Buying and Selling

Buying and Selling
11/02/07 10:38am

The Collapse of 1342 Rutland

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Condos, Foreclosures, Homeowners' Associations, Homes for Sale, Houston Heights
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1342 Rutland Lofts, Houston Heights

Just what is it about cheaply built condos in Houston that attracts so much, uh . . . “bank interest”? According to HCAD, of the fifteen condo units at 1342 Rutland in the Heights, only six have non-bank owners — and that includes the three owned by Freddie Mac, the “1342 Rutland Lofts Council,” and an investment group. Fortunately for buyers, the financial institutions appear to have no desire to hold onto the condos for corporate housing: eight of the units are on the market, and four more are due to be auctioned off at the huge REDC foreclosure extravaganza at the Reliant Center on November 17th.

(Special bonus for foreclosure bidders: the same auction features four units from Swamplot favorite Tremont Tower!)

Sure, there’s a downturn, and maybe a few problems with some nasty mortgages, but why do so many foreclosures concentrate on a few ugly buildings?

HAIF poster Kirzania provides a few clues:

from the inspector’s findings it would appear the second level of condos was added to the top of a pre-existing building. However, the first level was not reinforced for the second story. The walls were bowed on the first level and there were evident issues of structure problems. My understanding was there wasn’t a problem with the foundation itself, but the frame of the building.

The HOA itself sounded like it was barely staying afloat; the banks owe the HOA $$$$$ for past dues but these funds are being held up in bureaucratic nonsense. I would very much reconsider even stepping foot in this place.

Let the bidding begin!

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Buying and Selling
10/30/07 10:03am

Sugar Land: New O.J. H.Q.

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Commercial Real Estate, Fort Bend County, Leasing, New Construction, Office Buildings, Sugar Land
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Minute Maid is moving to Sugar Land. The Minute Maid Building near the Galleria has been sold.

Should we expect added sweeteners in our O.J.?

Cameron Management, Wachovia Bank and a group of local investors recently purchased the 351,000-square-foot office building at 2000 St. James Place for an undisclosed amount.

Minute Maid, a Houston-based division of Atlanta-based Coca-Cola, will lease back 150,000 square feet of space until its new home is ready in late 2008. Coca-Cola is negotiating a lease for 120,000 square feet in an office building that Planned Community Developers Ltd. began constructing last July in Sugar Land Town Square at U.S. Highway 59 and State Highway 6.

Why not . . . Pearland? Probably less appealing.

And what will happen to the empty building on St. James after the juice is gone?

In preparation for Minute Maid’s move-out, Cameron is marketing the 12-story building, located between Westheimer and San Felipe, as the largest block of contiguous office space in the Galleria area.

Sweet.

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Apartments
10/29/07 12:30pm

Demolition Watch: Greenbriar Chateau Apartments

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Boulevard Oaks, Buying and Selling, Commercial Real Estate, Financing, Real Estate Investing
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Greenbriar Chateau Apartments, 4100 Greenbriar St., HoustonFirst, they came for Maryland Manor. And then: the Greenbriar Chateau apartments? Just what is happening to the great Mansard apartments of Houston? And what will be next on the chopping block: that birthing place of Bushitude, Chateau Dijon?

No 23-story tower has been proposed for the Greenbriar Chateau site—yet. But think of the stylistic possibilities: a Tuscan shopping center . . . or taller, vaguely turn-of-the-century New York-ish apartments. Sure, it’s more than three-and-a-half acres at the northern edge of Boulevard Oaks, but really, it’s those mansards that have to go.

A local investment group has obtained a $10-million loan to buy the 145-unit Greenbriar Chateau in the near southwest submarket. Given the location, it could end up as a conversion into a higher-density project.

Bammelbelt LP bought the complex, built nearly 40 years ago at 4100 Greenbriar St., a prime infill location within minutes of Rice University, Hermann Park and the Texas Medical Center. Sources familiar with the area say rising land costs for infill sites could prompt similar deals by investors buying aging properties as land plays.

Swamplot readers: is this your home? When you get that little slip in your mailbox, let us know.

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Avondale
10/24/07 8:23am

Avondale West: Do Not Bother

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Buying and Selling, Demolitions, Historic Districts, Historic Preservation, Homes for Sale
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Lots for Sale on Avondale, Stanford, and Westheimer in New Avondale West Historic District, Houston

Here’s one of those great coincidences that makes watching Houston real estate so much fun:

  • Avondale West just became Houston’s newest historic district! But . . . uh, it’s not a protected historic district.
  • A big chunk of Avondale West is for sale! Adjacent lots 600, 606, 610, and 614 Avondale are in the new district; 520, 524, and 528 Westheimer aren’t. Together, they make

    a total of 52,400 square feet in the heart of Montrose with frontage on Westheimer, Avondale and Stanford. Do not bother tenants, do not walk property with out notifying listing agent!

