Listed earlier this week, for $3.8 million: This 3-story home, designed in 2008 by Houston architect Allen Bianchi for the president of a stone supply company. That would explain the more than 20,000 sq. ft. of stone surfaces attached to the house, including the limestone cladding outside. The 4-bedroom, 5-1/2-bath block sits on 3 3/4 gated acres on West Rivercrest, just a few mansions south of Briar Forest Dr.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE MODS AND THE BANKERS 
“My fiance and I have wanted to purchase this home for over a year. We’ve heard the banks won’t approve financing due to the foundation problems; we’d love to restore it to [its] original glory, it needs a MCM loving family–maybe you’re an investor who’d like to help us out? We don’t want this house to get into the wrong hands, it’ll break our hearts.” [Jessica Define, commenting on Scouting Report on a Walnut Bend Mod]
Video: Brian Price
Thinking long and hard about that unloved $160K 1960 Mod on Olympia Dr. in Walnut Bend featured here earlier this week? Real estate agent (and Swamplot advertiser) Robert Searcy has a few thoughts:
Due to the presence of pets, unfinished projects and other work needing to be done, (plus the absence of the mod furniture you see in the pictures), it all combines to make the home show less than ideal. Architecturally, however, it is one of the more dramatic in that price range and someone could pull it together. Mod houses are almost ALWAYS a project. This one is no exception. Most either need to be brought up or if they have a higher level of maintenance then they typically require “undoing.” That means going in and taking out inappropriate alterations done in the name of updating and putting back in more architecturally compatible finishes. This is often times a more difficult and more costly process than a straight up restoration. Especially if the seller wants more for the house initially because of their “updates,” which in reality are nothing more than bad choices that architecturally “dumb down” the house to look like every tract home in Katy.
This house needs work, but doesn’t really need the “undoing” factor. It is priced well and the location is not bad.
And he sends in part of the program for the 1960 Parade of Homes:
“What a weird, cool house” says the reader who wrote in to clue us in on this 1960 Parade of Homes “townhouse” in Walnut Bend built by Robert Pine. The owner, who claimed to have rescued it in 2007 from the previous owner’s planned second floor addition and “tons of Home Depot upgrades,” put it up for sale last summer, after chatting it up a bit to Midcentury Mod fans on HAIF.
The $199,000 asking price only lasted a few months. Since last September, it’s been available for $159,900. Why hasn’t it sold?
H. Dan Miller, senior managing director of the Houston office of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, commenting on the sale he recently brokered of the fully leased 30,000-sq.-ft. office building and bank drive-thru on an L-shaped property at 10411 Westheimer in Westchase, which received 18 offers within a week:
You had an irreplaceable location at the corner of Westheimer and Beltway 8 and three streets of frontage. I wish I had 10 of these types of buildings.
Photo: Holliday Fenoglio Fowler
Not a fan of the “ugly uninspired office parks” that line Beltway 8 on the west side of town, radio geek and computer answer guy Jay Lee finds he has a few nice things to say — and photograph — about the recently completed first phase of Westchase Park, a Simmons Vedder office development that’s replaced the Cinemark Tinseltown Westchase just north of Westpark:
There’s a water feature in the front of the building that sports a metallic sculpture which sort of reminds me of the contraption from the movie “Contact.†It’s by far the most interesting piece of architecture I have seen out here on the west beltway.
The building itself is glass and chrome and glints in the daylight. I was kind of hoping the sculpture was a corporate logo of some kind and that this was going to be to world headquarters of some up and coming conglomerate or something. Alas, it is simply a business park and will soon be selling office space to those looking to setup shop in the Westchase District.
On the plus side, it looks pretty cool at night:
A reader calls this odd home “a lottery winner’s dream!” The listing agent calls it “the ultimate bachelor pad.” But does either pitch fully explain what’s going on in this $4 million, 6,753-sq.-ft. medieval chateau fantasy in Rivercrest Estates?
A few highlights:
AND JULY IS MEAT CANDY MONTH Its first Houston store (at Main and Kirby) apparently a patty-smashing success, 3 new Smashburgers are now ready to open in a few other strip centers: “First up is a restaurant in the Westchase area at 10705 Westheimer, Suite C, opening on July 15. A second will open July 22 in the Energy Corridor at 1635 Eldridge (Eldridge and Briar Forest). And a third, located at 5520 Buffalo Speedway (Buffalo Speedway and Bissonnet) in the West University area, will open July 29.” [Eating Our Words; previously on Swamplot]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE GREAT WEST HOUSTON DIVORCéE BELT “It basically runs in between Beltway 8 and 610 and is crossed by the likes of Westheimer, Woodway, Richmond, Bissonnet et al. Basically these people met in drunken stupors along the Richmond strip in the early 80s at those cheesy night clubs; tried to make lasting marriages but eventually divorced; and then bought homes and patio homes close but not too close to their old stomping grounds. Incidentally, many of them work non-descript office jobs at middle market companies in the Westchase district and raaaaaave about the tres leches cake at the Churrasco’s out there on Westheimer. Yay Divorcee Belt!” [Bobby Hadley, commenting on Neighborhood Guessing Game: Blue Check]
Time’s up for this week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game. And there’s a prize winner to announce!
