A mid-1980s land rush transformed Fort Bend County.
This story ran Oct. 14, 1984, capturing a time when Fort Bend County was mostly farmland. But with the creation of new housing developments, Fort Bend County has become one of the nation’s fastest-growing communities. It has more than doubled since 2000, according to Census Bureau records. In 2016, the population was 741,000. This story has been edited for length.
Regular customers at Ed Dozier’s barbecue place on FM 359 in Fort Bend County still talk about farming and the weather, but these days the locals love to talk real estate.
Dozier, like other landowners in this rice farming country just southwest of Houston, realizes just how much his spread is worth and it makes for interesting conversation.
Neighbors who cashed in their acreage to developers from Houston have become multimillionaires lately with some of the largest land deals in Texas building to crescendo here.
Amid the grain farms and rich Brazos River land, within Richmond and Rosenberg and in the surrounding countryside, a Houston-style land rush is on.
Houston developers, stockpiling development space to the turn of the century, have paid millions this year to sock away huge building sites in Fort Bend County. Even with the recent jump in prices, developers say raw land in Fort Bend County and other nearHouston areas is a bargain compared with the outlying areas of Dallas or Austin.
Large chunks of the county are in the 100-year flood plain, a tender subject among Fort Bend residents and an added expense for developers, and much of the land is tangled up in oil companies’ mineral rights. Even so, most of Houston’s heavy hitter development companies agree that it’s only a matter of time before Fort Bend County becomes inextricably bound to Houston’s westward growth.
Fort Bend was the third fastest growing U.S. county from 1980 to 1983, with a 30 percent burst in population, according to a Dun & Bradstreet Corp. study. Montgomery County just north of Houston was No. 1 with a 50 percent increase.
If one of several regional airport plans pans out, Fort Bend County may have a regional airport. Also, if a 160mile loop around Houston, dubbed the Grand Parkway, is built, the county’s tie to Houston would be complete.
Home builders such as General Homes and Hines Development Co.’s Sugarland Properties Inc. have been thriving in Fort Bend County subdivisions for years. But it was the Cinco Ranch deal earlier this year that spurred the land rush from a canter to gallop.
At more than $15,000 an acre, a partnership of the Mischer Corp., U.S. Home Corp. and American General Corp. invested $83 million in eight square miles of open ranch land about 24 miles out Westheimer from the Galleria.
New developments in the area include:
• J.B. Land Co. in a partnership with United Financial Corp. has begun construction on Weston Lakes, a 1,400-acre residential community. Lots will be a half acre to two acres.
• The Cinco Ranch partnership is finishing plans to develop half the tract into a 2,400-acre housing community. A deal is in the works to sell about 750 acres of that to a group of two local savings and loans and an oil company for commercial development.
• Texas Southwest Development Corp. has begun construction on Briarcroft, a 355-acre mixed-use community that will include 1,500 homes, office and commercial development and a townhome project. Texas Southwest bought the development site for $5.3 million or about $15,000 an acre. Home prices will average $75,000.
Fort Bend residents have seen land booms before — and seen them fizzle. In the early 1970s, land speculators bought land in the area with light down payments and let several deals go bad, a debacle that made landowners skittish for years, said Ross McDade, a sales associate with Houston’s Benton/Gould Properties Inc. who specializes in Fort Bend County.
Today, the bloom has returned to the Brazos. For land in the best locations, values have tripled in the last few years, says Susan Menke. The 32-year-old broker has closed $60 million worth of raw land deals this year in the Fort Bend area through Susan Menke Real Estate.
Most Fort Bend County landowners, often second and third generation farmers who own their land outright, stay levelheaded about Houston’s rush for prime development land. Some farmers realize their land is worth millions, but prefer to sit tight.
“What would I do with all that money?” is a typical response, Menke said.
Nevertheless, the Cinco Ranch deal sent Fort Bend land values soaring. And thousands of acres have been sold since summer. A Houston real estate broker negotiated for two months recently for a 500acre tract the landowner was selling for $17,500 an acre. Just after the Cinco Ranch deal was announced in June, the landowner scrapped the deal at the suggestion of his banker and upped his price to $25,000 an acre.
One 110-acre site sold last month for $4.1 million, about $38,000 an acre. This month the owners are asking $6 million, or $55,000 an acre.
Brokers familiar with the area agree that some Fort Bend landowners have an exaggerated notion of what their land is worth. On the other hand, some developers are buying land for twice what others paid for it a year ago.
On the average, land values have appreciated about $2,000 to $2,500 an acre in the last year, McDade said.
“As soon as the oil industry turns around, this area is going to explode.” Menke said. “That’s what the developers are getting ready for.”
One of the Fort Bend hot spots is the booming residential area just south of Rosenberg and U.S. 59. At least 4,000 acres of prime development land are for sale in the area already dotted with subdivisions by many of Houston’s largest builders, McDade said.
Recent deals include a 700-acre tract which sold for $7,500 an acre and a 386-acre site purchased for $11,000 an acre. A Dallas developer bought a large tract for $8,500 an acre three months ago. An 81-acre tract within the Rosenberg city limits recently sold for $21,000 an acre.
Developers are gobbling up all the land they can get their hands on because, they say, land prices are still underpriced, making purchases a good long- or short-term investment.
“I can’t buy raw land for $15,000 an acre (in Dallas or Austin),” said Neil Freese, vice president with Texas Southwest Development Corp.
The hinterlands of Houston are still a bargain for developers because they have remained largely bedroom communities, Freese said. Outlying areas of Dallas have become self-contained communities by developing an identity and attracting industrial development for a solid job base. For this reason, land prices are higher.
“In Houston you don’t find that,” he said.
What you do find in Houston, and fairly commonly in Fort Bend County, is that oil company mineral rights that can be thorny problems for real estate developers. Developers have to make sure they can work out a deal with oil companies before building.
If developers don’t work out a legal arrangement ahead of time, oil companies could have the right to set up drilling rigs in someone’s backyard, said John Bonica, an attorney with the Dallas firm of Winstead, McGuire, Sechrest and Minick. Bonica specializes in mineral and surface rights work and represents several Houston developers involved in Fort Bend land deals. Oil companies can agree to drill on a slant outside a subdivision instead of setting up shop on a home owner’s driveway. Another solution is for developers to set aside land in a subdivision for drilling.