Luxury Urban Townhomes

The Texas real estate market suffered enormous losses in the late 1980s which spread to banks and S&Ls almost immediately, sparking what became known as the Savings & Loan crisis. No market segment was hit harder than suburban condominiums. Suburban condos had been so overbuilt that unsold bank-owned condos represented a 30-year supply. Losses from non-performing real estate loans were unsustainable and virtually every bank and S & L in Texas failed.

Control of the real estate market was ceded to the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), a US government entity that had become the largest owner of real estate and failed banks in Texas. The oversupply of suburban condos was not corrected as thousands of unfinished condos that had been built as part of a fraudulent appraisal over-valuation financing scheme sat on the market for years. It was more than a decade before buyers would again buy condominiums or banks would finance them.

Apart from condominiums, the Texas real estate market recovered from 1992-1994 and there was tremendous demand for high density, attached urban housing that offered fee-simple ownership. I secured political and ministerial approval from the city to use flag lots which enabled me to build single-family-attached townhomes on multifamily (MF-2) land in Dallas’ urban Oak Lawn Planned Development zoning district (PD-193). Ascot Court was the first townhouse project approved in Dallas using the creative new platting scheme.

I built Ascot Court entirely spec, successfully delivering urban townhomes with all of the advantages of single-family ownership, but with a density of 16.25 units per acre on relatively inexpensive land. They were traditional row-house style brick townhouses with units ranging from 1,727 to 2,233 square feet and prices of $150 to $160 per square foot 25 years ago.

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