A one-of-a-kind Oak Forest home doubles up on many of its features. Two chimneys form a sassy kind of turret above the front porch. There’s a second formal entry. And both wings of the home have their own garage. Plus, the property occupies an oversized corner lot, so it’s got twice (or maybe even thrice) the yard of its neighbors. The 13-year-old custom home appeared on the market last weekend. Its asking price: $925,000.
A shadowy presence pervades most of the wide-angle listing photos for this 1965 ranch-style home on the western front of Oak Forest near the Northwest Fwy. The spotty behavior starts on the green carpet of the living room (top) . . .
Minimalism maxes out the use of maple in a contemporary Indian Trails property that went blonde in its wooden trim, panels and shelving (top). The home’s lobby-like living and dining space, capped by skylights, sits between a bridge-like balcony and book-filled shelving rising to the double-height ceiling. The 2002 home, entered from a courtyard to the left of the front-loading driveway (above and at right), has a $1.25 million price tag and a $6,750 annual maintenance fee.
In the earlier waves of West U’s great residential reboot, before the 21st Century stucco surge, ruddy brick finished out a fair amount of the city’s new housing. The townhomes of Rutgers Place, for example, worked bricks, bricks, and more bricks into the development’s exteriors, fencing, and patios. An oft-updated corner unit in that street-straddling enclave, which dates from 1981, popped up on the market last week. Asking price: $484,500 — plus a $120 monthly maintenance fee.
This 1955 1-story home was first listed in July at $379,900. Just south of Beechnut and west of S. Rice Ave. in Meyerland, the 2,359-sq.-ft., 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 1-garage mod was priced down this month to $350,000. This exterior shot shows the home sitting back on a relatively expansive 11,067-sq.-ft. lot, but the listing also reveals something else, described as an “extra room” that’s downright subterranean.
Once a duplex, a box-on-box 1965 home two blocks from Baldwin Park in Midtown endures as newer townhomes sprout around it. The fenced-in side lot provides some yardage otherwise missing at the back of the property, which is light on windows (at right), but big on built-in storage cubes (top). Last weekend, the freshly painted, previously updated residence appeared on the market with a $760,000 price tag.
In Westbury, a 1965 home overlooking the medianed roadway out front punches up its mostly bloom-free elevation with a little hydrangea-tinted trim. For the property’s real color explosion, however, head inside, where in place of a stagnant, unifying hue, (most) rooms go boldly into the spectrum.
With the nearby bridges over the Southwest Fwy. slated for re-lighting, a softly glowing 2008 Vassar Court townhome could be facing some illuminary competition down the line. The front-loading property rises 3 stories along a block of older properties, adjacent to a crook in the one-way street, which travels west and ends at Hazard St., by the bridge. The residence may be 5 years old, but apparently it’s only been gently occupied: The 4-day-old listing describes it as a rarely-used second home for its art-collector owners. Price tag: $849,000.
Look-alike exteriors on sound-alike streets of the garden variety line the ring of roadways within Garden Oaks Court, a gated compound off 34th St. west of Shepherd Dr. Neat rows of (closed) front-loading garages have shallow setbacks and support a repeating pattern of porches, balconies — and the occasional bay window. A shingles-and-siding-fronted specimen of the latter (at right) was listed earlier this week with an asking price of $298,500. Its official description touts the home’s location within the 9-year-old development as having no railroad tracks, power lines, or neighbors behind it. With 61 homes in the niche neighborhood and a popular restaurant-bar within walking distance, however, plenty of folks are close by.
