The biggest windows in this renovated 1975 townhome in the heart of the Museum District appear to be the glass-panel garage doors, which split their at-the-sidewalk orientation between both streets forming the corner property near Bell Park. But there’s more glass to see inside. A week ago, the asking price on this property dropped to $620,000 from a May listing kickoff at $640,000.
Is it any wonder that this custom studio-home of a fine arts photography gallery owner is camera ready? From curbside, it comes with a limelight finish. Rice architecture prof Carlos Jiménez, who’s designed art museums, homes, and warehouses alike, incorporated ingredients of each in this 2011 project. A week ago, the Riverside Terrace property went up for sale with a $650,000 asking price.
The sloping roof accommodates a partial second story, as well as lofty living and a large, column-free exhibition space at ground level:
Why is Houston architect Karen Lantz putting up for sale the 1963 split-level cabin near Lake Travis she painstakingly brought back to life and renovated? To free up funds for more on-her-own projects for her family, she tells Swamplot. Of course, a real-estate listing of an architect’s own home can do double marketing duty: There’s always the chance someone might see your home and want to buy it! But there’s also a chance someone might see your home and want something kind of like it, but somewhere else. . . .
So Lantz went a little wild with the online show-and-tell, repurposing many of the images she had had taken and drawn of the property when she submitted it for professional recognition (both Lantz and the home won awards from the AIA last year) into a fancy listing website that pokes into all sorts of different sections of the half-acre lot, pointing out the “drainage swale,” “bamboo grove,” “firefly grotto” (with video of the bugs in action), “firefly patio,” BBQ patio, “arroyo,” swings (above left), and — oh, yeah, the house too:
Could the crop of buildings forming downtown Houston’s skyline viewed from a rooftop terrace north of Avondale be the “garden” reference in a contemporary townhome 3-pack dubbed “El Jardin Moderno?” Or maybe it’s the wispy palm trees that sharply mark the 2004 property’s portals? Or perhaps it’s the color use inside, where each level interprets a slice of the spectrum:
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:
