Bet the sellers are just itching to get rid of this place.
Here’s part of a photo from the listing of a 3-bedroom, 2-bath home in Braewood Glen. It’s been on the market for two weeks, and the asking price was lowered to $109,900 just a few days in.
After the jump: They already got rid of the carpet — what more do you want?
$1.2 Million in the Heights. And not budging. Since September.
Three bedrooms. Two full and 2 half baths. 3,758 sq. ft. Big lot. Built in 2003. Too many features to list, but that doesn’t stop them. Here’s a partial word count of the listing’s exhausting description:
suite: 3 mentions
custom: 4 mentions
Pella: 4 mentions
audio: 4 mentions
brazilian: 4 mentions
fireplace: 4 mentions
steel: 4 mentions
wood: 5 mentions
marble: 8 mentions
large: 9 mentions
After the jump, a few more photos.
Here’s as dramatic a perch as any from which to enjoy a high-price-condo meltdown: the empty cupola atop the 8th-floor penthouse of the Manhattan Lofts building in Uptown. And hey, it looks like quite a fall to the floor below. Maybe stepping down slowly would make some sense?
Almost exactly a month after our original report on this over-the-top, oversized, and overpriced Manhattan penthouse, the price was cut a sixth time, to $1.65 million. How long before it breaks into six figures?
Getting cheaper, but only in small increments: Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley’s former home has endured four small price cuts since it went on the market, but they’ve added up. The latest brings the home — at 1816 Bolsover in Southampton — to $1,125,000.
That price still isn’t so tiny, but it’s still a discount from $1.35 million. That’s where it started last July.
Foreclosure, vandalism . . . what more could possibly go wrong at this mansion-on-the-prairie near Brunswick Meadows, off 288 in South Houston?
How about a lack of serious buyers since the home was put on the market back in August — even after two major price cuts?
The place was built in 1950, but the listing agent’s mysterious comment that the “Home was at one time almost completed” probably refers to the recent doomed redo attempt. The asking price was cut to $345,900 in November, from an original $451,900. And it’s listed on another site for $325,900. Not bad for a 11,640-sq.-ft. home on 5 acres inside the Beltway.
Or . . . maybe not. After the jump: when vandals strike!
It’s not just the rice silos that’ll be leaving the First Ward. Next thing you know, they’ll be demolishing . . . the used-auto-parts yard across the street. A source very close to Charles Kuffner reveals that the owner of Johnny Franks Auto Parts at 1225 Sawyer St., across the street from the Mahatma Rice silos, has already sold the land to residential developers.
But wait. Johnny Franks Auto Parts bills itself as “The Nation’s Oldest Salvage Yard.” Is this true? If so, how could Houston let such an important historical site be destroyed? Founded in 1910, the salvage yard for years advertised itself as “the house of a million parts.” Sadly — like so many other historic structures in Houston — that may be its ultimate fate.
After the jump, Kuffner counts the reasons why there’s probably no stopping residential development from taking place on this historic site:
Renovate or demolish? It’s a false choice, really. Now you can do both!
If ever one listing encapsulated the essential paradox at the heart of the Third Ward’s uh . . . “resurgence,” it’s the one just posted for 2103 Berry St.
Contractors are hard at work completely renovating this Third Ward duplex . . . so that you can buy it and tear it down. Then you can start over and build brand-new townhouses! The brand-new listing features the construction-site photo above and the following description:
GREAT DUPLEX UNDER RENOVATIONS LOCATED MINUTES AWAY FROM DOWNTOWN,MIDTOWN, TOYOTA CENTER AND MINUTE MAID PARK. CORNER LOT SURROUNDED BY NEW CONSTRUCTION. PHENOMENAL OPPORTUNITY FOR A DEVELOPER’S OR INVESTOR’S TO BUILD TOWNHOMES.
Who says you can’t have it all?
After the jump: Can’t we just slather the stucco over the exterior brickwork and call it even?
Check out the discussion going on now in the “Real Estate Professionals” section of the City-Data online forum. A reader is excited about an amazing investment opportunity at the 1342 Rutland St. condos in the Heights!
The unit I’m interested in is as of now at $34K. This if from a high of $77.5. Yes wow the suspiciousness of the place even more intriguing.
