06/11/13 2:00pm

The deeply set lot of a porchified plantation-ish spread in Ridgeley Place lends a Southern — or maybe just South Fork — feel to this 6-year-old home in Hilshire Village. The south-facing Acadian-style structure also features plenty of  pull-up-a-chair gathering spots inside.

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06/10/13 11:00am

Among a trio of metal-clad homes built a decade or so ago north of a Washington Corridor rail yard and a few blocks east of Heights Blvd. is this tilt-topped contemporary sited in a neighborhood someone decided to name Kalitta. Its stained concrete flooring on the first level glows beneath the furry exposed truss ceiling. The 2001 property showed up on the market last Tuesday, asking $425,000.

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06/06/13 4:00pm

There’s a bit of a gold rush within this faux-from-the-get-go 1992 Georgian-style estate in the Clear Lake area’s Bay Oaks golf course community. Its fairway-and-lake locale lends the lot the appearance of even more extensive grounds. When the marble-floored home popped back up on the market a month ago, its new agency set an asking price of $1,545,000. That’s right about where it had landed midway through a previous listing’s slide from $1,799,000 (in May 2012) to $1,499,000 (in March 2013), when the polished up property took a bit of a breather.
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06/05/13 4:45pm

Neighboring homes to this 1955 Bellaire home, rejiggered in 2006, both sport swimming pools — including the one next door that HCAD shows as having the same owners. This relisted fitness-foremost property, however, fills its back yard with a sport court — and serves up the view from just about every room. There are plenty of places to work out inside, too.

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05/31/13 10:00am

When last we visited this home at the western edge of Memorial Bend, built in 1958 from a design by noted Houston architect Lars Bang, the trees were a smidge shorter and the open-plan interior perhaps a bit less tweaked. That was 5 years ago, for a listing that never found a buyer. Last fall, the midcentury-mod-gone-whatever property returned to the market at $565,000 — though within a couple of months the price had fallen to $499,000. (Price histories posted for the property indicate a couple contracts didn’t go through.) Earlier this month, however, the flat-topped specimen overlooking Rummel Creek and the Edith L. Moore Bird Sanctuary popped back up with a big bang of a price increase, to $679,000.

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05/29/13 11:30am

Since its beam-boosting renovation in 2009, a Briarcroft corner-lot property on an oxbow street off Chimney Rock has been listed a few times — and offered itself up as a rental property. A year-and-a-bit-long break from the market for the updated 1963 home ended earlier this month when the agent upped the asking price to $825,000 for its latest run. That’s just shy of $150K more than the previous 2 efforts, both of which gave $675,750 a shot back in 2011 and 2012. Back in 2009, though, the pre-reno property sold for $282,150. If you want to rent this home today, it’ll run you $5,850 a month.

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05/24/13 1:15pm

The ‘bay’ at this multilevel 1990 property in Walden on Lake Conroe is a 2-story space with a modern, multi-pane frame of the water. Photos of the vista-boosting room — and its contemporary decor — dominate the early-in-May listing. The asking price, $925,000, apparently includes the furnishings.

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