There is a question we get from Heights homeowners more than almost any other: should I list now, or wait until the project down the street opens?
It is a fair question this year. A sizable adaptive-reuse development on Waverly Street — roughly 60,000 square feet of restored older buildings blended with new space — is working toward opening by the end of the year, with a mix of restaurant, coffee, wellness, fitness and office tenants reported as leasing progresses. Site work, utilities and building rehabilitation have been moving along, with landscaping and the greenspace near the trail rounding out the work.
The instinct to wait is understandable. It’s also usually incomplete.
The logic goes: once the project opens and the neighborhood gets its new anchor, buyers will pay more. Sometimes that is true. But there are three things that logic tends to leave out.
First, buyers price in announced projects earlier than sellers expect. Heights buyers are unusually well informed. Many of them have already walked the block, read the coverage and formed a view. A meaningful share of the “opening bump” is often already in the market before the doors open.
Second, waiting has a cost. Another six to nine months means another six to nine months of carrying costs, another tax year, and exposure to whatever rates and inventory look like then. Nationally, inventory has been building and homes have generally been taking longer to sell than during the rush years. That trend does not reverse on your schedule.
Third, construction phases and open phases market very differently. Right now, the story you tell a buyer is about what is coming. That is a genuine selling point — but only if your agent knows the project timeline well enough to speak to it credibly and can address the near-term realities of construction traffic and noise head-on rather than hoping nobody asks.
How we’d actually approach it
Start with your own numbers, not the neighborhood’s. Pull a real comparative analysis on your specific block and product type — a bungalow, a new-build single family and a townhome in the Heights are three separate markets with three separate buyer pools, and they respond differently to a nearby retail anchor.
Then look at your timeline honestly. If you need to move within the next year, the calculus is about presenting your home at its best in the current market, not about market-timing a project opening. If you are genuinely flexible, we can map out what the comparable data would need to show to make waiting worth it — and then actually track it with you.
Finally, get ahead of the questions. Buyers will ask about construction, parking and traffic. Prepared answers build trust. Silence invites discounting.
The Heights rewards sellers who know their specific corner of it. If you’d like a straight, no-obligation read on where your home sits — and whether timing around this project helps or hurts you — reach out and we’ll put the numbers together.
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The Audra O’Neal Team | ONTX Realty Partners
Call or Text: 281-972-8200
Email: ONealTeamRocks@gmail.com
Web: http://www.ONealTeamRocks.com
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