COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT BRAND-NEW NEIGHBORHOOD CALLED OAK FOREST “So, any Oak Forest residents out there? I was wondering whether builders are just buying up everything that comes on the market or are they making cold solicitations to homeowners? I looked at moving to Oak Forest a few years ago and remember seeing new construction here and there. I drove around the neighborhood a few weeks ago and it looks like someone is building a new subdivision but didn’t notice that people were still living there.” [Old School, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: The End of Pleasures]
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Love that neighborhood, my family owned a home (it was passed around the family) there until the early 2000s.
Haha so true! My grandmas live in Oak Forest/Candlelight Estates and the new homes next to the older ones just looks weird. The new ones are just huge and tower over the older ones. Not sure why someone would want to change the character of the neighborhood so much.
I live in Oak Forest. Hah, no cold calls here, although it’s clear that builders are seeking out the ones on the market or soon-to-be on the market that are total gut jobs and within the boundaries for Oak Forest Elementary. Stay west of Rosslyn and you get a good idea what the neighborhood used to look like.
OF is a great place with many living in the original homes, mine was built in 1950 and has the original hardwood parquet floors, still in great condition! Still some gems here if you look hard enough.
I live in Oak Forest in one of the new homes. I am not sure either about the original post. I see many homes torn down on a weekly basis that were never for sale on the market. I think certain builders are contacting the elderly through the mail to see if they want to sale and then buying it from them outright.
You don’t have to be elderly to receive purchase solicitations in the mail.
People are being solicited…
http://www.theleadernews.com/?p=3418
Is it time for another “This is our home, it’s not for sale” campaign?
I’ve lived in Oak Forest now for 11+ years, zoned to OFE, in an original house just north of 43rd, west of Ella and about 5 years ago began receiving sporadic letters to buy the house site unseen. That stepped up a bit a year ago and we now get 2-3 a month from random builders/real estaters trying to purchase our house with promises to close within 30 days.
Granted not all the original homes are gems, some need to be torn down, but there aren’t many of those now left, and other originals are well maintained and still solid, smaller by today’s standards, but that’s a preference for me. The kids enjoy the bigger yard.
I don’t mind the new bigger homes that much, but unfortunately the new homes on the block have had owners that lived there for a about a year before they put if back on the market. Both are back up for sale again at the same time. The block is pretty tight, we know each other, but really never got to know the folks in the new builds. That is the underlying issue for a lot of the folks in the neighborhood with the old vs. new, it’s the perceived mindset or commitment to the neighborhood.
Oak Forest was a Frank Sharp development where people picked their floor plans out of a Sears catalog so the “gems” were few and far between! :)
I think I’ve asked this before, but is there a map of sorts that might have various neighborhoods shaded in? I have no idea where 1/2 the neighborhoods are that are mentioned on this site.
Cody, Google Maps seems to have a pretty good database of neighborhood borders but I’ve never been able to figure out where to access the raw data (to do a full “dump” of all the boundaries). I usually search ‘neighborhood’+’houston’ to see what it turns up. Yelp has neighborhood data too, but the boundaries are much rougher. HAR appears to have location data for all of the city’s subdivisions but their website gives me a headache. http://www.houstonsna.org/ is a good super neighborhoods map, but it might be out of date.
cody, google is your friend. google maps will identify most all subdivisions but more importantly will provide you with boundaries for a lot of these as well.
The oldest sections of Oak Forest (Wakefield to Judiway, Ella to Piney Woods) were poorly constructed compared to later sections (according to a friend who is an original owner near Oak Forest Elem.). When one is looking for an epicenter for the new construction frenzy–that seems to be it.
Thanks. I’ve used those resources and they all have their issues. The super neighborhood map comes close. I guess I was thinking there was a “cleaner” map out there somewhere .