Asking price: $5 million. Being able to tell your new neighbors that you can tear down whatever history you want in their new district after 90 days: priceless.

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Buying and Selling
10/12/07 12:01pm

Due Today: Bids for Piney Point Party Hall

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Homes for Sale, Piney Point Village
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The Party House That Might Have Been City Hall for the City of Piney Point Village, Texas

Remember the $1.53 million party house the City of Piney Point Village bought back in April? The one it wanted to use as City Hall, because City Hall was being kicked out of a strip center outside city limits? Remember how Mayor Carol Fox was all excited about it, and didn’t think they’d even need to redecorate? And how local residents were all upset about a City Hall in a Party Pad moving into a quiet residential neighborhood and having visitors park in a church lot across the street? Sure, the place looked cool, but what would it be like holding police court in the pool room?

Well, it didn’t work out. The mayor backed down, City Hall moved to a third-floor suite in an office building on Woodway, and the house was put back out on the market for bids, which are due today. There were 30 showings, but only three bids had come in by Monday. How will Piney Point Village do on its city hall flip? Stay tuned!

Most of the fun throughout this adventure, of course, has been eavesdropping on politicians trying to play the housing market:

Councilmember John Ebling asked the council to allocate about $3,500 for painting and minor repairs to make the house more attractive to potential buyers. Councilmember Susan Jones objected, saying that most buyers want to do their own painting.

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Buying and Selling
10/10/07 2:20pm

Attack of the Sign Bandits!!!

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Real Estate Marketing
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For Sale Sign on Tree off 288 North

Attention billboard hobbyists: The City of Houston has temporarily lost control of its sign ordinance.

Jim Moriarty, the attorney handling the case for the city, called the current situation a “disaster.”

“Somebody could take a 200-foot banner and run it across I-10,” he said. “It could say ‘Fred’s Cleaners,’ or ‘Out of Iraq Now,’ or whatever.”

The city’s motion suggested that people already are taking advantage of the injunction. Inspectors have noticed banner signs strung casually on roadside poles and electronic signs blinking and scrolling “at a rapid pace,” according to an affidavit by Susan Luycx, division manager of sign administration.

Under the ordinance, electronic messages can only change once every five minutes, to prevent driver distraction.

“We believe the court has made an error,” Moriarty said. “That doesn’t mean that Houston should become the Wild West in regards to signs.”

Sellers of real estate (especially those of you in the ten-gallon hats): You know what to do. Now is your chance.

After the jump, another bandit sign spotted only hours ago near IAH—on wheels!

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Apartments
10/02/07 10:30am

Ghost of Ghost of Katrina Haunts Apartments

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Buying and Selling, Commercial Real Estate, Crime, Cypress Station
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The Retreat at Cypress Station

When it was shopped around to investors last year, there weren’t too many offers for the Retreat at Cypress Station, a 296-unit apartment complex on an 18-acre site north of FM1960 near I-45. How come?

Hendricks & Partners’ principal Jim A. Hearn says the two-year-old asset at 18200 Westfield Place Dr., assessed at $22.7 million by Harris County, was on the market with another brokerage firm about one year ago, but was pulled due to lack of buyer interest. “By luck, this property was in lease-up during Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and the owners took on a significant number of corporate leases,” Hearn explains. As the corporate leases ran out, he says vacancies went up. “Some of the buyers were spooked,” he says.

What would happen when all those Katrina-era leases expired? Boo!

Apparently, some residents were spooked as well—by local crime. Back in January, an anonymous resident posted this gem about the complex to the Apartment Ratings website:

The shooting that occured on Wednesday was due to a damn drug deal.. If I understand correctly, the resident will NO longer be living here… BE SMART, take your damn valuables out of your vehicle and keep an eye out for your neighbors… This is a very good property for the area, yes you pay for it… It is worth it…

Well, now only 20 percent of the apartments are vacant. And the complex has just been bought by a fund managed by Boston’s TA Realty Advisors—even before Allied Realty Services, the company that built it, was able to put it back on the market.

