rental me this

On 7/29/2022 at 11:15 AM, JLWM8609 said:

This is definitely the year of white houses with black trim. It's trendy, but timeless. My late Aunt and Uncle's c. 1938 Salisbury & McHale home in Riverside has been painted white with black trim for probably all its life. Fortunately, my cousin hasn't changed the paint scheme.

Trendy is an understatement.  A house near us in Woodland Heights was sitting on the market for a couple months.  The owner painted it completely white (like primer-white, including the trim) and re-listed it for $25k higher.  Went under contract for full asking price within 10 days. 

Not my taste (and you have to be careful not to look at it directly on a bright sunny day), but people will clearly buy anything white.

On 2/1/2021 at 7:40 AM, wilcal said:

Big Tex mentioned in their reply to a news station that the building will:

· Adheres to COH Transit-Oriented Development: pedestrian-friendly plaza with 6′ wide sidewalks & a well landscape street façade.

· Architecturally designed to be complementary to the character of the Heights: honed brick, la Habra stucco and architectural metal panels

"La Habra stucco" is a nice sounding word for EIFS, which no one should be excited about.  And I'm guessing "architectural metal panels" is code for corrugated metal. 

I just hope they ditch the billboard.

The parking lot entrance and "loading berth" on Dorothy could be problematic.  That's a very narrow street with open (and deep) drainage culverts.  Assuming the loading berth is for deliveries, large trucks will not fare well on Dorothy.  I can't imagine the neighbors will be thrilled either.  There are 4 more houses not pictured immediately north of the parking lot (to the right in the rendering) before you get to 14th street.

Our neighbors just got their 2015 appraisal - their 5,000 sq ft lot in Woodland Heights is now valued at $60 / sq ft.  Ouch.

Check out White Oak and Studewood on a Friday or Saturday night.  I cannot think of anyone who wants that for 19th street. 

 

More restaurants would be great.  Everyone wants that.  Another low key bar like Down House would be great.  But some club packing in tons of people to see Sparkle Pony would do nothing for 19th street after 6 pm except to leave a mess to clean up at 6 am the next day.  No one going to a big bar or live music club is going to shop for antiques, boutique clothing, or home decor on 19th street before they go to see Sparkle Pony.  When was the last time you heard someone say "dude, I am so wasted.  Let's go shop for a credenza!!!!".

The band is called Sparklehorse.  And its touring days are over.  

To address your underlying point, I would go to a show on 19th street, and if I saw a cool piece of furniture in the window of a shop nearby, I would absolutely stop in for a better look.  I'm not in my 20s anymore, but that just means I have money to spend on nice things, like furniture.

I think the mistake here is stereotyping people who enjoy live music.  Contrary to the assumption, we're not all drunk kids.

The bust was bad.  I was a kid then, too, and it at school it seemed like there were 2 groups of kids - those whose dad had been laid off, and those whose dad was about to be laid off. Mine survived round after round of layoffs at Shell, took a huge pay cut and called himself lucky. 

We used to drive up to the Spaghetti Warehouse sometimes for dinner, and I remember thinking how sad and empty downtown looked.  We used to go look at fish in the bayou near Allen's Landing, but it got too creepy and our parents wouldn't let us go down there anymore.

Went away for school, kicked around in Austin for a few years after that, and came back to Houston in the early 2000s... it was a little embarrassing to have to ask somebody what "Midtown" was.  I don't love everything that's been built here in the last 15 or so years, but Houston feels more like home now than it ever did.  So, I think we're doing something right.

Interesting, it appears that it doesn't matter that my lot is smaller than my neighbor's - because it is less than the typical 5,000 square feet found in Woodland Heights, HCAD adjusts the "size factor" to render that difference meaningless.  HCAD website says this is an "adjustment for lots smaller than the base lot established for the neighborhood."  Which I find odd because my lot has been this size since at least 1926.  

Sooo we get a higher tax bill for not owning enough land.  Just peachy.

Just checked mine - we're in Woodland Heights and our appraisal value went up by exactly 10%.  The "market area" on our appraisal is listed as the Heights, Brookesmith, & Norhill. 

