September 28, 2009 – 9:00 pm
The Swamplot Price Adjuster needs your nominations! Found a property you think is poorly priced? Send an email to Swamplot, and be sure to include a link to the listing or photos. Tell us about the property, and explain why you think it deserves a price adjustment. Then tell us what you think a better price would be. Unless requested otherwise, all submissions to the Swamplot Price Adjuster will be kept anonymous.
Location: 1005 Cordell St., Brookesmith
Details: 2 bedrooms, 1 bath; 980 sq. ft. on a 5,000-sq.-ft. lot
Price: $229,900
History: On the market for 3 months.
Why does the nominator of this bungalow think it’s overpriced?
- Brooke Smith is one of the most transitional areas of the Heights area, and this house is not on one of the better streets in terms of curb appeal. Also,the next block over (Enid) has lots of poorly kept rental and commercial property.
- The house does not have central air conditioning.
- The house is only a 2/1.
- The lot is only 5000 SF. You can buy a similar house in nearby Sunset Heights (better area, IMO) on a larger lot (6000 SF) for much less than $230K.
- There is a similar house on Jewett listed at $160,000. This house is on a better street in terms of curb appeal, and it has central air conditioning.
Okay, then: What would be a better price for this home?
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Read more about: 77009, Brookesmith, Bungalows, Homes for Sale, Price Adjuster
September 4, 2009 – 12:26 pm
The Brookesmith home of Kevin Freeman and Jen Feldmann — fashioned from shipping containers by Numen Development’s John Walker and Katie Nichols — meets a national audience in the pages of the latest issue of Dwell: “The meat distributor [across Cordell St.] begins loading trucks as early as 5:30 a.m., but the couple imagines themselves as hipsters living in New York City’s meatpacking district, and that makes it okay. . . . The corrugated steel of the container that houses the master suite becomes a textured wall for writing messages in the home’s entrance. ‘When we were furnishing the house, I thought, “Oh no! Our fridge isn’t magnetic for Eli’s artwork,” but then I realized the whole house is magnetic,’ Feldmann says. ‘We’ve become magnet connoisseurs,’ Freeman adds.” [Dwell; previously in Swamplot]
Read more about: 77009, Brookesmith, Construction Materials, Green Design, Green Development, Home Design, Homebuilders, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Shipping-Containers, Transportation
January 14, 2009 – 11:19 am
Next experiment at that Swamplot-Award-winning house built out of shipping containers on Cordell St. in Brookesmith? The unique driveway installed earlier this week. John Walker of Numen Development writes in with details:
It is composed of recycled crushed glass, with a resin binder, and achieves the consistency of caramel popcorn for lack of a better description, so it has voids that allow surface water to percolate through the paving and ultimately be absorbed into the underlying soil rather than running off into the storm drainage system. It is a triple threat: recycled material, reduces environmental impact of development, and it’s really cool!
Walker says Presto Geosystems, a division of Alcoa, installed the driveway as a pilot project for the Houston market.
This installation has been described by their consulting engineer as most likely the “first and last” residential project they will do in Houston as the product is expected to meet with huge commercial demand, especially for “landlocked” developments for whom expansion is limited by Harris County stormwater detention limitations.
Some views of the installation:
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Read more about: 77009, Brookesmith, Construction Materials, Flooding, Green Design and Development, Paving, Recycled Materials, Shipping-Containers
So you think this week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game is tough? Sure it is. But it’s not impossible.
You want to see impossible? Try guessing the neighborhood of the home shown in these photos. This is a home we decided not to use for this week’s contest . . . for, uh, reasons that should become clear when you read all the way to the end of this post.
But don’t do that just yet!
Look at the photos of the interior below, after the jump . . . but stop scrolling before you get all the way to the bottom, so you can spend a minute or so testing yourself, to see if you’re the kind of Houston real-estate savant who really could figure out this home’s location, just by viewing images of the inside.
Swamplot readers are very sharp . . . but this has got to be impossible. Without seeing the pictures of the exterior (added at the very end), there’s no way you’d ever be able to identify the correct neighborhood. Well, okay — you might just get lucky. But there’s no way to figure it out, really.
Ready to see more interior photos?
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Read more about: Interiors, Neighborhood Guessing Game
A reader writes in with this report on the newly reopened McDonald’s at I-45 and N. Main, at the entrance of Woodland Heights:
It’s no “McStarbucks,” but it is different from most McDonald’s I’ve seen. The colors are rich coffee browns. There’s some fake zebrawood-looking formica on some walls, and a strange wallpaper-like tile in the bathroom. Right in the middle of the main eating area there’s a round structure that looks vaguely like a DJ booth. A bar-height counter juts out from it, where people waiting for their orders can rub elbows. The indoor playground in front is in a separate room. Sorry, no comfy couches.
How were the hamburgers?!!!?
Read more about: 77009, Brookesmith, Fast Food, Woodland Heights
January 10, 2008 – 2:42 pm
That house built out of shipping containers on Cordell St. in Brookesmith looks like it’ll be ready for delivery soon. Yes, this was a spec house — and yes, there already is a buyer.
Last year, Numen Development owners Katie Nichols and John Walker used shipping containers to construct the Apama Mackey Gallery on 11th St. in the Heights — because the gallery owner wanted a structure she can move when the property owner kicks her off the land. But the house Numen is building on Cordell looks like it’s going to be around for a while. It comes with its own, uh . . . doublewide lot, and it’s right across the street from a meat-processing plant.
After the jump: drawings, models, and an earlier construction photo of this neat little three-bedroom, three-bath, 1,851-square-foot package!
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Read more about: 77009, Brookesmith, Construction Materials, Green Design, Green Development, Home Design, Homebuilders, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Shipping-Containers, Transportation
January 3, 2008 – 5:59 pm
We have an answer to last week’s reader question about the future of the Woodland Heights McDonald’s, at the corner of I-45 and North Main St., which was recently demolished. Miz Anonymous (”from the lovely and talented ‘Brooke Smith’ subdivision”) writes in:
Neighborhood prattle says that one of those new fancy McDonald’s, with earth tones, Wi-Fi and lounge areas, will be put up there. We’re calling it “McStarbucks.” Guess the McD franchise figures the neighborhood is going “up” after all. We hope that the 45-feeder bums will have to get their panhandled-dollar burgers somewhere else.
Another clue the burgers are coming back: the hood on the freeway-visible sign, which remains. If you haven’t visited the Willowbrook McDonald’s, see the prototype photos in this BusinessWeek slideshow.
Photo of McDonald’s sign: Flickr user Michael Schanbacher
Read more about: 77009, Brookesmith, Demolitions, Fast Food, Proposed Developments, Woodland Heights
Look what’s going up in Brookesmith: “Luxury Patio Homes”! Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about designing a home from the ground floor up—and from scratch. We figure the first floor started as a garage apartment, but by the time they got around to the second floor the concept had expanded to a more Heights-y Victorian. Onto the third floor and there were better ideas: maybe what we really want here is one of them apartment complexes? Plenty of room for the air-conditioning units on the roof deck.
Bonus points for the computer rendering that makes living in Brookesmith look like . . . a walk in the park.
Read more about: Brookesmith, Home Design, Homes for Sale, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, New-Listings, Patio-Homes
