12/04/14 3:00pm

15 doe run 13 pool

15 Doe Run 1

In the Grogan’s Mill neighborhood of The Woodlands, a 1985 Mediterranean spreads across a half-an-acre lot served by a loop-tipped roadway that appears in aerial views to resemble an inverted golf club. That’s rather fitting — the property overlooks a fairway of the tournament course of the Woodlands Country Club. The floor plan, meanwhile, includes its own pool room (top photo). Laps on the housing market date back to June of 2010, when the asking price bobbed for a bit at $949,000 before sinking to $693K. A 2011 re-listing splashed water at $900K before a late 2013 surge upped the ask to $1.15 million. That’s also the price sought in a brief spring-to-summer 2014 listing as well as the re-re-re listing by a different agent dating from Black Friday. Let’s take a swing through the place:

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Pool Hall
12/03/14 4:45pm

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Now approaching the Big 1-0, an artsy 2004 contemporary by architect Allen Bianchi has been on the market for a month (this time), bearing a $2,799,000 asking price. A previous listing in the summer of 2013 briefly sought $100K more for the property. The 5,595-sq.-ft. home is planted at the crossroads of Cherokee St. and Sunset Blvd., just north of Rice University. Houston’s headlining art museums are three-quarters of a mile to the east. The house of stucco, glass, and steel is itself a bit of a gallery.

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The South Side of the L
12/02/14 3:30pm

310 Lindenwood St., Memorial Drive Manor, Houston

310 Lindenwood St., Memorial Drive Manor, Houston

With its quirky cutouts, windows shaped a bit like marine hatches (no rivets, though), and central tower, a 1994 contemporary in gun-metal gray floats a bit like a battleship on its interior lot within the Memorial Drive Manor neighborhood of Hunters Creek Village. Located on a big lot west of Chimney Rock Rd. and south of a bend in Memorial Dr., the spit-and-polished property has been on a mission to secure a tenant since its listing in late October. Last month, the rental rate dropped $2K to $6,500 per month on a year’s lease.

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Cleared Conditions
11/26/14 2:30pm

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More a reconstruction than a renovation, extensive work on a 1938 Mandell Place property is believed to have kept only the original slab, exterior walls and roofline. The rest has been reimagined by Fisher Homes, which looks to have reduced the number of interior walls but boosted the white trim package big time. Like a line of creamy frosting, wainscoting panels finish much of the home, which is located west of Mulberry St. and north of W. Alabama St. For the rebuilt results, the seller is now asking $1.35 million. The previously updated property last sold in 2011 for $485K.  Do the modifications add up to the “90 percent new” touted in the listing, which went up earlier this month?

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All Trimmed Out
11/25/14 4:00pm

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Tweaks to a 1977 Briarmeadow home have left it looking rather peachy inside, thanks to a dream-state color wash. The heavy-roofed French-ish property last sold in 2013, for $291,040, and has appeared in an assortment of listings and relistings ever since. Updated in that interim, the westward-facing home is now  attempting a flip at $409,000. Previous listings sought a high of $489K in July 2013, with reductions to $459K in September 2013, $449K in April 2014 (which snagged a contract but not a closing), and $429K in July 2014 — before taking a breather from the market in August. Renovations picked the bones clean and added new ingredients . . .

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Continuity
11/24/14 2:45pm

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A Garden Oaks home likes balconies so much, it stuffs a few of them inside looking over the living room (top) as well as facing the street (above). The bones of the property beneath a tree canopied lot located just west of Yale St. date to 1940, but it’s been expanded and updated over the years. Last week, its tidy presence popped up on the market sporting a $695,000 asking price.

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Canopied Lot
11/21/14 12:00pm

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In Memorial Bend, a neighborhood known for its operatic street names and steadily dwindling collection of midcentury modern inventory, one of the homes designed by architect William Norman Floyd has landed stylishly on the market, asking $798,900. A “California contemporary” in its day, the 1956 property features banks of clerestory windows and sloping, beamed ceilings throughout open, light-filled spaces.

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It’s Spatial
11/20/14 4:15pm

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Lake Livingston laps near the lazy river meandering within a whopper-scaled waterfront pool (top) at a 2006 property that also boasts a “barndominium” (above) with its own 15-car garage, a pool house, a boat house, but no house house. Does it matter? The existing structures come with kitchens and bedrooms, and there are 6 acres of grounds to tend. Price? $2.995 million. That’s down from the $3.4 million asked in previous listings back in 2013 and 2012.

Ready for a flyover?

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And a House, Someday
11/18/14 2:15pm

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A cul-de-sac in Woodside is exhibiting some fall color — in the golden tones of a 1955 Ranch home updated a decade ago. Or maybe that golden glow is from the skylights found in many of the rooms. Groomed ivy (appearing to end at the ivy clipper’s shoulder height) adds texture to the painted brick exterior, which is slightly recessed beneath the roof’s overhang. The home faces east on one of 6 lots fanning ’round Latma Ct., which is located off Latma Dr., a main street sloping diagonally through the neighborhood found east of Stella Link Rd. halfway between S. Braeswood Blvd. and the South Loop. In its listing a few days ago, the property-with-pool attached a $495K price tag and a very basic description. Is the midcentury property ripe for remuddling?

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With Red Stripes