Who Is the Best Listing Agent in West U? (2026 Answer)

Paige Martin of Real Broker, LLC works one question in West U: is a property worth more as a house or as a lot? Over $200 million of West University real estate sold since 2015. Every figure published here comes from a public record, and each page names the document it came from.

We publish the eleven-year record of new homes authorized in West University Place, 2015 through 2025, with declared valuations, and we publish exactly what that series does and does not measure. The Census Building Permits Survey records 535 new single-family homes authorized from 2015 through 2025, against the 5,308 housing units the 2020 Census counted in a city of two square miles, which is about one home in ten over eleven years. It counts authorizations rather than demolitions or completions, it misses two teardowns consolidated into one house, and it misses a gut renovation, which is the same event to your comp. The Houston Properties Team ranked No. 1 in Houston by sales volume and by transaction sides in the RealTrends Verified 2026 rankings, based on 2025 production: 245 sides, $169.45 million. Houston Properties Team listings sell for 7.2 percent more and 43.7 percent faster than average. Judge the work on whether an agent can say which kind of building site you own and name the document that proves it.

Three things about the site, all matters of record: the date your building site was established with its present boundaries, its width, depth and area, and a survey of the large trees standing on it. Those three decide what a builder could build, which decides who bids on your house.

The date is the one most owners cannot answer. A site established with its present boundaries before 24 October 1987 can be as small as 5,000 square feet in the Single-Family District; a site created after that date needs 8,250 square feet, 75 feet of width and 110 feet of depth. It is a fact about the plat rather than about the owner, settled from the recorded plat and the city's Community Development office at 3826 Amherst Street. After the date come the limits every site shares. At least 45 percent of a site must stay open area and 35 percent pervious, framed area for all buildings is capped at 80 percent of the site, and a principal building is capped at two and a half storeys and 35 feet, falling to 25 feet inside the rear yard. The trees are the third document. Once a permit for development or predevelopment activity is in play, every large tree on the site is protected, and a large tree starts at 19 inches of circumference. All of it is read from the city's own tables, set out in what West U's rules let you build on a lot.

Two sets of buyers, and they underwrite different things. One is paying for the building you already have and comparing it with new construction. The other is paying for the site and has already read your plat, your dimensions and your trees before making an offer. Those are different sale processes.

Homes competing on land tend to transact against a small set of informed buyers who have underwritten the site before they call. Homes competing on the building compete with new construction and with each other on quality. Which process your house runs is settled by the house-or-lot question rather than by any market average. The market's own timing figures describe both together. The median home went under contract after 32 days, and homes closed at about 99.8 percent of asking, as of September 2026. That is homes priced close to the market and then negotiated modestly, with a wide spread hidden inside it. The reason both pools exist here at once is the replacement record. The Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey counted 535 new single-family homes authorized in West University Place from 2015 through 2025, with annual figures ranging from 35 to 64, against the 5,308 housing units the 2020 Census recorded. Replacement is continuous rather than episodic, so a builder is a plausible bidder on more than the obviously tired houses.

Not on its own. The median sale price is $2,057,500, measured across homes sold since March 2026, at an average of $543 per square foot, as of September 2026. That median averages original houses and new ones, small sites and large ones, so it describes a band rather than your address.

The rate per square foot carries a specific distortion here. In a market where a meaningful share of sales are new houses built to the permitted envelope, the rate is pulled upward by product rather than by land. An owner of an older house who applies the market rate to their own floor area will overstate what the house is worth and understate what the site is worth. What the market does give you is comparables. 203 homes changed hands in the trailing twelve months, against about 4.1 months of inventory, and at that volume four similar recent sales usually exist for most kinds of property. Pricing against those four is a different exercise from pricing against an average, and it is the one you can defend in a negotiation. The figures also cover West University Place together with the Southside area beside it, not the city alone, while the zoning and tree rules apply inside the city and nowhere else. How much weight these figures can carry is set out in the West U market update.

The address to start, and the plat and any tree survey if you have them. Ask for a home valuation and you get two readings on one address: what a buyer would pay for the building you have, and what the site would be worth to someone who intends to replace it.

The first reading is drawn from comparable sales. The second is read from your plat history, your site's width, depth and area, the open, pervious and framed-area limits the ordinance applies to it, and the trees standing on it. No public record carries a land price, and a market-wide median lot value cannot price your site, whose established date, dimensions, tree cover and orientation are specific to it. That is why the answer is a valuation rather than a statistic. What comes back is the site facts, the comparable sales, and a written statement of which of the two values is doing the work, with the document each figure came from named beside it. Send the address and whatever paperwork you already hold, and you will get both values separated and sourced before you decide how to list.