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Buying and Selling
09/28/07 8:41am

The 1031 Exchange Buyer Advantage

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Commercial Real Estate, Financing, Office Buildings, Real Estate Investing
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Parkview II, 333 Cypress Run, Houston

Everyone knows having money gives you a big advantage when you try to make money. But think about the advantage already owning real estate gives you when you’re trying to buy real estate.

Imagine a buyer bidding against a crowd of competitors on a pair of fully-leased West Houston office buildings—say, Parkview I and II:

“They’re not active buyers and they had a specific need with 1031 exchange money,” says Marty Hogan, associate director in Houston for Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP. Texas is a non-disclosure state so he won’t discuss the sale price of the 333 Cypress Run properties, but local experts confirm that similar class B buildings are trading for $110 per sf to $120 per sf.

Hogan says the assets attracted 10 offers, with a partnership from Greenwich, CT ending up with the deal because it offered a short due diligence and certainty of close. “The buyers also had a large amount of equity and the purchase wasn’t contingent on financing.” Hogan tells GlobeSt.com. “Given the market at this time, they weren’t high-leveraged buyers looking to get 80% to 90% of the purchase price financed so that was appealing.”

Sure, a lot of cash in the transaction is going to be pretty attractive to a seller. But other aspects of 1031 exchange requirements—if the buyer knows that’s what you’re doing—give like-kind-exchange buyers a decided advantage in any market: The seller knows you’ve got time constraints to complete the deal. And that you’ll likely have to pay a lot of taxes if you can’t pull it off. You look like a sure thing.

Of course, if the seller knows that you have no other 1031-exchange options available and the terms of your deal aren’t fully worked out yet, that’s another story.

Photo: Parkview II

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Buying and Selling
09/19/07 8:56am

Price of Smalley House Shrinks Just a Little

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Homes for Sale, Southampton
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1816 Bolsover St., Houston, the former home of Richard Smalley

The family of nanotechnology pioneer Richard Smalley has knocked a little more than $50,000 off the price of the late Nobel Prize winner’s Southampton home.

The 21-year-old, six-bedroom house has been on the market for more than two months. Arnoldy says she has had some trouble selling the three-story home, which features a gourmet kitchen and third-story deck, because it has virtually no yard. The 5,433-square-foot house sits on a 6,312-square-foot lot.

What do you mean, no yard? What this home clearly needs is an owner who can take advantage of small spaces.

Included in the sale—sort of: a Buckyball-shaped skylight over the Family Room.

“Rice University wants the skylight, but we see it more as a marketing tool to sell the home,” says Susan Arnoldy, a Realtor at John Daugherty Realtors Inc. who has listed the property for sale. “The new owner can decide whether or not they want to give it to Rice for display.”

New asking price: $1,295,000.

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Buying and Selling
09/05/07 10:59am

Mattress Mack Saves You Money

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Homes for Sale, Northgate Forest, Price Trends, Real Estate Marketing
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Mattress Mack's Home at 3002 Pine Lake Trail in Northgage Forest

Speaking of fame and real-estate listings, we may have an answer to our earlier question about the power of endorsements by celebrities—or local celebrities—to sell houses quickly and at a premium price.

The Northgate Forest estate of Gallery Furniture owner Jim McIngvale—written up here a month ago—is still listed for sale! And the asking price has dropped a quarter of a million dollars.

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Buying and Selling
08/20/07 3:54pm

Sonoma Units Available?

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Condos, Development Strategy, Mixed Use, New Construction, New Construction: Residential, Proposed Developments, Rice Village
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Interior Rendering of Model Living Room, Sonoma

Our story on the Rice Village’s Sonoma development last Thursday repeated KHOU reporter Lee McGuire’s claim:

The developer says potential buyers have reserved all but four of the new condos.

But Jennifer Friedberg’s writeup in this past weekend’s Chronicle sez otherwise:

A total of 115 of the 220 units for sale in Sonoma are already reserved, Tysor said.

That’s quite a number of buyers backing out of their reservations in a very short period, no? But even more curious is this:

The number of units continues to change depending on the square footage potential residents select for each condo.

Contracts won’t be signed until later in the process.

That’s right, ma’am, just tell us how big you’d like your kitchen and we’ll move the wall there.

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Buying and Selling
08/03/07 1:58pm

Mattress Mack Pad Available . . . Today!

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Homes for Sale, Northgate Forest, Real Estate Marketing
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The McIngvale Home at 3002 Pine Lake Trail

Do celebrity endorsements move real estate? Okay, what about local-celebrity name-dropping, plus a few personal appearances?