We had 2 guesses each for Camp Logan, Crestwood, and “near the Houston Country Club.” The rest: Tanglewood, “overlooking Memorial Park,” Spring, Champions, Greenwood Forest, Nottingham, Hudson Bend, Hudson Forest, “somewhere off Gessner,” along Gessner between Briar Forest and Memorial, Tealwood, “near Memorial . . . around Gessner, Fondren or Wilcrest,” the Braeswood-Med Center area, east of 288 near MacGregor and the bayou, along Rice between San Felipe and Westheimer (?), between San Felipe and Woodway off Post Oak Lane, Clear Lake City, River Oaks, near Memorial between Kirkwood and Eldridge Parkway, Bellaire, Sugar Land, Greatwood Bend, “the Plantation-y area around Dulles and Highway 6,” Bayou Glen, Westhaven Estates, near Chimney Rock and Memorial, Lakeside Place, and Lakeside Forest.
The winner of a year-long membership in the Rice Design Alliance? MariaO, for this entry:
I wonder what this place looked like before the staging? What’s up with the pool cues without a pool table?
Obviously 70s construction, built-ins and bathroom cabinets are the giveaway. Brick floors and no carpet down, so most likely is near water, maybe backs to a bayou? I’d say Memorial but it can’t be or they would have done a Subzero fridge instead of that generic thing. Must be outside the Beltway and south of the bayou, Lakeside Forest or Lakeside Place.
Congratulations! The runner-up this week is CK, who was drawn to Wilcrest. And an honorable mention goes to the amazing through-the-web olfactory talents of JPSivco, who was able to sniff out both a bayou and golf course nearby. Only it was the wrong golf course:
Guys, I can’t believe you can not smell that Bayou in the backyard of this place!!
I like the second floor loft.
All of the windows argue a view of something.
Since Houston is flat…with views of nothing…I bet it is along Buffalo Bayou
it is a big place, with a pool and lots of renovations (floors, kitchen) so near HCC. it might even be on a golf course if it is not the Bayou. Maybe i just smell a retention pond.
Talk about a great nose for real estate!
A special shout-out goes to Lisa, who wrote in that she knew the listing, then submitted this great head-fake:
Painted paneling and flagstone fireplace place this as built around 1975. The poor little kitchen looks neglected. Not upscale enough for Memorial, Tanglewood, etc. The bathroom looks like the ones in the 1970’s homes in the great NW area. The yard is small so it’s a subdivision. I think that it’s a older home in the Champions area. Maybe Greenwood Forest or Nottingham.
And now . . . the reveal!
abc13 reporter Miya Shay says likely Houston mayoral candidate Ben Hall has decided not to buy State Rep. Hubert Vo’s enormous Rivercrest mansion after all.
Hall maintains he’s got a condo in the city, and more than meets the residency requirements. I guess Rep. Vo will have to find another buyer with $3.9 million to spare.
Hall currently lives in Piney Point Village.
Remember that crowd-friendly but vacant and unfinished mansion on Rivercrest that State Rep. Hubert Vo has been trying to unload since mid-2006? It may soon have a buyer! Abc13 reporter Miya Shay says former city attorney Ben Hall — who would need to move inside Houston city limits from his current home in Piney Point Village if he decides to run for mayor — is interested in buying it!
The house is nice, very nice. It’s currently listed for $3.9 million on HAR. There are 8 bedrooms, 9 bathrooms and 2 half baths, and an 8 car garage. So, if Hall buys the house, you can bet that his mayoral ambitions are pretty real. Imagine the fundraisers he can hold there!
The $800K price cut apparently went through last May. And though the revised listing still lists the home as “under construction,” the rooms now look . . . finished!
The guesses are in for this week’s mystery pad! We heard West University twice, the Augusta-Bering area twice, plus Bellaire, Southgate, South Post Oak Lane, Tanglewood, Missouri City, Mid Lane, Bay Glen or Bay Oaks in Clear Lake, West Bellfort/Fondren, Kingwood, “west of Weslayan between Bissonnet and 59,” Pearland, Woodlake, Memorial Club, Briar Hollow, off Memorial between Voss and 610, and North Post Oak.
The winner this week is David W, who was wrong at least about the neighborhood and housing type . . . but still came closer than any other contestant!
I agree with those who think it is a townhouse – but I think it might be farther out in the burbs. Maybe Woodlake or Memorial Club? It has to be pretty old – when is the last time you saw a sliding glass door in a bedroom? I think it must be near water, too with all the tile and no rugs (or the resident has allergies) so I am leaning more towards Woodlake or maybe it is closer in around Briar Hollow. It can’t be too expensive or they would have gone the granite/stainless steel kitchen route. Maybe just outside the loop around North Post Oak north of Memorial? Tough to tell.
An honorable mention goes to Starkeshia, who didn’t even bother to guess a neighborhood, but did pick the correct decade — and didn’t call it a townhouse. The kindest portion of Starkeshia’s comments:
More than likely this is just some house out in suburbia built in the late 70s or 80s that has had some remuddling done.
Okay, 1970s . . . not a townhouse . . . but where?
Mattress Mack’s home in Northgate Forest sold back in April for $815,000, reports Jennifer Dawson in the Houston Business Journal. That’s more than a 50 percent discount off the home’s original asking price.
The McIngvales’ 7-bedroom, 6,840-sq.-ft. home at 3002 Pine Lake Trail originally went on the market in May of 2007 for $1.75 million. Three months and a $250K price cut later, John Daugherty Realtors decided that marketing the pad as “The Home of Mattress Mack” might help. But it didn’t, apparently. The price cuts spiraled from there.
Jim and Linda McIngvale’s new home is a 2,000-sq.-ft. apartment on the grounds of their Westside Tennis Club on Wilcrest near Briar Forest, but that’s not necessarily a step down, says Dawson:
While the couple may have a lot less house, right outside the door is a resort-styled pool, family fitness center, lighted soccer field and one of the city’s largest yoga facilities.
Photo of 3002 Pine Lake Trail: HAR
