Low lot alert: Houston’s top 10 communities with the lowest lot supply

Houston’s residential real estate market is thriving, buoyed by new home construction in master-planned communities.

Master-planned communities hold about 30 percent of the market share of Houston’s new home construction, said David Jarvis, regional director of Houston-based Metrostudy.

However, many of the communities are short on lot supply and nearly sold out. In April, lot supply — months left if the community maintains its current rate of new home starts ­— dipped to 3.4 months, a 13-year low.
“Good quality (master-planned community) lots are in short supply, and competition for these lots is going to get more severe,” said Ali Ebrahimi, CEO of Houston-based Ersa Grae Corp.

Old-school factors such as proximity to work and respectability of school districts still matter just as much, but the difference is that corporations are moving to livable centers that feature a high quality of life, said Bill Odle, managing principal in Houston at TBG Partners, an Austin-based architecture firm.

Indeed, three major companies have expansions underway in Fort Bend County — Fluor Corp. (NYSE: FLR), Texas Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: TXN) and Nalco Co.

Looking forward, the planned Grand Parkway near the Katy area has concrete just poured and will likely bring development farther west, experts say.

Houston Business Journal’s Most Active Residential Communities list, ranked by the number of new homes started last year, published in its June 21 edition available to print and digital subscribers.

NOTE: Lot supply is listed in months per year and was calculated by Metrostudy using developed lot inventory divided by annual starts of the community. MetroStudy only included lots that are developed and ready for slab to be poured and did not include future lots, which may be in various stages of development — platted, excavation, utility installation.

Source: Houston Business Journal by Emily Wilkinson