15 Comment

• vwgto March 26, 2015 at 9:15 am

  Will be interesting to see if the latest concepts at The Woodlands Waterway Square are successful. Grimaldi seems to be the only thing that has worked thus far. High rents, inconvenient/paid parking. Assume the growing office and hotel foot traffic will help to give the new guys a fighting-chance.
• TheNiche March 26, 2015 at 9:35 am

  “Ideally, it will become a place where residents support one another, whether by watching each other’s children or delivering chicken soup to an ailing neighbor.”

  Yeah, uh huh, ideally…

  Clearly I’m not the target market for this. I like Acres Homes; but primarily as it relates to keeping out of other people’s business and keeping them out of mine. I wouldn’t even want to be on the same street as this conclave of busybodies.
• Memebag March 26, 2015 at 10:11 am

  I think someone needs a nice hot bowl of chicken soup.
• Old School March 26, 2015 at 10:19 am

  My 2012 nomination for most overlooked neighborhood: Acres Homes. It is a blank slate out there. This developer has a good idea hyping the idea of a “pocket neighborhood”. The prime reservation people have with the area is crime. But the lots are so big out there that developers can build mini neighborhoods where everyone will have a sense of security knowing that neighbors are looking out for each other. The pioneers are making their way to this area. Buy now. No room left inside the loop.
• ZAW March 26, 2015 at 10:30 am

  So Niche, if you just want to keep out of other people’s’ business and keep them out of yours, why would you live in an urban area, much less one that’s becoming more dense? Why not move out to the middle of nowhere, Alaska perhaps, where you can get several hundred acres of land, plunk a house down in the middle of it, and never have to worry about someone else being offended by what you choose to do with your own property?
• Michael March 26, 2015 at 11:22 am

  Re Seven River Oaks: Great to see new life, but the whole complex would be so much cooler were the property owners to paint the complete structure (modern white), remove that hideous and filthy awning (very Numbers) and rid the place of its tacky signage ..
• commonsense March 26, 2015 at 11:55 am

  Acres Homes ?!?!?! Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. The land values are cheap for a reason, nobody wants to live there, the crime is high, the amenities are non existent, and worst of all it has no hope of gentrifying in any foreseeable future. You think people are complaining in 3rd ward and East End that outsiders are moving in, Acres Homes is 10 times worse.
• joel March 26, 2015 at 12:08 pm

  well i don’t blame her. you’re going to need big image and a whole lot of promotional advertising to try and pimp out $400k homes in Acres homes with only 2,000 sqft of living space.
• Local Planner March 26, 2015 at 2:35 pm

  Kind of takes the “Acres” out of “Acres Homes.”
• Major Market March 26, 2015 at 9:43 pm

  Regarding the population explosion in the last article (156,300 new residents in the metro area): Yup, I can believe that since I received my HCAD appraisal today and saw the eye-popping “market” increase.
  .
  Even with the homestead exemption capping it at a 10% appraised increase, I can’t magically make 10% more income appear to counter it. I’m hoping that the proposed bill in the legislature lowering the cap to a 5% maximum yearly increase makes it out of committee.
  .
  Or, it may be time to sell in this crazy market and move out to the suburbs.
• TheNiche March 27, 2015 at 12:09 am

  @ ZAW: If somebody had a really awesome job that they had to physically commute to and it was in central Houston then Acres Homes would be a great place to go for if that person prioritizes acreage over a lot of other disamenities. That point becomes especially acute if they’re on a budget. This neighborhood certainly isn’t the only option in that scenario, but it’s a good one in terms of what you get for the price and location.

  If the area becomes denser and less desirable (to that individual person) over time, then they can sell their land at a profit and go somewhere else; maybe figure out how to telecommute from a tropical beach somewhere in SE Asia…I dunno, its up to them. But I suppose that in order for that to fly, you have to view housing and homeownership as impermanent, subject to entropy, exogenous factors, the possibility that one’s life circumstances or values may change over time, and as something that isn’t quite sanctified as a matter of divine interest. Some people are confused about these things; the plan doesn’t work if you’re one of those people.

  @ commonsense: If you think that Acres Homes is scraping at the bottom of the barrel, then you’ve never visited Avenue D in Channelview. No, actually there are A LOT of places in Houston that are far less desirable than Acres Homes.
• ZAW March 27, 2015 at 11:44 am

  I wouldn’t write it off, Commonsense. Windwater Village and Villas di Tuscany are sort of the same idea, in the heart of Sharpstown. They sell for in the $260-$360k range. So I don’t see why something similar, on a smaller scale, couldn’t be attempted in Acres Homes. I wish the developer the best of luck.
• Cody March 27, 2015 at 12:06 pm

  Old School: “No room left inside the loop.”
  .
  You’re a smart guy, so how could you come to that conclusion? There is TONS of room inside the loop. Homes for $100k. Land in the $10’s/SF. And it’s just a few miles from downtown. It’s just East of 288. I’d pick one of those areas if I were on a budget, vs. outside and going further.
• commonsense March 27, 2015 at 3:44 pm

  @ZAW, those two enclaves have been a dismal failure from a developer’s perpspective. It took many years for them to fill the lots and I believe there are still plenty sitting empty. It’s simply unrealistic to expect success from a home double the price of surrounding area and in a sea of crime ridden apartments.
• TheNiche March 28, 2015 at 4:47 am

  @ commonsense: Imagine that you came to own a large block of undeveloped acreage in Sharpstown. Its not a prime location, has low traffic counts, and has no visibility from any major thoroughfare. And lets say that its surrounded primarily by low-rent apartments and Class C low-rise office buildings. What are you going to do with it (or what will an end user that will purchase it from you) do with it? Surely nobody wants to buy it just to sit on it for another 40 years in order to pay taxes, cut the weeds, and clean up the illegal dumping and in so doing find the occasional corpse.

  I would submit to you that If you can build and sell townhomes at a price that implicitly pays you back on the lots (or sell to a builder as such), then you should seriously consider that option. If the rate of lot takedown is slow…well that just reflects on why the land value was low to begin with. It’s already factored into your pro forma.

  This sort of development happens a lot in the rural fringes of Houston, too. Large-lot communities sometimes take fifteen or twenty years to sell out or build out. Maybe by the time that they’ve built out they find themselves surrounded with new subdivisions and the value of raw land has increased — or maybe not — but the developer has been cash flowing in the meantime rather than speculating.