Swamplot Archives by Tag: 77080

Monday, October 26, 2009

Swamplot Price Adjuster: The Path from Spring Branch to Binglewood

The Swamplot Price Adjuster needs your nominations! Found a property you think is poorly priced? Send an email to Swamplot, and be sure to include a link to the listing or photos. Tell us about the property, and explain why you think it deserves a price adjustment. Then tell us what you think a better price would be. Unless requested otherwise, all submissions to the Swamplot Price Adjuster will be kept anonymous.

Location: 3122 Mona Lee Ln., Binglewood
Details: 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths; 3,894 sq. ft. on a 10,018-sq.-ft. lot
Price: $234,500
History: On the market since mid-September

This person who’s nominating this home writes:

Binglewood? Binglewhere? Wherever it is, this is a great neighborhood to walk in. As my spouse and I have strolled past this house over the years, we’ve called it The White Elephant. It’s a charming elephant from the front, but it’s been way over-improved for the neighborhood. Before the large addition, it was a 3 bedroom, 2 bath and was probably around 1700 square feet. Now it’s a 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, and almost 3900 square feet. Almost no one else in the neighborhood has added on. The addition at the back is quite graceless, the pool won’t add any value, and the entire rest of the back yard is concrete.

There is no cache to living in this neighborhood. When we moved in, more than one person said to us: “Oh, Spring Branch. That area used to be nice.” We love it here, but are under no illusion that other people will. The school district is great, but the neighborhood is zoned to Edgewood, Northbrook and Northbrook - not the best in the district. (Snark aside, our kids loved Edgewood Elementary, but didn’t want to go to Northbrook Middle and High. It was their choice to go elsewhere.)

So what about a better price for this home?

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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Where Long Point Is the High Point: Houston Westside Taco Tourism

Maybe this is the industry that’ll bring in . . . all those bargain-seeking tourists from Austin?

Video: Nelson Flores

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Wednesday, April 8, 2009

The Houston Tropical Model: Bermuda Woods Apartments, Spring Branch

Following up on a comment made on this site recently by another reader — noting Houston’s recent but storied “tradition of adopting styles that clearly evolved in climates very different from ours” — Swamplot resident Robert W. Boyd sends in photos of a notable exception: the Bermuda Woods Apartments in Spring Branch, near Long Point and Gessner.

Boyd reports after his visit:

The townhomes are superficially like Bermuda–the pastel colors, the long vertical window shades.

Isn’t that the idea?

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Thursday, April 2, 2009

Neighborhood Guessing Game Over: Sunshine Ranch

We have a winner . . . and a new member of the Rice Design Alliance!

Here were your guesses for this week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game: “Spring Branch south of Long Point, around Antoine, Wirt and Pech,” Spring Branch, Oak Forest (2 guesses), Mangum Manor, Timbergrove Manor, Lazybrook, Garden Oaks, Afton Oaks, “Braeburn/Meyerlandish,” Meyerland, Meyer Park, “Westbury, around Chimney Rock/Willowbend/West Bellfort,” Willowbend (2), Glenbrook Valley, Braeburn Valley West, Westwood, Tanglewilde, Westbury (2), Maplewood, “Spring Valley or above - near Hollister,” Pasadena, “between Willowbend and Bellfort, east of Post Oak, within a half-mile of Willow Park in Willow Meadows,” Tanglewood, Braes Heights, Braes Oaks, “somewhere south of Bellaire Blvd., near Stella Link/Buffalo Speedway,” Braes Terrace, Channelview, Jacinto City, Montgomery near Little York, and “the Woodlake/Briar Meadow area off Richmond inside the Beltway.”

