Smaller homes in Montrose haven’t disappeared entirely over the last few years; they’ve just been busy knocking down interior walls and undergoing price-lifts. We’ve rustled up a few shy senior citizens from around the neighborhood for this weekend’s tour.
Location: 1737 Indiana St. Details: 2 bedrooms, 2 baths; 1,288 sq. ft. Price: $275,000 The Scoop: Smallish 1930 cottage in nice condition on divided lot in Hyde Park. Built-in Mahogany bookshelves in Living Room; beamed ceiling in Dining Room. No garage. Just listed. Open House: Sunday, 2-5 pm
Remember those sleek modern million-dollar white-stucco townhouses designed by New York architect Francois de Menil for a small lot over in Temple Terrace, just behind Allen Parkway?
It was unusual to include the One-Two Townhomes being on the AIA Houston 2006 Home Tour in that they were, and are, unfinished. “My concern was that they would soon be sold,” says [developer Carol Isaak] Barden, “and then nobody would get to see them.”
She shouldn’t have worried. One of the units apparently sold a little less than a year later, and the other is still on the market — though it’s not a million-dollar townhome anymore. After construction finally ended last July, there were five successive price reductions. Since the end of last month this 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,845-sq-ft. townhome has been available for a humbling $779,000. If you count the garage level below and the rooftop deck as a single story, that’s almost as good as getting one whole floor . . . free!
Some curious price fluctuations on this 2006 turreted Montrose townhouse: Last week the asking price was reduced from $525,000 to $350,000. Which is pretty dramatic, though only slightly more dramatic than the $140K increase recorded on MLS the day after the property was listed, in early December.
In an extensive interview with Houston Press music blog Houstoned Rocks, Proletariat owner Denise Ramos explains she isn’t shutting down her Richmond Ave. bar and music venue in February because she’s afraid upcoming University Line construction on the street will hurt her business. She’s shutting the club down because Metro has told her exactly where the Montrose light-rail station is going to go:
I started going to all these meetings Metro had put together, and in one of the meetings they had the proposed design for the rail, and I noticed that our building was nowhere in the design . . .
Right in front of where our building is, that’s where they [plan to] have the station . . .
We know for sure they plan to demolish our building. That’s a given; we know that. But I just don’t know when that’s going to be.
So the actors aren’t likely to win any awards, but this new video posted to YouTube by Tremont Tower owner-victim-gadfly Heather Mickelson is notable for it’s uh . . . stirring illustration of the connection between construction-quality complaints and foreclosure train wrecks.
The Tremont is colorfully renamed “LemonTree Tower” in the video reenactment. If you’re new to the story, you’ll find better introductions to the sordid Montrose condo tale elsewhere. But if you’ve ever wondered why foreclosures seem to gather like flies around new developments that feature questionable levels of quality (and, say, water-tightness), this will make pretty good internet theater. No, the mortgage defaults aren’t the work of the millions of mold spores and the grim reaper, who together make cameo appearances in the video; they’re the ultimate result of the surefire sales techniques employed for undesirable properties — made so much easier, of course, by the subprime-mortgage boom.
Here’s the formula: Building with bad enclosure + poor disclosure = lots of foreclosure. Or just watch the video. At just over seven minutes, it’s still a lot shorter than Glengarry Glen Ross.
Twenty-five Montrose homes were foreclosed on this month, reports the Houston Business Journal. That’s a huge increase from last July.
[Mike] Weaster, a Realtor with Century 21 Excel Realty, currently has about 45 foreclosed homes in the Montrose area listed for sale.
“There’s been a big time increase — I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says. “It’s something that is so unique to Houston that I can’t even tell my buyers what’s happening.”
What could be the problem? In Houston overall, there was no increase in mortgage foreclosures: 2,090 last July; 2,085 this month. So what is it with Montrose?
Well, here’s a clue:
Many of the foreclosed homes in Montrose have never even been occupied by the homeowner and were instead purchased by investors who apparently weren’t able to sell them, according to Weaster, who says he comes across first-payment defaults in Montrose at least once a week.
Weaster believes speculation investors and bad loans have taken a toll on the trendy neighborhood.
Still stumped? What if you learned that twelve of this month’s foreclosures alone were at the same address? And what if you discovered that the building at that address was the Tremont Tower?
Yeah, that Tremont Tower, at Yupon and Westheimer. The one featured in an article called “Contractors from Hell” in People magazine in 2005. And in the Houston Press. The one the Lemon Lady used to picket.
The “Lemon Lady,” Houston grandmother Jordan Fogal, testifies colorfully against Texas homebuilder mandatory binding arbitration provisions to a congressional subcommittee this morning in Washington:
The first night in our new home, my husband decided to try out his new Jacuzzi tub on the third floor. When he pulled the plug, one hundred gallons of water crashed through our dining room ceiling. . . .
Well, this was not one overlooked plumbing connection, as my husband so desperately wanted to believe. It was a preview of coming attractions. Rainwater, from outside, sprayed us at the kitchen table. – The windows were installed upside down (our builder finally admitted this after three years). Our floors buckled and black spider-webs of mold crawled up our walls; the smell grew worse; then shower wall fell out and little puffballs grew out of the carpet. All the while, we had begged our builder to please fix our house.
We had the mold tested by an accredited laboratory, and they said they had never seen toxic readings that high in an inhabited dwelling.
The story of Fogal’s Hyde Park Crescent home was detailed in Mother Jones magazine two years ago; she also plays a part in this Houston Press report about the lucky owner of another Tremont Homes/Jorge Casimiro opus.
Written Testimony Submitted by Jordan Fogal To The Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law: “Mandatory Binding Arbitration Agreements: Are They Fair For Consumers?” [U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, via Bay Area Houston]
Coming down soon . . . in a neighborhood near you! It’s our daily report of sold demolition permits. Our list of casualties approved Friday begins after the jump.
Swamplot covers real estate, home design and renovation, architecture, and the landscape of Houston, Texas. Swamplot did not flood during Allison. Honest! Read more
