I think this has a significant likelihood of happening provided the THSR folks are able to take a couple of pages out of the FECI/AAF playbook and apply it to Texas to ward of the NIMBYs and show clear path to cash positiveness, while not using too much taxpayer funding. Getting funding in the form of loans and tax free bonds seems to be OK though. The game the AAF played with NIMBYs is to use very detailed knowledge of the wants of individual communities and address them, and not worry about a relatively small remaining group of NIMBYs, other than to outflank them at each turn.
THSR needs to get not only Houston and DFW on board with their plan but also several en route large urban/suburban communities. They will face NIMBYs from rural areas, that should be taken as a given. That has to be counterbalanced by strong visible support both on the ground and in local county commissions and state house.. Look at how AAF finally divvied things up. Basically they have the large relatively urban counties firmly on their side - Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Brevard and Orange), and small rural counties against (Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River). Thia has made it relatively hard for the NIMBYs to get enough traction to do much damage, though they have and continue to try mightily. They also partitioned the source of construction funding to make sure that only FECI sourced money is used in the opposed counties and the huge pile of bond money is used only in counties that support their effort. They have even tacitly promised favored treatment to supporting counties both on the service front and priority in addition of new stations front. It has all been about economic impact that the supporting counties foresee.
THSR will have a bit of a challenge in the sticks unless they can line up at least a few counties outside of Houston and Dallas to be on their side. Not an insurmountable problem but adds to the difficulty if they can't.
On the real estate front, to understand FECI/AAF's game, you have to understand that AAF is a passenger railroad attached to a huge real-estate empire, and the whole project is really supported by the projected growth in the real estate empire as a result of building this project. I am not sure how THSR is structured financially since I have not seen much on it. but if they are depending purely on rail revenues, they may have a difficult path to hoe. They need to bring in the real estate angle and figure out how to plow back some of the real estate growth resulting from the project into operating budget of the railroad. The Japanese passenger operations do this in spades. Purely on rail operations they'd barely make it.
But for now I am optimistic. but we'll see.