They say that everything is bigger in Texas, and it’s usually true. We’ve found an exception, however. The only thing large about the micro condos being built in Parc at Midtown is the audacity of the developers!
Are you tired of paying rent for something you’ll never actually own? Many people who have Houston, TX Renters Insurance are just biding their time until they can afford to buy the home of their dreams… Or any home, anywhere, that’s affordable. The Houston housing market has been hot for some time now, and it doesn’t seem to be showing signs of slowing down. Land is hard to find in the city, and developers who are building currently have frequently owned that land for a number of years.
Surge Homes, operated by partners Louis Conrad and Ben Lemieux, thinks that they have found a solution to the Houston housing market problem. Instead of building more practically, they’ve chosen to build smaller. Parc at Midtown includes eighty homes, most of which are of normal size for a condo. While condos are a different form of home ownership than what the American Dream has traditionally considered, it’s an equally valid form if one that comes with more than a few caveats. You do tend to give up a bit of space and privacy in a condo, but the cost of entry can be lower especially in a market like Houston.
If we told you that you could buy a new construction condo in Houston for as little as $158,000 would you jump on the opportunity? Many people would! But before you jump into that quite reasonably priced offer, let’s dig in a little more. What, exactly, does $158,000 and condo association dues buy you in Parc at Midtown? First, of course, it buys you an address in a trendy neighborhood at 2401 Crawford Street, right in the middle of the Midtown neighborhood.
414 SF Houston Condos Make Your Tiny Apartment Look Huge (And You Won’t Believe The Price!)
For less than the cost of sending a child to an Ivy League school for four years – but only just – you can get a European inspired micro condo at that trendy address. What, exactly, do “European-inspired” and “micro condo” really mean? Well, the starting price brings a mere 414 square feet. That’s less space than most apartments in Houston – even apartments located in converted single-family dwellings.
But in that 414 square feet, you do get a closed master bedroom. The developers claim that there is “space for entertaining in the living areas”, though we’re not quite certain how many people you could entertain in 414 square feet, less master bedroom, less bathroom, less what passes for a kitchen. Not to say that it’s impossible, but consider the number of friends you have before taking them up on their offer. If n (as number of friends) > 2, you may want to reconsider.
As to European-inspired… It’s common knowledge that Europe tends to make better use of space overall when constructing housing in large cities. Most Europeans are perfectly content with an apartment or the equivalent, whether rented or owned, and have no real desire to own (or maintain) a lawn or a white picket fence. But in the case of these micro condos, it also refers to the cabinetry. Those cabinets are imported from Italy and Germany, but made of synthetic materials.
Parc at Midtown is an interesting development, and we’ll keep an eye on this micro condo trend. While land use and multi-family housing construction has changed and evolved in positive ways in recent years, not all trends will turn out to be positive ones. Overall, Parc at Midtown is one of the fastest-selling new construction developments in Harris County. Will the resale value of these micro condos hold? Will they impact the resale value of the other units in the community? Time and the market will tell.
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