This 6,840-square-foot, seven-bedroom Northgate Forest estate has been languishing on the market for almost three months, even though John Daugherty Realtors has been advertising it as the actual home of Gallery Furniture and Westside Tennis & Fitness owner Jim McIngvale—in full-page ads in luxury-home mags. And the Houston Business Journal reports that Mattress Mack himself has been mingling with visiting homegawkers at his own open houses.

Hand the downsizing McIngvales a mere $1.499 mil, and you get:

a dramatic two-story entry with winding staircase; a two-story living room with two-story fireplace, hardwoods and adjacent sunroom; gourmet kitchen with built-ins and quality appliances; breakfast room with built-ins; dining room with hardwoods; and Swarovski crystal chandeliers. Media room, den, weight room, reflection room, game room, extra room and more. Master suite with two-sided fireplace and amazing bath. Olympic-style pool, spa and pool house. Additional five-car garage with apartment above.

What about the furniture?

After the jump, more pics from the McIngvale Mansion.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Buying and Selling
07/16/07 11:44am

The $9.7 Million Corner Lot

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Hotels, Land Prices, Reliant Park
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Corner of Braeswood and Main

Buried at the end of a Houston Business Journal report on a new Hilton Garden Inn that’s going to replace the Droubi’s boxcar at 7807 Kirby, between South Main and OST, is this gem:

Moody National had been on the hunt for more property in the area, and was especially interested in finding more land next to the Hilton site to create a larger footprint for the project. . . .

A 1.2-acre vacant lot on the northeast corner of Main and Braeswood, across from Moody National’s Residence Inn, also caught the developer’s eye, but the price was too high there as well. Moody says an offer of $140 per square foot was rejected by the owner, who said he would entertain an offer of $185 per square foot.

“The land has been extremely hard to come by,” Moody says.

Sure, that’s expensive, but there’s a premium for waterfront property.

Photo: Bradley Broom

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Briarbend
06/12/07 9:14am

You’ll Love This Home! And You’ll Love Demolishing It, Too!

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Buying and Selling, Demolitions, Development Strategy, Homebuying, Homes for Sale, New Construction, New Construction: Residential
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7807 Del Monte Dr.

Five little words slipped into the end of an MLS profile remind us, gently, that updated but low-slung houses on large lots in tony Houston neighborhoods aren’t meant for homebuyers who want to enjoy a simple home in a natural setting. No, an older ranch like this is meant for a family willing to tolerate a “gorgeous” and “spacious” (but also apparently cramped and doomed) home until they can tear it down and build something that’s five times as big and that blankets the 10,665-square-foot lot more definitively. It’s a sacrifice, we know.

See if you can find the magic words in this listing:

GEORGEOUS, UPDATED, WELL MAINTAINED 3/2.5/2 W/LRG ENTERTAINMENT RM & WET BAR OVERLOOK POOL, BRIARBEND SUBD, ZONED NEW BRIARGROVE ELEM. $55K+ IN UPDATES: 2007 Paint/Hardware, 2005 Silestone Kit Counters/ Dbl Ovens, Baths, Entertain Rm Roof, Replaced Ducts/Added 4 Return Vents. UPDATES LAST 6 YRS: Dbl Pane Windows, Refinished Hardwood Floors, Refinished Pool Surface/Robotic Pool Sweep, Garage Doors, Recessed Lights in Kit, LR & Hall. Park @end of blk. Live in now/Build later/2 story allowed.

More photos of the amazing $466K Briarbend house you’ll love so much you won’t be able to wait to tear it down—after the jump.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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Buying and Selling
05/22/07 10:34am

New Listings: Where the Mid-Century Moderns Are

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Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Meadowcreek
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Back View of 5226 Berry Creek

Stained Glass Window at 5226 Berry Creek Dr.A three-bedroom, two-bath, 2700-square-foot house on a cul-de-sac. A half-acre, wooded, park-like lot. Overlooking the bayou. Designed by Houston’s own Frank-Lloyd-Wrightian architects, MacKie & Kamrath, and built in 1969. Lots of built-ins and stained glass.

At $259,000, is it a bargain?

It’s in Meadow Creek Village. Meadowcreek has some nice mid-century moderns. But yes, it’s on the southeast side of Houston, and it’s not too far from Hobby Airport or Pasadena. That bayou is Berry Creek, a tributary of Sims Bayou.

So some of you are probably imagining how nice this house would be if it were only in a different part of town.

How nice would it be? Read on for an estimate—and more photos.

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

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