The Market Sleeps Through October

November 15, 2019November 17, 2019Cameron Ansari

The week after Labor Day is the traditional start of the Houston real estate market’s second wind, especially in River Oaks. All was going to plan until Tropical Storm Imelda hit the city in the third week of September. Then the market curled up and went into a deep sleep. A...

Ask the Agents #14: Home Staging Services

November 12, 2019November 17, 2019Cameron Ansari & Teresa Byrne-Dodge

Question: What do home staging services do – and are they worth the money? Answer: The point of staging a home is, simply, to make it more appealing. You know about getting rid of clutter, touching up paint and replacing the dead shrub by the front door. Staging takes that “fluffing”...

New Construction in River Oaks

October 17, 2019October 18, 2019Cameron Ansari

As of the third week of October, there are currently 42 properties in River Oaks owned by speculative builders. Of these, 18 are being actively marketed on the multiple listing system (MLS), including one in a pending contract awaiting completion. What do we know about them? Of the 42 spec properties,...

Take a Look at 2300 Timber Lane

September 26, 2019October 16, 2019Teresa Byrne-Dodge

We’ve all been hard at work on 2300 Timber Lane for the past 14 months. If you get the print edition of the River Oaks Market Report, you’ve seen renderings for this big-deal house. Finally, as of late September 2019, it is complete and about to be unveiled. Here’s the scoop:...

How to Protect Your Trees from Heavy Rains

September 26, 2019September 26, 2019Katie Dubow

Fall in Texas often means storms and heavy rains that saturate the ground. While trees in the region are accustomed to this amount of rain, too much water threatens trees’ ability to stand tall, strong and steady. Just like most living things, your plants, shrubs and trees can only handle so...

Reading the Tea Leaves

August 13, 2019August 13, 2019Cameron Ansari

Drawing broad conclusions from market anomalies in River Oaks real estate is usually a mistake. There simply aren’t enough data points to extrapolate likely future outcomes. In other words, it’s a thin market, so don’t try to be too clever by predicting what’s going to happen in the next six months...

A Houston Restaurant Quiz

August 13, 2019August 13, 2019Teresa Byrne-Dodge

Editor’s note: We reached back into our My Table magazine archives to find this Houston restaurant trivia quiz. We offer it as a brief summer distraction from the churning River Oaks real estate market. How much do you know about Houston restaurants? Here’s a stroll down memory lane to test your...

At the Half-Way Mark: River Oaks Demographics Update

July 29, 2019March 17, 2022Cameron Ansari & Teresa Byrne-Dodge

As we wrap up the mid-year print edition of the River Oaks Market Report, here is a teaser of the demographics in the River Oaks real estate market since January 1. Origin of Buyers The trend of fewer buyers coming from River Oaks itself continues. It fell from 38% in 2017 to 26%...

A Bee in His Bonnet

July 15, 2019July 16, 2019Teresa Byrne-Dodge

Maybe you’ve seen that t-shirt that has a cartoon drawing of a bee followed by the quote: “If we die, we’re taking you with us.” Or perhaps you’ve read the newspaper and magazine articles that discuss bee colonies collapsing at a rate that beekeepers seem helpless to staunch. In any case,...

Big, Bigger, Biggest

June 25, 2019June 25, 2019Cameron Ansari

While we have seen a robust number of house sales in the first half of 2019 on small and moderate-sized lots, the most striking feature of the current River Oaks real estate market has been the large number of sales of properties on half an acre or more.* In a neighborhood...