Sometimes I am way too impressionable for my own good. Current case in point: house buying. I know several people who are either house hunting or have recently moved, and it makes me want to buy a new house too, which — for the record — would obviously be silly. We have a perfectly lovely 5-year-old house that meets all of our needs and then some. But…new (to me) houses! I can’t help but look!
We’re right on the edge of Houston and currently live in a suburb, so there are a lot of varying options in the area depending on which suburb you choose. I’ve always said that my favorite neighborhood in the Clear Lake area is Nassau Bay. It’s one of the oldest in the area — which around here means it dates to the 1960s — and it reminds me so much of the Charlotte neighborhood I grew up in. The streets are wide, there’s not a lot of traffic, there are old, established trees and a nice neighborhood park. It’s within walking distance of a few restaurants and a Starbucks. On top of that, it’s right across the street from NASA so we could even theoretically walk or bike to work in nice weather.
Because the homes are older, we’d probably have to trade house price vs. renovation budget — in other words, we could buy an already-renovated house and pay more, or we could buy a cheaper house knowing we’d need to spend money updating things like kitchens and bathrooms.
There are a few other part of the area that I would consider as well, including Polly Ranch — a neighborhood with its own private runway! Living on the runway would basically be Jose’s dream house, as you can imagine. Runway houses don’t go up for sale very often, but there’s actually one available right now, and it’s even in our price range…if we were actually house hunting.
(It doesn’t have an airplane hanger, which is WHY it’s in our price range. But we don’t own a plane either, so no hanger isn’t an issue and wouldn’t be for quite a while…if ever.)
I’m pretty sure if we bought this house, we would basically live in the backyard; immediately behind the pool is the runway itself. Swimming and watching airplanes? Fun times.
Sometimes I realize that I’m becoming one of those people on HGTV that I always make fun of — the ones who have 1 or 2 kids yet somehow still think that 3,000 square feet of house isn’t enough. But oh the possibilities! We could live on a runway! I could have a craft room! We could have a media room! And yes, I realize the irony of saying two of those things when we have a bonus room that is largely unused right now.
So yeah. We’re not currently looking for a new house or intending to move, but it sure is fun to browse!
The other option with living on the Runway and not having a Hangar is perhaps you could enter into a rental agreement with someone else on the runway to store your airplane in their hangar – most houses have hangars suited to 3+ planes. The airport has a rule that only residents and their guests can operate in and out of the field, so you’d be a resident by virtue of having the house, so its no issue to rent hangar space. Several of the people that live there with hangars don’t even own planes! As you can tell Byron and I have talked about this neighborhood at length. That said, we’d only consider a house with a hangar. Hangar rent in Houston is a ridiculous $400/month for a single plane (that’s the same price as Santa Barbara!) so from our perspective, that makes a hangar worth a minimum of about $50k extra in home price. Plus the luxury of having a plane in your backyard.
Also love the blue house in the right hand side picture.
Are there health concerns living next to a runway? Would the noise be annoying?
That is a nice-looking pool and backyard.
It’s a short, small runway, only usable by small private planes. There would certainly be some noise, and I don’t have a feel for how many takeoffs/landings they actually see on an average day, but I doubt it would be a significant factor.
I suppose there is risk of say, a plane crashing into your house, but other than that I can’t imagine any health concerns.
They did have an experimental in that neighborhood crash into a neighbors peach tree :).
They are really good about being “polite” about night time take offs and landings to a minimum. During the day small airplane noise should be considered charming not an annoyance if you are going to live there…
We love Nassau Bay too, but right now insurance won’t cover any new policies in there. So we’re looking into Brook Forest, etc.
Ah yes, I forgot to mention that potential flooding is the big downside to Nassau Bay. I didn’t realize you couldn’t get insurance there right now. How is anyone managing to sell their house there then, if no one can buy??
Gavin what is the insurance situation in Nassau Bay? Is it National Flood Insurance that has gotten too expensive? Or is that you can’t get private Windstorm and Hail but they don’t qualify for Texas Windstorm and Hail?
Jen told me, and since we’re not looking there any more I promptly forgot. Have to check with her.