Right off the bat, Brad and CK win a couple of honorable mentions for mentioning Spring Branch. This week’s winner didn’t name that neighborhood explicitly, but came closer to the actual location and gave a better explanation:

I think Brad sorta nailed it but I’m going to move a little to the west & say Spring Valley or above - near Hollister. A cul-de-sac lot - that big bathroom window is looking out on their own garage, so no need for, um, cover. Maybe if you buy the house they’ll throw the RV in as well. Possibly a ravine lot - that’s why the new bathroom, because of flooding in the 90’s?

Congratulations, flake: You just won a one-year membership in the RDA!

A third honorable mention goes to biggerintexas, for this entertaining and entirely plausible (if geographically challenged) commentary:

My favorite part is how the dining room floor magically grew onto the kitchen walls. The bathroom was a project done very recently (hence no window coverings) to help sell this house…if only you could see the before photos of the bathroom when it had gold, textured wallpaper and a red carpet to go with the pistachio colored porcelain. In their defense - the visible “neighbor” is actually the detached garage so unless they have squatters living in their garage they don’t have worry about peeping toms from that particular directions. The house is owned by a couple that is reaching retirement age and they plan to sell their house and dump their furniture so they can take their RV (you can see it from the kitchen window) on a tour of America’s finest petting zoos. Once the furniture gets cleared out this house isn’t so bad but the new owner will have lots of fun removing wallpaper and paneling. Oh, and the house was built around 1960-ish in the Oak Forest neighborhood.

And the actual coordinates?

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Thursday, January 31, 2008

Long Point, Long Walk, Long Story

Hillendahl Cemetery, Long Point, Spring Branch, Houston

There’s just too much to take in from the latest rambling, illustrated walking tour by David Beebe and John Nova Lomax, narrated in harmony from their two separate corners of the Texan blogosphere. The pair’s latest venture — appropriately enough — runs along Long Point, through the heart of Spring Branch:

. . . primarily Long Point is a binary street combining Mexico and Korea. In contrast to the multi-ethnic riot that is Bissonnet, or the Pan-Asian explosion that is Bellaire, Long Point is binary. Some businesses fuse into MexiKorea. The Koryo Bakery, right next door to the only Korean bookstore in Houston, touts its pan dulce y pastels, for example, and it seems that many of the Korean-owned businesses aim at Spanish-speakers more than Anglos. (Someone should open a restaurant out here called Jose Cho’s TaKorea.)

The camera-and-tequila-toting duo guide us through a shady thrift-store nirvana they declare to be drab but safe, pointing out salient features along the way: cans of silkworm pupae in a former Kroger turned Korean supermarket, and the historic Hillendahl Cemetery (pictured above) carved out of one corner of a Bridgestone tire barn parking lot.

After the jump, more Spring Branch walking-tour highlights!

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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Daily Demolition Report: Razing in the Sun

A whole lotta demo going on: A county outpost downtown, more industrial buildings along Studemont, plenty of houses, and more. Our daily list of addresses begins after the jump.

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Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Daily Demolition Report: When the Bough Breaks

Today’s round of demolitions are all residences. Ten doomed houses, after the jump.

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Friday, June 1, 2007

Daily Demolition Report: What’s Going Down in Houston

Demolition watching is an unofficial but popular sport in Houston. Unfortunately, media outlets here have not served fans well. Sure, you’ll hear about the occasional announcement of big weekend implosions, but what about the many smaller demolitions that happen every day? Unless you’re in the business, you learn about them only after they’ve happened.

Today, courtesy of the Houston Planning & Development Department’s Code Enforcement group, Swamplot introduces a regular feature: daily reports of sold demolition permits. Houston Demo Derby fans now have an easy way to find out what’s coming down: just check with Swamplot.

Keep in mind that these reports are a day late. Permits for the demolitions we report today were sold yesterday. This means demolition groupies will have a pretty good chance of catching the action in their neighborhoods. But it also means that enterprising demolition professionals in a hurry to tear down a building may already have begun—or completed—their (no-doubt fulfilling) jobs.

What demolitions were approved yesterday? Read on, and we’ll reveal the victims:

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