The vast majority of the increase was land, with a small uptick in the improvement value.  Our neighbor with a bigger lot & same size house in similar condition was appraised for almost $35,000 less.  We had good success protesting last year using the online protest form, so we'll try it again this year.

I know that the ban on new garage apartments isn't new. However, my understanding is that if the proposed restrictions are approved, homeowners don't get another opportunity to revise them until the year 2025. So it sure seems like now would be the time to reassess whether the continuation of the garage apartment ban makes any sense. To me, it doesn't.

As I mentioned earlier, the ban eliminates the possibility of expanding a small home's living space without changing the character of the main house. I would think that people who are interested in preserving the older homes in the neighborhood would jump all over this opportunity and work to toss out a restriction that IMHO, actually threatens the stock of old homes (by making camelbacks and questionable additions the only option for adding square footage). Actually, I would think that most people, regardless of their stance on the preservation issue, could agree that it's an unnecessary restriction. Is there an anti-garage apartment lobby that I'm not aware of?

I have an honest question about the reasons for the garage apartment prohibition (in the Norhill deed restrictions and others). Just my two cents, but a garage apartment seems like a good way to add much needed living space to a small bungalow without changing the look or character of the main house. No need for camelbacks or weird looking additions. Preservationists and Expansionists could both be happy (ok ok I know that will never happen).

Personally, a garage apartment would make my relatives' visits way more enjoyable. Further down the road,it could be the perfect close-but-not-too-close option for caring for my aging parents. If I lived in Norhill (which I don't), I think I'd be lobbying hard for the inclusion of garage apartments rather than continuing their ban.

Per the WH bulletin board, it's been bought by the owner(s) of Hearsay. Word is that it is being remodeled and will reopen as a "park-oriented walk-up/bike-up tavern." I don't have any independent confirmation of this besides the buzz on the bulletin board. I'm curious to see what happens, as it's right around the corner from me.

Echoing Red, my house has alternately made me want (a) hug it and live in it forever, and ( burn it to the ground. I lived in the Heights as a renter for a while, moved away, and was finally able to convince the mister that we should sell his townhome and buy a house here. We've put close to 25k into it since buying it 3 years ago and we've got work to do yet. I'm not doing it to turn a profit. I just really love these houses. I also love the funky old artifacts we keep finding. Children's books and WWII canteens in the attic, and old quinine "tonic" bottles buried in the yard. These houses aren't for everyone. But they are definitely for me.

Specifically on the topic of floors, a guy from Clouse Floor came out and looked at ours, told us they had been refinished too many times already and were basically done. I can accept this, as nothing lasts forever. One day the old floor will become the new subfloor, but not anytime soon. We've got a big rambunctious dog, and I'm not inclined to drop a ton of money on a new floor during her lifetime.

The pine floors in our bungalow lie right on the joists, just like most of these old Heights homes. When we moved in, we noticed places where the tongue and groove had broken, leading to "soft" spots in the floor. We went under the house and built a cradle between the joists to reinforce the soft spots and prevent further breakage.

One of the best improvements we made to the house was insulating the underside of the floor using rigid spray foam insulation. We used a company called AIS Foam and I would recommend them. Cost a couple thousand dollars for a 1200 square foot house, but well worth it. The house is much less damp, the floor isn't as cold, and most noticeably - the floor feels so much more SOLID than before. It's also quieter to walk on. It's not a flashy improvement, but it's by far my favorite.

As far as riding out hurricanes, I trust the shiplap in the walls of my current house to withstand far more than the fake stucco/sheetrock combo of my old townhome. During Ike, the entire townhome shook and vibrated like a cheap motel bed.

I grew up there and moved away in the early 90s, before the Bellaire boom really got booming. As far as I can tell from driving around and chatting with a few old neighbors, it's now chock full of mega-mansions, and retains precious little of the small town charm that made it such an awesome place to grow up. Of course, I'm a little jaded... My old house was demolished just a few weeks ago, along with the enormous live oak tree in the back yard. Some people have no soul... I think a lot of them live in Bellaire.

Gotta chime in on the lack of good sushi in the Heights. I've tried it a couple times at Thai Spice and was pretty underwhelmed. My pieces were very dry and tastewise, boring. The 11th Street Kroger rocks by comparison, which ain't saying much. It would be great to get an actual sushi place in the hood.