“The key to buying a home in Houston is to figure out the next up-and-coming neighbourhood before it arrives,” declares Sheila McNulty, the Houston and energy-business correspondent for London’s Financial Times. Then you can knock down a home there — or fix it up! And that next hot new neighborhood would be . . . ?
Momentum is building in Westbury, a 20-minute drive from downtown. Here the tree-lined streets sell suburbia: they are quiet, close to good schools (both public and private), the Medical Center – a key employer in Houston – and the Galleria shopping mall that anchors Houston. Yet they are set back from the highways and urban sprawl that characterise any big US city.
Before Westbury hit the radar of local estate agents it was Meyerland, which followed Bellaire, which followed West University, as the circle of sought-after areas around downtown Houston steadily widened.
McNulty tours a few listings in the neighborhood with Keller Williams agent Peggie Kohnert — including this “needs TLC” special at 5842 Dryad Dr., just 6 houses in from Hillcroft:
