The Envelope Please

I enjoy watching award shows for the entertainment industry, especially the Academy Awards. I must admit though that I often don’t understand how the voters distinguish between the different performances. I suppose you have to really be into movies to appreciate the subtle differences. Awards handed to Realtors on the other hand are much simpler as they are usually based on production volume statistics such as most sales. Just imagine if the Academy Awards were based on production volumes. John Wayne would have won the majority of Best Actor awards during his heyday as he was one of the most productive actors in movie history with 142 leading roles. But alas, the Academy Awards criteria for recognizing excellence is somewhat more complicated, so the Duke ended up with only one Oscar toward the end of his career. If Realtors’ work was as transparent for all to see as actors’ work is, the results might be interesting. And it certainly would be helpful to future buyers and sellers of real estate.

Well, I’ve really strayed from what I wanted to write about in this column. I actually did want to talk about awards, but not Realtor awards. I thought it would be interesting to give some awards to some of our local neighborhoods. So I asked my broker (who is also my husband) to do some statistical analysis on sales of single family residences in various neighborhoods in and around the Conroe and Lake Conroe area. I should note that this is not a complete list as the number of neighborhoods are simply too many and my broker has limited patience to satisfy my curiosity. But he did try to pick up many of the more popular neighborhoods and a mix of older and newer neighborhoods. And to get a meaningful sample, he selected data over the last 24 months and only included neighborhoods with at least 10 sales during that period.

There’s no opening song and dance number, so let’s get right to the awards. First up is the Mayflower Moving Van Award for the neighborhood with the most sales. By a landslide, it was Walden with 377 sales. April Sound and Bentwater get an honorable mention with around 200 sales each. Closer to Conroe, River Plantation and Graystone Hills came in neck and neck with 95 and 93 sales, respectively.

The Lamborghini Award is for the neighborhood in which homes sold the quickest. Pass the envelope please. The award goes to Panorama whose 58 sales had a median time on the market of only 52 days, a far cry from the worst in this category at 248 days. It shall go unnamed, but I will hand out the Yugo Award in a private ceremony.

The Porcelain Award is for the neighborhood whose sales reflect the highest median number of bathrooms. And we have a 4 way tie. Graystone Hills, Crighton Woods, Crighton Ridge and Bentwater all tied with 3 ½ baths. Now that’s a lot of porcelain.
The Yao Ming Award is for the largest home in our sample and goes to Crighton Ridge whose median sold home was 3,940 SF. It just barely overshadowed its cousin Crighton Woods by 36 SF. And as no surprise, it also won the Donald Trump Award for most expensive median home.

Finally, the Horizon Award is for the newest median home sold and is awarded to both Graystone Hills and Crighton Woods where the median home sold was built in 2008. The Heritage Award is for the oldest home sold and goes to Tanglewood whose median home sold was built in 1965.

This was all sort of silly and isn’t very meaningful. But with an abundance of real estate articles about market conditions, I just felt a need to do something different and perhaps get a chuckle or two. But what I personally gained from all this is that the Conroe and Lake Conroe area has a wide diversity of homes for sale. And like actors and Realtors, neighborhoods are all unique and have their own personality. We truly are very fortunate to live in such a wonderful and diverse area.