Fort Worth’s first luxury condo project might be the one thing that’s not bigger in Texas.
Though the three-story block of residences has only seven units, it’s noteworthy for Fort Worth — the initial attempt at what condo boosters hope is a trend.
The condo units that rose on the northern edge of the Bowie House Hotel property are being completed one by one, on full display for the hotel’s pool deck sunbathers. The project, called the Seven at Bowie House, is a brainchild of Jo Ellard, the cutting horse hall of famer who developed the Auberge Resorts Collection hotel.
Ellard is also the guinea pig. She razed her cabin on the property to build the hotel; when she’s not at her home in North Dallas or at a ranch, she’s living part-time in one of the condos, too. Even though she lives alone, spending time at the condo leaves one feeling “like you’re part of a community,” she said.
“Just that little bit of sound, of voices,” she said, standing on the spacious third-floor balcony that serves as an extension of her living space and overlooks the hotel’s pool deck. “You just are never alone.”
More practically, she realized the lifestyle gives homeowners a chance to have luxury but also “zero maintenance.”
And the luxury is going on thick. Residents get an “arrival concierge” who curates their comings and goings; the adjacent hotel amenities, like the pool and spa, are part of the package.
It comes at a price. Ellard is selling the condos for $2,000 per square foot, adding up to about $6 million.
But Ellard isn’t just building a few fancy units. She and a handful of developers throughout the state are trying to lay the bricks for Texas’ fledgling high-end condo market — figuring out financing, overcoming financial and legal obstacles and lobbying for better tax treatment. Beyond the Seven at Bowie House, there are very few luxury condo projects in the pipeline in the Lone Star State. Douglas Elliman is tracking 45 condo projects that are in sales, under construction or have been proposed in Texas, but only nine are projects associated with the flag of a high-end brand — a signifier of a luxury project, albeit not an exclusive one.
In a place where high-end homes are usually built on sprawling ranches, condos have long been overlooked, leaving these developers to their own devices when it comes to critical aspects of successful development like finding comps and getting financing.
As a result, Texas’ condo pipeline can be a long one. Four Seasons Lake Austin was announced more than three years ago, and the $1 billion ultra-luxe project packed with plans for bountiful amenities has yet to go vertical.
Still, the champions of Texas’ very green market are going big as they bet on the asset class by appealing to potential buyers’ outsize expectations for luxury living.
The Texas condo buyer
Condo markets in Texas’ major metros are like baby siblings of the mature markets — South Florida, Chicago and New York.
The major Texas metros each have a few condo buildings, but the single-family home reigns in a state where bigger is better.
That’s not radically changing any time soon, either.
To put it in perspective, Broward County, which has long trailed Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties in South Florida condo development, has 25 condo projects in development, at least nine of which are branded developments.
But the admittedly few projects are adding a new option for Texas homebuyers: living in luxury, in an apartment you own. Some Texans can get on board with that, the believers predict.
“Just that little bit of sound, of voices. You just are never alone.”
“The potential owner would be someone who wanted to downsize but didn’t want to give up the luxury they’re accustomed to,” Ellard said.
Houston’s most anticipated condo projects are going up in the city’s high-end neighborhoods, like River Oaks, so this resident type wouldn’t even have to leave their comfort zone. Bowie House offers the same; the condos back up to the North Hi Mount neighborhood, adjacent to the River Crest Country Club.
Bowie House’s proximity to Dickies Arena, which hosts the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, is a boon for Ellard’s peers in the equestrian world, people who might have both the ranch and the condo pied-à-terre.
“They usually have ranches somewhere, but we have so many events here, and they’re in and out, in and out,” she said.
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that condo sizes in Texas are larger on average than units in other cities.
Austin is the exception, since the city’s many transplants from New York are familiar with vertical living, Douglas Elliman’s Ben Watson said. There’s plenty of demand for studios and one-bedroom condos. These units made up 40 percent of the Bat City condo sales Douglas Elliman tracked last year.
Texans’ preference for more space is more enduring in a market like Houston, where 10 percent of units sold last year had only one bedroom.
Luxury appetite
Texas’ lack of a mature condo market isn’t rooted in a lack of taste for luxury.
The state saw a 10 percent jump in million-dollar homes sold in the last year, according to a report from Texas Realtors. Dallas-Fort Worth led the pack, accounting for nearly four in 10 million-dollar homes sold in the state. Meanwhile, the average price of these homes increased, too, from $409 to $418 per square foot.
“It’s not that Texas doesn’t have the wealth,” Watson said.
So, where are the Lone Star State’s luxury condos?
The answer is, in part, a legal one, said DC Partners’ Roberto Contreras IV. The Houston-based firm is the developer behind the Allen, a 99-unit condo building that opened in February 2024.
The country’s most popular condo markets are ones that allow developers to supplement their capital stacks with deposits on condo pre-sales. Some developers use deposits to finance up to 30 percent of construction costs, Contreras said.
Texas is one of a handful of states that doesn’t allow developers to use these deposits until after a condo project is complete.
“What that means, though, is that you have to come up with significantly more equity to get a deal done,” he said.
Getting construction financing for condo projects is hard enough, he said. Banks see condo projects as riskier than multifamily projects, since the latter have one owner and are much easier to liquidate.
The cost of the brand
The projects on the way are taking cues from more developed markets.
The vast majority of the projects in development in Texas are sponsored by a luxury hospitality brand like the Ritz-Carlton coming to the Woodlands or Ellard’s Bowie House.
The branded condo is a massively successful product in South Florida with developers in Miami and West Palm Beach creating projects sponsored by top fashion labels and luxury car companies.
The audiences for these high-end branded condo units have standards, of course. People who purchase a Ritz-Carlton condo expect to buy Ritz-level luxury, and they’ll pay for it. A condo at a branded residence can cost up to 30 percent more than an equivalent non-branded unit.
Yet in Texas, a lack of comps makes condos, luxury or not, almost impossible to price.
A lot of legwork goes into the process used by Douglas Elliman’s consulting arm to peg the nearly non-existent market. They advise developers based on single-family transactions and property tax appraisals.
Winning
In the early planning stages, Ellard wanted to build 11 condos at Bowie House.
She later reduced the number to seven, because “they weren’t special enough.” She knew if she was going to sell condos for $6 million in Fort Worth, they’d have to be perfect.
The Texas condo market may be new, but its buyers are not less sophisticated in their expectations for luxury. Translation: condo developers have to aim high, and there’s almost no room for error. For Ellard, perfection meant cutting a hole in her condo’s elevator shaft to carry intact mahogany beams up to the third floor for the ceiling.
In a state where financing is one of the biggest obstacles for development, filling a condo project is a far less pressing concern than delivering it.
The Seven at Bowie House aren’t all complete, but two are already occupied. Ellard is so sure there are one-of-a-kind buyers for these one-of-a-kind condos that they’re not advertised using traditional methods.
“Interested folks have to go looking for it,” she said.
