Mansion sales and discount dining: oil rout hits Houston's rich

Houston

PRICES for mansions in Houston's swankiest neighbourhood have tumbled in lock step with crude prices. The Houston Opera has offered free season tickets to patrons who lost their jobs in the oil bust. A fancy restaurant offers cut-price dinners.

Twenty months into the worst oil price crash since the 1980s, well-heeled residents of the world's oil capital are among the hardest hit largely because tanking energy firm shares make up much of oil and gas executives' compensation.

In River Oaks, a neighbourhood of palatial mansions and lush gardens, the average sales price of a home has tumbled to US$1.3 million from US$2 million in the middle of 2014 when oil began its more than 70 per cent slide, according to data from the Houston Association of Realtors and Keller Williams. Median property prices in the area have already fallen further in this downturn, which is not yet over, than the 16 per cent drop in the previous oil slump in 2008 and 2009. "When oil does well, River Oaks does well. When oil does bad River Oaks does bad," said Paige Martin, a Keller Williams broker who specialises in the neighbourhood. "Not everybody can afford a US$10 million house." City-wide data also show that while overall sales of sin…