Swamplot Archives by Tag: Homebuilders

Friday, September 4, 2009

Secret Powers of the Cordell St. Shipping-Container House

September 4, 2009 – 12:26 pm
   

The Brookesmith home of Kevin Freeman and Jen Feldmann — fashioned from shipping containers by Numen Development’s John Walker and Katie Nichols — meets a national audience in the pages of the latest issue of Dwell: “The meat distributor [across Cordell St.] begins loading trucks as early as 5:30 a.m., but the couple imagines themselves as hipsters living in New York City’s meatpacking district, and that makes it okay. . . . The corrugated steel of the container that houses the master suite becomes a textured wall for writing messages in the home’s entrance. ‘When we were furnishing the house, I thought, “Oh no! Our fridge isn’t magnetic for Eli’s artwork,” but then I realized the whole house is magnetic,’ Feldmann says. ‘We’ve become magnet connoisseurs,’ Freeman adds.” [Dwell; previously in Swamplot]

12:26 pm | 1 Comment | Read more about Construction Materials, Green Design and Development, Home Design, Homebuilders, Neighborhoods: Brookesmith, New Construction: Residential, Quicklink, Transportation
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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Low-Income Veterans’ Housing in Bridgeland

September 1, 2009 – 11:28 am
   

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates presented the keys to a new lakeside cul-de-sac home in Bridgeland yesterday to Purple Heart recipient Capt. Daniel Moran, USMC (Ret.). Moran, who was severely injured twice while on duty in Iraq, qualified for a low-cost housing program for disabled veterans administered by HelpingaHero.org. “The new 3,300-square-foot home was funded by the Strake Foundation, Rex and Marilyn King and the Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund. Perry Homes built it with special accommodations for Moran’s physical condition. It features tinted windows, a high-efficiency air conditioner and heating system and other enhanced temperature-control measures because Moran is no longer able to control his body temperature. The lot was selected to allow the least amount of direct sunlight into the home. The house also includes an extended covered porch to allow him to spend time outdoors with his two children, Trey 4, and Macy, 2, without direct sun exposure.” [DefenseLink]

11:28 am | 4 Comments | Read more about Home Design, Homebuilders, Neighborhoods: Bridgeland, Neighborhoods: Cypress, New Construction: Residential, Quicklink
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Monday, August 31, 2009

Comment of the Day: Cue the Wilshire Village Sale and Redevelopment Rumors

August 31, 2009 – 2:45 pm
   

“I heard (not joking) that KB homes (I think, or another home builder) was looking at this site for a new style of very small and relatively inexpensive 1,000 sf-ish single family hyomes on very small lots. The [target] pricepoint was about $150k I believe.” [Charlie, commenting on Boyd’s Wilshire Village Prayer, with Photos]

2:45 pm | 35 Comments | Read more about Comments, Home Design, Homebuilders, Neighborhoods: Lancaster Place, Quicklink, Redevelopment
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Friday, June 5, 2009

Getting Houston Right: The Toll Brothers Come to Town

June 5, 2009 – 3:41 pm

Houston, the Toll Brothers have been looking for just the right home for you:

“We have been studying the Houston market for a long time and have been looking for the right opportunity to enter it,” Robert Toll, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “In 2008, Houston was the second-largest home building market in the nation.”

Actually, the “nation’s leading builder of luxury homes” is headed to The Woodlands. The Pennsylvania-based company, which already operates in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio, promises its first houses in the Village of Creekside Park will be complete early next year. Sales will begin this August.

Toll Brothers at Creekside Park will offer homes on 80′ wide home sites and will showcase five floorplans with multiple exterior designs.

A Swamplot reader comments on the photo accompanying the announcement that appeared in the Houston Business Journal:

The story includes a photo of one of the exterior choices: A French provincial pastiche. What in the name of pete does anything like this have to do with the climate and traditional architectural style of the Gulf Coast? Do the Toll Brothers even pay attention?

Well, that may not have been the company’s intent. On its own website, Toll Brothers illustrates its press release with this separately tuned sample:

Continue Reading This Story >

3:41 pm | 21 Comments | Read more about Homebuilders, Homes for Sale, Master-Planned Communities, Neighborhoods: The Woodlands, New Construction: Residential
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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Survival of the Fittest

May 26, 2009 – 12:09 pm
   

“The days are long gone when sales were so brisk that everyone from accountants to lawyers snapped up empty lots to build homes in Houston, where loose laws meant at the height of the property boom anyone could be a builder. . . . Mike Salomon, president of Sandcastle Homes, however, says those unprepared for an inherently risky business have been chased out of the industry. ‘We’ve gone from a market that was very forgiving, and you could make mistakes and still be profitable,’ he says. ‘We’re close to what it should be like, where people who don’t know what they are doing are going out of business.’ His profits were down by 30 to 40 per cent in 2008, but volume was up 37 per cent. ‘We have to do more stuff to make the sales, but we have a profitable business that we’re still running.’” [Financial Times, via Swamplot inbox]