I’m thinking I could pay cash for the place maybe borrow a little but (family borrow not bank borrow)… finish the interior (it’s not finished) and rent it out for a good monthly rate (good for me that is). It’s in one of the best/trendy/expensive neighborhoods in Houston . So from the steady fall of the price I’m thinking an offer of $25K would be good. That way I could pay it completely and take my time fixing it up for rent… or sale.
Wow, a $77,500 condo for only $25,000! Sounds like a great investment. But then there’s that nagging feeling inside that makes the would-be investor end with this question:
Just how scared should one be entering this building[?]
After the jump: Reader advice!
The wave of foreclosures sweeping over neighborhoods at the outer edges of town has . . . an upside!
Remember back when these neighborhoods were new — like, four years ago? Well, for buyers it’s just like those good old days all over again . . . only cheaper! That’s right: if you’ve settled on one builder model, you can be pretty picky about which upgrades and finishing touches you really want — even though the builder has moved on.
If you’re shopping for a home in Bear Creek Meadows in Katy, for example, you’ll find the four distinct residences pictured above listed on MLS. That’s right, those are four different houses. But they’re all the same model — The Cairns, Plan 509, by Legend Homes — and they’re all resales!
Which one is right for you? Clockwise from top left, the contenders are: 19411 Billineys Park Dr., 19606 Ballina Meadows Dr., 19906 Brisbane Meadows Dr., and 19510 Buckland Park Dr.
After the jump, a look at the differences between these four newish but back-on-the-market homes!
Just what is it about this West U house that’s scaring off the buyers? Is it the location on busy Buffalo Speedway? The outbreak of quoins on the front facade? The curious “custom paint” job in one of the home’s seven bathrooms that demonstrates to pooping gameroom guests how the house’s stucco surface might flake off?
Whatever it is, it sure looks like there’s a reverse auction going on: The five-bedroom, 5,119-square-foot house went on the market early last May and listed for $1,614,050. After three price cuts, it ended the year at $1,339,000. And now it’s only $1,239,000!
After the jump: a detailed look inside.
A reader writes in to report that a house discussed recently on Swamplot had also been featured in Architectural Digest last October. And so it had! But really, they called it “Trapezoidal Transcendence”?? Whatever. Swamplot had the guts to call it what it really was: A River Oaks teardown.
Oh, well — there’s no accounting for taste. Unless, of course, you consider demolition a form of judgment:
By the way, that amazing modern house in the Tall Timbers section of River Oaks is definitely toast.
In this case, apparently, the decision of that judge was final.
There’s more to the story of the Lakewood Church pastor’s amazing house flip: How were Joel and Victoria Osteen able to unload their townhouse in order to buy that house they made so much money on?
Readers of Joel Osteen’s previous book — Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential — already know the answer. From page 265:
Victoria and I had been married a few years when we decided that we wanted to sell our townhome and buy a house. We put the townhome on the market for six or eight months, but we never had a serious offer. Hardly anybody looked at it, even though we were praying regularly, asking God to help us sell it.
We really wanted the other house, but we couldn’t afford it until we sold our townhome. Finally, we decided to do more than pray. We needed to sow a special seed in faith, believing for that townhome to sell.
There’s more!
Honey, stop the car! 2300 square feet, new construction, in-ground pool, spa, game room, on a man-made fake lake. $209k. Bonus: The Relitter actually typed in “HONEY STOP THE CAR!!” as a description.
That’s blogger Lou Minatti’s punchline, after a brief tour of tiny, chain-linked-fenced, or apparently leaning homes available at similar prices in Los Angeles.
Also in the description of the Katy home is this paradox:
POPULAR LENNAR FLOORPLAN! . . . A ONE OF A KIND GEM!
After the jump: more pics, plus the sad news about this some-of-a-kind Katy home.
Lakewood Church’s Joel Osteen, in Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Everyday, p. 289:
I remember as a young couple, Victoria and I found a home that we really liked. It was a run-down house but on a nice piece of property. And we knew it was for us. In the natural, it didn’t make a lot of sense. We were leaving a beautiful townhome. Yet we knew that’s what God wanted us to do. So we took a step of faith and we bought the run-down house. The day we closed on it, we were standing in the front yard and a Realtor stopped by and offered us much more than we had paid. We thought, “What’s going on?” We didn’t understand it. Come to find out, they were in the process of changing the deed restrictions in the neighborhood. And several years later, we sold that property for twice as much as we paid for it. That was God causing us to be at the right place at the right time.
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.
