COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT MONTROSE LOOK 
“If you really look at the building, it resembles a typical three story townhome, shrunk and widened to one level. Even the arched facade mimics the townhome in the background. And let’s face, the neighborhood behind it is rapidly becoming a majority townhome area if it isn’t already. So maybe it does resemble the neighborhood after all. . . .
If you seriously look at Montrose, it is just a polyglot of everything. A lot of it is butt ugly but the trees and grown out landscaping obscure it. My neighborhood and its adjacents are filled with homes, apartments, offices, etc. spanning 90 years of different styles and much of it is seemingly incompatible if viewed as a single entity. That is Montrose. It ain’t The Woodlands!” [JT, commenting on Raising Cane’s Is Almost Ready To Grab the Corner of Hazard and Westheimer with Its Chicken Fingers] Illustration: Lulu
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Tag: Townhomes
- 5930 Woodway Place Ct. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PATIO HOME, A TOWNHOME, AND A HOME HOME 
“As a general rule, Patio Home means tiny yard and 1 to 2 stories and no shared wall. A Townhome may have no yard at all or a small yard but is generally 3 stories plus and may have a shared wall. Now, don’t ask me what the difference is between those and a Garden Home, or City Home, or Urban Home.” [commonsense, commenting on What’s Planned for the Camp Strake Property; Pushing for a Galveston Bay Watergate ‘Compromise’]
Sure, high-above drone still shots now regularly pepper real estate listings, but a reader wonders whether the effort shown above — and included in this for-sale website — might constitute the first video tour by quadcopter ever to appear in Houston’s MLS. It probably isn’t, if only because (as of early this afternoon), the 3-story townhouse at 1611 W. Clay St., which backs up to the TJ Maxx store on W. Gray St., isn’t actually listed for sale on the MLS (it last sold in 2012, for $462,060). But the video was only posted on Monday, so give it some time. Asking price: $560,000.
The flying-remote-camera footage begins with an awe-inducing golden-hour survey of the home’s exterior and moves onto the amazing views of downtown and the surrounding neighborhood that might be available were the townhouse to be 3 or so stories taller than it is. But more notable is the moment about 44 seconds in, when the flying-around-the-house quadcopter camera footage cuts directly into an interior walkthrough, starting from the front door (leaving out, of course, the awkward around-the-side-of-the-garage entrance common to homes of this type).
Real Estate Listing Innovations
- 2625 Newman St. [HAR]
- 7626 Olympia Dr. [HAR]
The rooftop terrace of this 2008 City View Courtyard townhome ought to be a decent spot for watching tomorrow’s Freedom Over Texas fireworks show. The Fourth Ward location between W. Dallas St. and the back of Allen Parkway Village falls in Freedmen’s Town — though not the portion designated and nationally registered as Freedmen’s Town Historic District. The townhome property’s name is only semi-apt; while “city view” (top) is a sure thing, the “courtyard” reference is less clear. Perhaps it refers to the narrow strip of fenced pens between the 2 back-to-back 3-packs? Even without the seasonal pyrotechnics of Houston’s Official July 4th Celebration to view, the end-cap’s perspective peeks at office peaks, . . .
Skyrockets at Night
Developers of a 7-townhome development on Wrightwood St. just east of Houston Ave. in Woodland Heights paid a $300,000 settlement to the city last year for clear-cutting about an acre of neighboring Woodland Park. Neighbors claimed the extensive cutting and uprooting was done expressly to give future residents of the townhomes a better view, but one of the developers, Bill Workman, went on a hardhat-in-hand apology tour trying to explain that the brush-and-tree-and-grass removal spree was only the result of a communication error with a subcontractor. Now, more than a year after the land-grading-gone-awry incident, the website and marketing materials for the 2 four-story townhomes currently available in the development have been adjusted a bit — to highlight their expansive views of Woodland Park.
How We Got Woodland Park Views
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.
Gray Line Tour
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:
Taking a Long View
COURTLANDT MANOR SITE PHOTOGRAPHER: GOOGLE PLUS ATE YOUR ‘G’ 
The reader who sent in pics that Swamplot posted yesterday showing a banner announcing the new 14-townhome Courtlandt Manor development at 411 Lovett Blvd. — where developer Croix Custom Homes had a 1906 mansion in fine condition torn down earlier this year — writes in to apologize and explain why they inadvertently made it look like the developer’s sign had a prominent typo. Having examined the originals and discussed the issue with one of the firms marketing the project, Swamplot can now confirm that Courtlandt Manor is indeed “pre-selling,” not “pre-sellin” units for $875K and up, and that the actual sign spells this out accurately. “I feel really bad about this,” writes the photographer, who didn’t notice anything wrong with the photo until it was posted. “My phone automatically uploads all the photos I take to Google+ for backup. When it sees several images taken side by side, it ‘auto-enhances’ them into a panorama.” That’s more of an explanation for a missing letter than Croix had provided publicly for the site’s now-missing mansion, but the spelling-oblivious auto-panorama mechanism in Google+, apparently, is a little more complicated. Original, unstitched photo of sign at Lovett Blvd. and Taft: Swamplot inbox
Update, 6/24: The banner depicted in the photo above really does spell “pre-selling” correctly; the photographer explains how Google+ ate the ‘g.’
And here’s what you all were waiting for, while patiently enduring the demolition of the recently renovated 1906 Bullock-City Federation Mansion at 411 Lovett Blvd. this past March: The old building’s old-fashionedly-named replacement. Signs announcing Croix Homes’ Courtlandt Manor development went up Friday at the two-thirds-of-an-acre site on the corner of Lovett Blvd. and Taft St. A rendering of the development (at top) may make it kinda look like a single collegiate building, but it’s being sold as 14 separate townhomes, with prices “from” $875,000. The site plan (above right) shows the structures grouped around some sort of central argyle auto court, perhaps reminiscent of the former brick-and-concrete design on the parking lot of its vanquished predecessor, in a twisted-45-degrees kind of way.
Avondale Replacements
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.
All in a Row
Tilt Creep? The saw-toothed roof of a 1977 Walkers Mark townhome located south of the Energy Corridor and west of Wilcrest Rd. appears to have slanted some of the interior’s fittings as well. If so inclined, grab a protractor and explore all the angles on this property . . .
The Jagged Edge
