Condo Sales Too Brisk: Developer Taps Brakes

THE WOODLANDS – (Realty News Report) – Howard Hughes Holdings reports 72 condos have been pre-sold for $313 million at the Ritz-Carlton Residences, The Woodlands, where sales began about four months ago.

Construction will begin later this on the Ritz-Carlton towers, which will rise on a wooded site on the shores of Lake Woodlands.

Selling Too Fast?

Surging from the starting gate, Ritz-Carlton sales have been so strong, the developer has increased condo prices and has even taken units off the market to preserve inventory until the building is complete.

“We’ve increased prices pretty dramatically in an effort to – honestly – slow sales until we finish the building and can show off the quality of what we’ve built. We think that the pricing will go higher at that point in time. Despite the efforts of increasing pricing and listing only a few units, the team is still selling units,” said Howard Hughes CEO David O’Reilly in an earnings conference call with analysts.

Since April 1, Over $313 Million in Sales at Ritz-Carlton in The Woodlands

The 72 pre-sold condos (65 percent of total units) represent future revenue of $313 million, Howard Hughes said in its second quarter earnings report.

Initial pricing was estimated at $2 million per residence.

The 15-story Ritz-Carlton development, which will not include a hotel, will have 111 condominiums.

Of course, the rapid condo sales pace raises questions.

One: If the 15-story tower is selling that fast, why not make it a 20-story building?

Two: Isn’t it time to start planning another new high-end condominium in The Woodlands?

In the recent analysts call, O’Reilly did not rule out the eventual possibility of additional residential high-rise projects and “perhaps” another tower could be planned someday.

An extraordinarily wide variety of units are available The Ritz-Carlton Residences in The Woodlands, said architect Johnny Cruz of RAMSA, which designed the Ritz-Carlton.

“In this project we have 111 units and 36-unit types. That’s quite a bit. Any typical condominium project is essentially a box going straight up, and may offer of two or three unit-types. We (in The Woodlands) have quite a variety. Think of a neighborhood, a beautiful neighborhood in America with a variety of homes – small, large, mansions. We have it all. The Ritz-Carlton a vertical neighborhood, if you will. This variety is definitely appealing to buyers,” Cruz said in The Ralph Bivins Project podcast last year.

The condominium development will have 15-story and 10-story tower connected by structure of varying heights to display an undulation in the Ritz-Carlton neighborhood skyline, Cruz said.

The New York-based RAMSA architecture firm was founded by Robert A.M. Stern, the former dean of the Yale School of Architecture.

The Ritz-Carlton will rise on an 8-acre site, located on the last available large-scale residential site on Lake Woodlands.

The Woodlands, which covers 28,500 acres about 27 miles north of downtown Houston, began some 50 years ago under a vision articulated by George Phydias Mitchell, the father of the hydraulic fracturing techniques of oil and gas exploration. Mitchell’s environmentally sensitive development guidelines for The Woodlands required that over one-fourth of the greenspace as retained and lawns of single-family homes retained sizable chunks of untouched forest.

Rendering: Howard Hughes Holdings. Architecture: RAMSA

RNR Real Estate Briefs are published by Realty News Report

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