12:09 pm | 2 Comments | Read more about Buying and Selling, Homebuilders, Houston Data, Quicklink
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Thursday, May 21, 2009

No-Charity Case: Royce Builders Education in Bankruptcy

May 21, 2009 – 10:40 am

Regular Swamplot readers will remember all the fun surrounding the collapse and shutdown of Royce Builders last year. What’s happened since? Chapter 7 bankruptcy! Plus now, says the Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff:

Wisenbaker Builder Services, Suncoast Post Tension, Builders Mechanical and Luxury Baths by Arrow are collectively seeking to recover more than $1.1 million from the builder, according to the petition filed last month in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Thousands of home- owners could also have claims against the company.

Attorney David Jones, who is representing Royce in the bankruptcy, is compiling names of potential creditors that lists more than 12,000 people.

“Homeowners are the biggest portion,” said Jones, a partner with Porter & Hedges.

Oh, but there’s more! In a separate legal action, an educational charity that Royce owner John Speer used to promote his businesses and solicit contributions from customers is claiming that Royce failed to deliver funds raised on its behalf. A struggling charity that renamed itself the Royce Homes Foundation for Youth in 2003 — after Speer apparently promised to deliver several hundred thousand dollars a year in support — says Royce still owes it about $400K:

Continue Reading This Story >

10:40 am | 16 Comments | Read more about Bankruptcies, Hazards, Homebuilders
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Friday, April 10, 2009

Comment of the Day: The Nottingham Forests of the Future

April 10, 2009 – 4:32 pm
   

“. . . it is amazing how that works in Houston. Same house, probably same builder, same sort of subdivision when it was new. If that same oil and gas junior executive had bought the same new house back in ‘70 in Nottingham Forest, he’d be looking at a $450K + pay day. It will be interesting to see which areas developed in the most recent boom will be the Nottingham Forests and which ones will be more like this subject. Any speculations out there??” [subprimelandguy, commenting on Neighborhood Guessing Game Over: The Houston Highlands]

4:32 pm | 3 Comments | Read more about Neighborhoods: Inverness Forest, Neighborhoods: Nottingham Forest, Price Trends, Quicklink, Real Estate Investing
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Thursday, April 9, 2009

Putting Stock in the Spread

April 9, 2009 – 11:14 am
   

Pulte Homes announced yesterday it will swallow up Dallas-based Centex for $1.3 billion in devalued stock. The new Pulte Homes, based in Michigan, will be the country’s largest homebuilder — with twice the revenue of its nearest competitor. Together, the two combined sprawling companies are building in 31 separate Houston-area developments, but only 3 of them are inside Beltway 8. All but 4 of the rest lie beyond Highway 6. [Houston Business Journal]

11:14 am | 2 Comments | Read more about Homebuilders, Quicklink, Sprawl
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

New Mark for Layoffs

March 31, 2009 – 9:09 am
   

Newmark Homes, a local brand of failed Florida homebuilder TOUSA, will be laying off 156 Houston employees beginning in May, according to a filing with the Texas Workforce Commission. Another 63 employees in Austin will lose their jobs. The company, which filed for bankruptcy back in January 2008, had been trying to sell Newmark and its other local brand, Trophy Homes. “The company said in a recent statement that it would stop building new homes and focus on selling its remaining inventory of speculative homes and its land holdings.” [Houston Business Journal]

9:09 am | Add a Comment | Read more about Bankruptcies, Homebuilders, Quicklink
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Monday, March 30, 2009

Outlines of a Bunker Hill Village Theme Retreat

March 30, 2009 – 9:04 pm

Here — minus mysteriously absent lots 5, 7, 9, 11, 17, 19, 21, and 23 — are the outlines of the 19 homesites carved from the 10-acre wooded property that Holy Name Retreat Center sold off last year in Bunker Hill Village. Black Diamond Companies, the purveyors of two elsewhere-themed, other-worldly developments — the Cáceres Andelusion in Rice Military and vaguely Francophile Bammel Lane Park Homes on . . . uh, Bammel Lane — so far appears to be soft-pedaling the existence of any foreign entanglement in this latest development.

