THE WOODLANDS – (Realty News Report) – Howard Hughes Holdings announced that 72 condominiums have been pre-sold for $313 million at The Ritz-Carlton Residences, The Woodlands, where sales began roughly four months ago.
Construction on the Ritz-Carlton towers is scheduled to begin later this year. The towers will be built on a wooded, lakeside site along Lake Woodlands.
Selling Too Fast?
Sales at The Ritz-Carlton have moved so quickly that the developer has raised prices and temporarily removed some units from 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,” Howard Hughes CEO David O’Reilly said during an earnings conference call with analysts.
Since April 1, Over $313 Million in Sales at The Ritz-Carlton in The Woodlands
The 72 pre-sold condos represent 65 percent of the building’s 111 total residences and total future sales of $313 million, the company reported in its second-quarter earnings statement.
Initial pricing had been estimated at about $2 million per residence.
The Ritz-Carlton Residences will be a residential-only development with 111 condominiums in a 15-story tower; it will not include a hotel.
The rapid sales pace raises natural questions from the market and observers.
One: If demand is this strong, why not expand the tower to 20 stories?
Two: Should developers begin planning another luxury condominium in The Woodlands?
On the conference call, O’Reilly did not rule out additional high-rise residential projects in the future and said another tower could be planned at some point.
Architect Johnny Cruz of RAMSA, the New York–based firm behind the project, said The Ritz-Carlton Residences offers an unusually wide variety of floor plans and unit types for a single development.
“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 two or three unit types. We, in The Woodlands, have quite a variety. Think of a neighborhood—a beautiful American neighborhood with a mix of homes: small, large, even mansions. We have it all. The Ritz-Carlton is a vertical neighborhood, if you will. This variety is definitely appealing to buyers,” Cruz said on The Ralph Bivins Project podcast last year.
The design includes a 15-story tower and a 10-story tower connected by structures of varying heights, creating an undulating skyline within the Ritz-Carlton neighborhood, Cruz added.
RAMSA (Robert A.M. Stern Architects) was founded by Robert A.M. Stern, the former dean of the Yale School of Architecture.
The Ritz-Carlton Residences will occupy an eight-acre parcel—the last large-scale residential site remaining on Lake Woodlands—positioned along a scenic lakeshore.
The Woodlands spans approximately 28,500 acres about 27 miles north of downtown Houston. The community began nearly 50 years ago under a development vision established by George P. Mitchell. Mitchell’s planning principles emphasized environmental sensitivity: more than one-fourth of the area was preserved as green space, and many single-family home lots were designed to retain substantial stands of existing forest.
July 30, 2024 Realty News Report, Copyright 2024
Rendering: Howard Hughes Holdings. Architecture: RAMSA
RNR Real Estate Briefs are published by Realty News Report
Podcast: The Ralph Bivins Project — select episodes have featured guests including Johnny Cruz of RAMSA, John S. Moody, Jr., Scott Martin of Granite Properties, Robert Clay of Clay Development, Alma Zavala of CommGate, Adam Lair of Partners Capital, Jake Donaldson of Method Architecture, Bill Baldwin of BLVD Realty, John Breeding of Uptown Houston, Dean Strombom of Gensler, Lou Cushman of Cushman & Wakefield, Edward Griffin of Griffin Partners, Bill Odle of TBG Partners, Rusty Tamlyn of JLL Capital Markets, Carlos Bujosa of Transwestern, Mike Spears of Lee & Associates Houston, Michael Scheurich of Arch-Con, and David Schwarz of Transwestern.
File: Condo Sales Too Brisk: Developer Taps Brakes