Houston Real Estate Investment Company
Modest men
are those who compose the Houston Real Estate Investment
Company, one of the oldest firms engaged in this line of
business in Salt Lake City. The officers of the company are: J.
W. Houston, president; A. W. Houston, vice-president; C. W.
Johnson, secretary and treasurer. The capital is $10,000. The
company was incorporated in 1898, although the Houstons had been
in business here for several years prior. Its business has grown
in volume, due to careful, conservative management, until it is
numbered among the largest real estate corporations in the
inter-mountain empire.
The offices
of the company occupy the first floor in the magnificent Boston
Block, fronting on Main Street and Exchange Place. These offices
are beautiful in that they are simple in furnishings, modest in
appointment, yet handsome, because they are modest the
handsomest real estate offices in the West.
While the
capitalization of the company is but $10,000, the surplus and
undivided profit account is fifteen times that amount, and the
business has been expanded to large proportions. Several
business structures have been erected, as also a number of
residences by the company, while the real estate transactions
which the company has negotiated and carried through
successfully, aggregate a large sum.
It can be
said of the Houston Real Estate Investment Company that it does
things, does them at the right time, and in the right way.
Conservatism has marked the business career and that is what has
enabled the company to build up a business second to none in the
real-estate world of Salt Lake.
This work has
been carried on; their business has been increased; their
clientele has become enlarged without any flourish of trumpets,
without any dress parade. The company is a believer in the use
of printer's ink believes in advertising but has an idea of its
own regarding this matter. Its announcements are terse and
pointed, and the advertising columns of the newspapers are used
to make the announcements. The company has real estate for sale;
it has improved property on the market; it has a number of
properties, both business and residence in its rental
department. Its insurance, loan and bond department is an
important factor in the payments of its annual dividends. It
will, and does, build business structures to suit tenants. In
all this, the company transacts its own business. In other words
the transaction is as lawyer to client, as physician to patient,
as priest to confessor. It belongs to them alone; hence the
transfers, the sales made, the prices paid, are not emblazoned
to the world.
It is the
policy of conservatism, of pursuing one method in transaction of
business that has enabled the company to reach the acme of the
individuals who make up the company. No eulogy is necessary.
They have lived in Salt Lake City for years, their lives have
been an open book, their methods are known and it is this that
has made the Houston Real Estate Investment Company known
throughout the business world of Utah, of the inter-mountain
empire, and of the entire country.
Index
Source: Sketches of the Inter-Mountain
States, Utah, Idaho and Nevada, Published by The Salt Lake
Tribune, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1909
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