Lennar launches its first community inside Houston's 610 Loop

National homebuilder launches its first community inside Houston’s 610 Loop

Lennar will be opening it’s first townhome community, Fulton Station’s Urban Villas, inside Houston’s 610 loop. Fulton station will be built just half a mile east of the Heights, giving its future homeowners an easy commute to downtown & the Galleria/Uptown area. Learn more about Fulton Station in this Biz Journal article by Jen Para.

The parent company of Houston-based Friendswood Development Co., which oversees more than 30 communities across greater Houston, is building its first residential community inside the 610 Loop.

Miami-based Lennar Corp. (NYSE: LEN) has begun preselling the 39 townhomes in Fulton Station, which will be built at Fulton and Cavalcade streets about 2.5 miles north of downtown and half a mile east of Interstate 45 near the Heights, according to a press release. The two-story homes are starting in the $349,000s and will range between roughly 1,400 square feet and 1,600 square feet.

The MetroRail Cavalcade Station, which services the Red Line, is across from the community on Fulton Street, and Lennar will construct a private, gated entrance to the station for residents.

According to records with the Harris County Appraisal District, Fulton Station will be built on a collection of land parcels acquired by Lennar Homes at the beginning of 2018. The records do not show former owners, square footages or appraised values. Houston Business Journal has reached out for more information.

Adjacent to the property is a 4,000-square-foot abandon-looking art studio at 226 Cavalcade St., according to Google Maps and Harris County Appraisal District records. That property has an appraised value of about $233,000.

Each townhome in Fulton Station will offer a private backyard and two-car garage. The residences will also feature Lennar’s Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ Home Designs, which include home automation with voice control over lights, locks and the thermostat. Two model homes are expected to be finished this summer.

HBJ first learned that Lennar was planning Fulton Station in April, just before Friendswood Development Co. held a grand opening for Neumann Oaks, a 22-townhome community on 2 acres off Lehman Street near the Garden Oaks-Oak Forest area. That community’s duplexes are priced between $333,990 and $343,990.

Both Fulton Station and Neumann Oaks are among the company’s “in-town” communities for the greater Houston area. It has a total of seven of such communities, according to its website.

Friendswood Development Co. recently announced that it is launching a new 514-acre master-planned community called Baytown Crossings in Baytown’s extraterritorial jurisdiction. The first homesites are expected to be available for builders in early 2019, and the community’s grand opening is planned for summer 2019.

In 1963, Friendswood Development launched Clear Lake City, the first master-planned community in the Houston area. The developer has since built several major communities — including Fairfield in northwest Houston, Friendswood in the south and Kingwood in the northeast.

Currently, the company is the fourth-largest developer of master-planned communities in the Houston area, based on its 5,200 local acres owned as of last fall, and developed 1,732 lots locally between October 2016 and September 2017.

In October, Lennar announced it would merge with Arlington, Virginia-based CalAtlantic Group Inc. in a deal valued at $9.3 billion, including the assumption of $3.6 billion of net debt. The merger closed in February, making Lennar the nation’s largest homebuilder, according to sister paper South Florida Business Journal.

Anna Young