And there’s the pitch. Look up! Lots of roof peaks cap this 1971 Northampton home near Willow Creek Golf Course. And the rooms upstairs really play off the angles. A new agency relisted the property this week, though it trimmed the asking price by $4K to $375K from the tag attached for a week or so earlier this month. We begin our tour in the slightly schizophrenic foyer . . .
Does this Mediterranean-ian home in Crestwood actually like its view of Memorial Park across the street — or not? Judging from the corner lot’s tree canopies and the 1999 home’s extensive use of plantation shutters, it’s a little hard to tell. When a new agency re-re-re-relisted it a month ago, the property’s asking price came to $1.7 million. A series of 3 previous listings dating back to March 2013 shows pricing efforts targeted $1.975 million at first, but backed down to $1.935 million in September 2013, $1.895 million in February 2014, and $1.795 million in April.
Is it really worth it to empty out and polish your bomb shelter before you put your home on the market? Here’s some compelling evidence that it is. The property on Jackwood St. in Meyerland with the bomb-shelter-turned-subterranean man cave featured last August on Swamplot sold late the following month for $330,000. But the buyers wasted no time in working a profitable flip. Clearing out the La-Z-Boy, beer bottles, Wendy’s soda cups, bunny figurines, and other memorabilia from the underground domed space resulted in a cleaner listing and a much higher sale price last month: $503,700, marked down from a $515K asking price and locked up only a week or so after the April listing. That’s an explosive increase of $173,700, or more than 50 percent, over the purchase price, in less than your typical real estate half-life.
Of course, a few things affecting home prices may have been going in the outside world while the buyers were busily scrubbing the walls of their underground lair. Though they did make a few other changes to the house as well:
Smack in the middle of a Meyerland street of single-story ranch-style homes, an East-ish-meets-West property bumps up its curbside presence (and square footage) while keeping its inner life focused on the central courtyard with fountain (top). Was the mishmash of pan-Asian flavoring part of a 2001 remodeling or was any of it original to the one-of-a-kind 1970 home? The listing on Wednesday, which notes a $739,000 asking price, doesn’t make it clear. Let’s just say that there’s a whole lot more going on inside this home than might be hinted by the mostly quiet exterior.
Clear Lake laps placidly (at least for now) at the shore of a Mies-inspired home designed in 1974 by Houston architect Edmund Furley and located in Glen Cove (the one in League City, not the one near Houston’s Memorial Park). The waterfront retreat’s undated renovations (top) are attributed to interior designer J. Randall Powers and William Caudell (the still-living designer, not Bill Caudill the late CRS architect). Photos in the property’s listing last week generously tour the interior and grounds, but present just one through-the-gate peek at the home’s front (above). There’s a $4.3 million asking price dangling above the wowza waterside spread, but its $12 annual maintenance fee appears to be a real deal.
The floor plan may qualify as “open,” but rooms take shape nonetheless (top) in a compact 1960Â Holly Park home that was listed in late May with a $375,000 asking price. The updated property sits mid-block on a street in the middle of its neighborhood, which is located near Timbergrove Manor, south of W. 18th St. near the West Loop feeder road’s transition into the North Loop.
It’s a bit of a prickly walk past the cacti to the low-key entry of a palm-shaded 1948 Art Moderne-ish contemporary home with pool that’s available for lease in Braeswood for $4,800 per month. The residential street is located a block south of W. Holcombe Blvd. on a block west of Greenbriar Dr. that’s chock full of housing styles ranging from postwar to more recently built townhomian.
A 1976 home by architect Lucian Hood in the Indian Trails neighborhood north of Tanglewood displays different approaches to detail inside and out. Tall windows, extensive parquet flooring, and columns add drama to the finishes inside (top). The outside? Not so much (above). The corner lot property, at Chimney Rock Rd. north of Woodway Dr., has a front-filling driveway that curves around semi-walled landscaping. Listed last week, it has a $1.4 million asking price. That’s just a smidge more than the $1.375 million sought in 2003, when the north-facing home last appeared on the market; it eventually sold the following year for $823,500.
Berry Bayou’s banks lie behind an aqua-tipped and aqua-tinted 1962 mod in Meadowcreek Village. The ravine lot property popped up on the market today, with a $99,900 asking price. Many of the home’s original details are intact:
Since its purchase in 2010 for $65,000, an Eastwood property has gained what is described as — in the most recent of its 3 separate listings so far this year — a 2011 “Craftsman-inspired” home. The current listing has a $519,000 asking price. That’s down from the $555,000 mentioned in its March through April 2014 market debut and its weeklong appearance in early May at $529,999.
Does Sisyphus do windows? With floor-to-ceiling expanses and sliders trimming a tree house of a home in Saddlecreek Village Estates, the adjacent woodlands provide most of the background art. Last week, the updated 1980 property landed on the market, with a listing that keeps the home’s façade a bit of a secret. It’s a split-level and has a $1.75 million asking price. The glassy structure squeezes into its zig-zag lot’s leafy terrain in Hunters Creek Village, but much of the interior is wide open . . .
In the up-and-down maze of the 1985 postmodern Court at Museums Gate complex in Montrose, one of the 3-story units has been on and off the market at a variety of price points since last summer. Yesterday, the plaza-entry condo popped up again in a re-listing (with sharper photos) by a new agency. The asking price, $370,000, is where things stood earlier this month when an April 2014 re-listing terminated, having reduced its $385K price tag for 2 days. Back in July 2013, the unit debuted at $276,000, then tracked its price upward with the market through the end of the year. The property last sold in 2011, for $168,517.
It’s a square-off. One of Arquitectonica’s colorful, cube-studded townhomes on Graustark St. is back on the market, a year after its last sale, for $345K. This time around, the 30-year-old contemporary property’s asking price is $449,200.