Continue Reading This Story >

9:04 pm | 10 Comments | Read more about Buying and Selling, Homebuilders, Land Sales, Neighborhoods: Bunker Hill Village
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Monday, March 23, 2009

Comment of the Day: Inventing the Heights Teardown

March 23, 2009 – 5:02 pm
   

“Correction- The tearing down of old homes to build new was pioneered by Sterling Victorian Homes in the mid-late 1980s. It began on the 400 block of 22nd Street. These homes look very modest by today’s standards. It is likely true that Allegro pioneered the building of Disney-fied Hummer homes with cheese closets…” [Sheila, commenting on Scaling Back the Upscale: Allegro Builders, Downtempo]

5:02 pm | 20 Comments | Read more about Demolitions, Homebuilders, Houston History, Neighborhoods: Houston Heights, Quicklink, Redevelopment
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Friday, March 20, 2009

Scaling Back the Upscale: Allegro Builders, Downtempo

March 20, 2009 – 12:45 pm

Allegro Builders president and CEO Lambert Arceneaux has no more employees to let go from his company, and has had problems paying his subcontractors, a source tells Swamplot. Starting way back in the olden days of a dozen years ago, Arceneaux pioneered the concept of tearing down tired old Sears catalog homes and single-bathroom working-class bungalows in the Heights and replacing them with high-dollar luxury homes in Victorian dressing. After proving to other builders that land banking and upscaling the Heights could be a lucrative business, Allegro eventually stretched its repertoire to million-dollar-plus whirlpool- and wine-cellar-enshrined fantasies that mimicked a variety of regional historical styles.

Our source says Allegro’s project manager was let go a couple of weeks ago — and that “there’s no money coming in.”

Allegro also developed two small but high-profile mixed-use buildings on Studewood. One is now known as the home of Bedford Restaurant. An earlier effort across 10th St., which houses Lance Fegen’s Glass Wall restaurant and Allegro Builders’ offices upstairs, is shown here in a rare early photo — minus its usual tight single-wythe street wall of valet-parked SUVs:

Continue Reading This Story >

12:45 pm | 33 Comments | Read more about Homebuilders, Mixed Use, Neighborhoods: Houston Heights
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Monday, March 9, 2009

Powers Deactivates: Another Builder, Another Sunset

March 9, 2009 – 10:48 am

Nancy Sarnoff chronicles the decline of Houston homebuilder David Powers Homes:

David Powers Homes has moved out of its offices on Westheimer and the Beltway and is now operating out of a model home in Lakes of Bella Terra, a subdivision in Richmond.

The company’s staff — 120 people at its peak — has dwindled to just four or five.

The high-end builder is now trying to finish the 36 homes it has in various stages of construction. . . .

Given the company’s higher home prices, about 50 percent of its customers financed their purchases with two loans to keep from paying higher interest rates on jumbo loans.

Those are loans that exceed $417,000.

Many of those second mortgages, Powers said, were subprime.

Image: David Powers Homes

10:48 am | 1 Comment | Read more about Homebuilders, Openings and Closings
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Friday, March 6, 2009

Comment of the Day: Welcome to Westwood Gardens

March 6, 2009 – 3:33 pm
   

“The neighbors are starting to join together to remove the graffiti. Not many kids are on the blocks but they do range in age from babies to happy teens. You can see them outside at times with their parents, riding scooters, riding bikes or just playing around. The neighbors even have indoor small pups, not those that you see on the news that maul on people or those that are seen used to fight. They are small well cared for happy dogs. Never without being on a leash when they are outside. A few neighbors have been seen flying small model airplanes. Everyone is friendly. Try it, if you see any one of the neighbors outside just wave and you will get a smile and a wave back. Hopefully one day we see you, if so Welcome to Westwood Gardens where you are Not just a Neighbor, Your Family!” [We Are Family!, commenting on Westwood Gardens Still Life: A Photo Tour of Half-Built Houston Homes]

3:33 pm | 1 Comment | Read more about Comments, Neighborhoods: Northwest Houston, Neighborhoods: Westwood Gardens, Quicklink
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Thursday, January 22, 2009

No More Jim Walter Homes

January 22, 2009 – 9:25 am
   

It’s too late to buy a home in Houston from Jim Walter Homes — though the company website reports orders are still being taken for new homes in Houma, Louisiana. Parent company Walter Industries, based in Florida, is getting out of the homebuilding business. Jim Walter Homes had not been profitable “for several years”: “. . . the business, once known for its flash construction, caught a reputation for moving at a snail’s pace. Walter Industries decided to close the dwindling homes leg and work toward becoming a focused natural resources and energy business — a greater value to shareholders, [communications director Michael] Monahan said.” [St. Petersburg Times; website]

9:25 am | 2 Comments | Read more about Homebuilders, Openings and Closings, Quicklink
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