FILLING IT IN
Reserve at Clear Lake City is new in an early master-planned community.
The Reserve at Clear Lake City, a new 372-acre development of Trendmaker Homes on the northern edge of the Clear Lake area, could be the biggest infill project in the city of Houston.
The development, planned for 740 homes near Clear Lake City and El Dorado boulevards, offers the first homes to be built in more than a decade in one of Houston’s oldest masterplanned communities. That’s driving sales, frequently to area residents who want new, larger houses or empty nesters downsizing to one-stories or patio homes.
“It’s very close-in relative to other new-home opportunities,” said Will Holder, president of Trendmaker Homes. “You have to go another 10 miles south to find another new-home location.”
Trendmaker Homes is a builder in the community, along with Village Builders and Cal Atlantic Homes. Since opening in 2015, 175 houses have been built or are under construction. Prices range from $350,000 to more than $700,000.
The location has helped propel it to the top seller among 20 area communities where Trendmaker builds, even as low oil prices have slowed the market overall, Holder said.
Friendswood Development Co. opened Clear Lake City in 1962 near NASA Johnson Space Center as the first of many master-planned communities in the Houston area, including Kingwood, Fairfield and more recently, Graystone Hills and Tavola. The development spans some 10,000 acres.
Trendmaker Homes acquired the land for the development in 2012 from Fidelis Realty Partners, which recently developed an H-E-B-anchored Clear Lake Marketplace at the entry to the community. Since then, 70 families have moved in.
Dan McCarver, a real estate agent with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Gary Greene, has sold several houses in The Reserve at Clear Lake City to buyers downsizing from larger houses in Bay Oaks. The new community has raised awareness of Clear Lake resale homes, too, McCarver said.
The final homes in Bay Oaks, a heavily wooded golf course community of 1,100 homes, were completed in 2005. Prices there start around $400,000 for a 3,200-square-foot house built in the 1990s, and average $550,000, McCarver said.
Prices are at the high end of the greater Clear Lake area, where the median sales price reached $225,000 in 2015, up 14.5 percent for the year, according to the Houston Association of Realtors.