How well do you know Houston real estate? Here’s the game that lets you put your knowledge to the test!
This week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game follows our 2009 rules: Look at the photos in this post, and try to find clues that might help you figure out where this home is. Enter your guess in the comments.
Whoever guesses the right neighborhood wins! If more than one person guesses the correct neighborhood, the prize goes to the player who provided the best explanation for that guess.
If you already know this property — or come across it in the HAR listings — please don’t ruin the game for everyone else by entering the answer. Instead, you’re welcome to help confuse the other players! First, send us an email with a link to the listing, so it’s clear what you’re doing. Then enter a wrong guess — supported with a clever explanation — just to throw everyone else off. If you do it well, you’ll win special recognition for your efforts.
Here are the rest of the photos:
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Got a sense of where this place might be? Look carefully!
Now enter your guess in the comments! You’ll find the answer posted here on Thursday!
Update: Your wait is over.
Photos: HAR
Nicely staged except I don’t like the bed covers.
Tanglewood
Townhouses show up where land is expensive, but those closets are so cheap it couldnt’ have been built recently. But someone also had the money to seriously re do that kitchen. Something about the stone makes me think Museum district.
I feel like I’m watching House, the doctor, not House, the dwelling! “It’s never West U.!” Still, the mature trees visible outside and the fairly high end finishes and design coupled with a kinda old school layout are giving me a definite Bissonnet-Newcastle-Holcombe-Bellaire vibe. Good catch, Jim, on the cheap closets. But there might be too many ground-floor windows for this to be a townhouse, much as I’d like it for it to be. Call it a 1980 soft contemporary house, West U. or Southside Place, pre-oil bust, but just barely.
Holy coffered ceilings, Batman! Parts of it look like it has had a major remodel and addition? Looks like the kitchen, den, and maybe even the master bedroom are new additions? Is that dining room really as long as it looks? It looks like it’s long enough for a table for 30. Surely that was another room or two originally.
I can’t see much but green out of the windows. The original (bedrooms and living room) looks like built in the 70’s to me. Some place in Clear Lake?
Note to self: scrub hand smudges off closet doors before taking pictures to sell house.
All the built ins, sliding closet doors mature trees, and slit windows. Maybe Willowbend/ S Post Oak / Braeswood area.
Briargrove.
Don’t remember ever seeing double recessed ceilings… and I am glad. Lots of renovations of this older ranch: recessed lighting, cabinets, countertops, etc. But, as Jim noticed, old closets. Gotta be Old Braeswood.
The entry feels very Lakeside to me.
It’s four bedrooms, all generously-sized rooms and appears to be one-story, so it’s a pretty big footprint on a pretty big lot. It may even have a pool. It also appears to be a 70’s-ish build with some pricey recent updates. So, adding all that up says Meyerland to me. But maybe the Braeburn part of Bellaire.
Has anyone guessed generic Memorial? Could the house be older than the edge of the 80’s oil bust? I’m thinking it could be since the windows show as double hung through the sheer window dressings, then again, maybe not. I’m wondering if it could be one of those quickly built and shoehorned in places that lie along the edges of Memorial Drive between Chimney Rock and Briar Forest. There seems to be a lot of walking around space in the house. I’m rambling myself.
There is no way this is a townhome…simply too many hallways and doors leading in different directions off main rooms and too many exterior entries.
Looks to me like construction was circa 1990. It’s a fairly large home with some nice upgrades, but nothing too lavish. The furnishings aren’t particularly lavish either so I don’t think this home is in West U or one of the more expensive areas of town.
I’m going to guess north of town….Champions or Spring or maybe even in The Woodlands.
How does one vault ceilings, drop them AND soffit/coffer them to death? I think it has to be outside the loop and I’m liking tcpIV’s guess. Is there anything like this in Piney Point or Hedwig Village? That bathmat looks like it was a memento from pre-renovation days. I say built in early 70s, renovated mid/late 90s.
The older front door and expanded floor plan say maybe a big ranch on one of those big lots in the area just west of Bellaire, Braeburn Country club -like ‘toadfroggy’. Meyerland is a possibility, but I think this entryway is too wide. The owners really put some bucks into the kitchen cabinets, granite,floors, and the coffered ceilings (I like Cathy’s holy coffered ceilings comment!) The amount of investment could be typical for that area, too. The trees outside are mature I think, so it would have to be an older established area.
total remodel of a 60s or 70s house, going to guess sw Houston – what a surprise, Meyerland area. total remodel, though the remodel was about 15 or 20 years ago.
Gus – thanks for the article!!!! much appreciated, as usual.
I’m with Joni here, at least the ’60’s part — note the quality of the built-in closets, and the pocket door in the apparent hollywood bath off the blue-bedspread bedroom, as well as the cabinetry in that bath. The ceilings don’t appear to be so much coffered as furred-down to accommodate all those can lights all over the place. Given the tiled floor, requisite granite counters and open concept in the kitchen and adjacent family room, and *all that space* — is that a butler’s pantry? — this place appears to have had the entire back wall knocked out and the house greatly expanded ca. 2002, probably into the backyard. So where is this big house? The yard space required to accommodate that buildout, and those deep windows in the downstairs bedroom, belie Meyerland. Yet the notion of even keeping the original part of the house instead of demolishing the whole business says this isn’t, for example, Sandalwood. This is a toughie but I would say either older Memorial, anywhere between Silber and Chimney Rock; or, the western reaches of City of Bellaire, where the lots are expansive (and expensive).
You can tell from the number of bedrooms, the twin beds, teddy bear, and two computers in the living room that there are certainly kids in this home. So my best guess would be in my own backyard! I’m going to guess this home is located in the Houston Press Best Hidden Neighborhood just off of Stella Link near Braeswood/Bellaire. Just like the HP entry says it was a standard ranch home from the ’60s or so, but it has gotten some upgrades to the kitchen and Master Bedroom to go with the shiny new Pershing Middle School, Weekley Family YMCA, Stella Link Branch of the Houston Public Library, and Mark Twain Elementary that are all within easy walking distance.