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    Real Estate Round-up

    Big heads & busted-up buildings: Prudential goes Astrodome

    Ralph Bivins
    Apr 5, 2010 | 10:50 am
    • Six 20-foot-tall presidential statues at the WaterLights development inPearland. Where will they end up?
      Photo by Ralph Bivins
    • A close-up of the George Washington bust
      Photo by Ralph Bivins
    • Houston Main Building, 1100 Holcombe, formerly known as the Prudential Buildingand now part of the M.D. Anderson complex
      Photo by Ben Hill

    The Texas Medical Center is about to lose some of its history so that progress can continue.

    The Prudential Building is going to meet the ugly grim reaper of real estate – the wrecking ball. Located at 1100 Holcombe Blvd., it was built in 1952 and it is still loved as an example of modern architecture. It is considered one of the finest designs ever conceived by Houston architect Kenneth Franzheim.

    The 18-story building may have been appreciated so much because it includes a lot of native materials — red Texas granite, Texas limestone and a much-loved mural of Texas farmers with a haul of Texas produce.

    When the Prudential Building opened, it was way out in the suburbs of a much younger Houston. As a boy in the back seat of Dad’s car in the 1960s, I remember passing the building often as we traveled to our suburban homestead in Foster Place. At the front of the Prudential Building was a fountain with a sculpture of a man and woman holding a baby (entitled “Wave of Life” by artist Wheeler Williams.) Even as a kid I liked the sculpture.

    Back then, the Prudential Building had an Olympic swimming pool out back and over 20 acres of land. The swimming pool is long gone and the land has been chewed up for other purposes.

    The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Center bought the building and surrounding property in 1974 for a reported $18.5 million. The Prudential Building was renamed the “Houston Main Building” by the hospital administrators.

    Preservationists tried for years to save it. But retrofitting the old building is prohibitively expensive and more land is needed so more cancer patients can be treated in efficient new buildings. And now it’s time for the Prudential Building to go. The building is being fenced in, dismantled and will vanish forever in 2011.

    As a native Houstonian, it saddens me to see the places I remember from my youth – the Astrodome, Sharpstown Mall and now the Prudential Building – become obsolete or go into decline.
     
     The Big Heads

    Places are about dreams and visions and sometimes it’s hard to for people to let go of them.

    The presidential park in the WaterLights district in Pearland is one of those. WaterLights was going to have a sculpture display of all the presidential busts — from Washington to Obama.

    Houston artist David Adickes, whose gigantic sculpture of Sam Houston graces the highway near Huntsville, has completed the 43 presidential sculptures for WaterLights. Six of them are already installed on the site, 20-foot busts depicting George H.W. Bush, Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, Roosevelt, and Jefferson.

    But they might not be there much longer and the remainder of Adickes' collection may never arrive in Pearland.

    The 50-acre WaterLights development, located on Highway 288 just south of Beltway 8, is facing foreclosure, says David Goswick, one of the developers of proposed mixed-use project. Goswick’s group bought the land for $15 million in February 2007.

    The WaterLights group has been posted for foreclosure by Amegy Bank, Goswick says. The bank will take over the property if Goswick’s group does not get another capital infusion or find another way to avoid foreclosure, Goswick says.

    The problem wasn’t that the WaterLights development plan was bad, but other developers who wanted to build new restaurants, stores or apartments at WaterLights could not get financing because banks are reluctant to lend in today’s economy.

    The people of Pearland aren’t about to let the presidential display go without a squawk. In less than a week, almost a thousand people signed up to be WaterLights “friends” on a Facebook page dedicated to saving the president statue garden, Goswick says.

    If it doesn’t happen in Pearland, Goswick says the developers will find another property around Houston to display Adickes’ presidential statues.

    It’s hard to kill a good idea. And it can be even harder to extinguish the dream of a developer with passion — unless, of course, the dream has a head-on collision with a wrecking ball.
     
     Ralph Bivins, former president of the National Association of Real Estate Editors, is editor-in-chief of RealtyNewsReport.com.
     

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    news/real-estate

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    Slight decline in Houston home prices could benefit buyers, report says

    Holly Beretto
    Jul 18, 2025 | 2:32 pm
    311 Brown Saddle St. exterior
    Photo by TK Images for Martha Turner Sotheby's International Realty
    311 Brown Saddle St is on the market for $6.75 million.

    A brand new report from Homes.com, which tracks hundreds of thousands of transactions to identify real-time housing trends, might mean great news for Houston home buyers.

    Houston home prices posted their third consecutive monthly year-over-year decline in June. The median home price in the Houston metropolitan area fell from $349,000 in June 2024 to $347,970 in June 2025, a 0.3 percent decline. The numbers represent sales of single-family homes, townhomes, and condominiums throughout the metro area.

    Looking a bit deeper, the report indicates that condos and townhomes are seeing prices fall the fastest. In June, the median detached-family home sold for $278,204, and the median condo sold for $160,000. That’s a 3.9 percent dip for both from a year ago. Meanwhile detached single-family home prices saw the smallest price decline, selling at $350,000, which is 0.8 percent less than a year ago.

    The website Homes.com quotes local realtors noting that this is likely due to oversupply as well as rising HOA fees in these segments.

    But all of it taken together means the scene could be shifting to a buyers’ market.

    “Active listings are above pre-pandemic levels,” according to Itziar Aguirre, senior director of market analytics for CoStar and Homes.com. “Houses are staying on the market longer, and price cuts are becoming more common so that sellers can remain competitive, which is a good thing for potential homebuyers. With slightly lower prices and more houses to choose from, it is starting to feel like a buyer’s market.”

    The report goes on to explain that housing construction in Houston surged coming out of the pandemic due to strong demand and population growth in the region. Developers may have overbuilt, particularly in the condo market and townhomes. Now, prices are falling the fastest in those two segments.

    Also, there is likely a bit of a market correction going on since Houston saw a significant price appreciation from 2020-2022.

    Condos and townhomes are often entry-level options for first-time buyers and high mortgage rates have impacted these buyers’ purchasing power. HOA fees have also increased, as have insurance premiums in the last few years, due to increased risk of flooding and hurricanes in Houston as well as higher repair costs due to inflation.

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