 8 percent to as much as 84 percent. Telfair and Cinco Ranch bucked the trend of dropping sales by posting increased sales for the third year in a row. RCLCO, which stands for Robert Charles Lesser & Co., is based in Washington, D.C.. The firm surveys more than 400 master-planned communities each year for its sales survey.

Houston, TX Rock Concert Going Global

This from the HBJ:

Rock bands often say they want to conquer the world.  On Friday night, alternative rockers Creed and Staind will be in Houston to take a shot at being part of a record-breaking concert being seen live on the Internet around the globe.

The concert at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion will be broadcast at 8 p.m. on music Web site www.rockpit.com to U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan and United Service Organizations locations. Rock fans can also register online to get their all-access pass to the concert.
The concert production team will try to set two cinematic world records, with representatives from the Guinness Book of World Records on hand to witness the event.

The concert, including behind-the-scenes footage and band interviews, will be filmed using 227 high-tech still film cameras and high-definition digital movie cameras, the largest number of cameras ever used in a concert recording. The other record being sought is the largest number of still cameras used in a sequence.
The customized Nikon still cameras being used at the concert — patented by international production firm The Big Freeze — create the kind of freeze-motion effects first used in the Hollywood film “The Matrix.” With shutter speeds of up to 1/400,000th of a second, the string of images is used to create a slowing-time effect, in which an image can be frozen but the background around it can continue to move and rotate 360 degrees.
The software used to run The Big Freeze cameras was created by Stephen Wille-Pados, president of Thoth Systems.
The live Webcast is produced by DC3 Music Group LLC and directed by Daniel Catulo III, who has produced top-selling rock concert DVDs for bands such as Rush, Nickelback and Godsmack. The Creed/Staind concert will be sold on DVD at a later date, according to a rockpit.com spokesman.