Historic local family sells 95 acres for residential development in Montgomery County

 

Houston homebuilder Long Lake Ltd., through its development arm, Woodmere Development Co., has acquired 95 acres in Montgomery County for a residential community.

The land is located near state Highway 249, northwest of Tomball at 26119 Decker Prairie-Rosehill Road. The triangular piece of land stretches from the intersections of Decker Prairie-Rosehill and Schiel roads to Decker Prairie Road in the north.

No details were available for the planned community, and Woodmere President Richard Rue did not respond to a text and voicemail seeking comment.

Houston-based MLB Commercial Real Estate represented the sellers, members of the Brautigam family, who each owned a different tract of the total 95 acres. The family has a long history in the area.

They decided to sell the land for “greener pastures,” said Tommy LeBlanc, partner at MLB CRE, which is an affiliate of MLB Capital Partners.

MLB Capital Partners owns the Houston Farmers Market property at 2025 Airline Drive as well as the Houston Design Center at 7026 Old Katy Road, where its headquarters is located, among other sites.

MLB CRE took on the property listing in February and closed the deal at the end of October, LeBlanc said.

It was one of the first listings for LeBlanc and John-Michael Kamel. Both left Avison Young early this year to join MLB, together with Thomas Monaghan, Blake Steele and Elizabeth Riley. The move occurred for “a variety of reasons,” LeBlanc said, adding that he is good friends with MLB founders Todd Mason and Jeff Lindenberger.

“I think they offer a platform to not only do brokerage but investment and development,” LeBlanc said. “And I just felt like it was an opportunity to grow our land team here.”

Mason and Lindenberger sold their brokerage operation Mason Partners to Avison Young in 2012 but maintained separate ownership in MLB Capital Partners, according to MLB’s website.

The brokerage team was introduced to the Brautigam family through a previous client, LeBlanc said. MLB CRE marketed the land as a development opportunity in an urban infill location outside of any cities and municipal development restrictions.

The land is near Decker Prairie Elementary School in the Tomball Independent School District and surrounded by scattered homes. To the south are Pulte Homes’ Rosehill Lake and Centex Homes’ Decker Farms communities.

It’s also one of the largest continuous tracts in the area, LeBlanc said.

“That’s kind of the challenge with this particular market area; … you’ve got a lot of previously developed neighborhoods, estate-lot developed neighborhoods,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot of large contiguous-acreage tracts that are available to be developed.”

MLB is marketing tracts for development across all Houston-area counties, with homebuilders and residential developers making up the largest share of land buyers in the past three to four years, LeBlanc said.

Long Lake builds in 25 Houston-area communities, according to its website. It ranked No. 8 on the Houston Business Journal’s 2024 Largest Houston-Area Homebuilders List, based on its 1,075 new home closings from the fourth quarter of 2023 through Q3 2024.

In northwest Houston outside the Grand Parkway, Woodmere Development Co. communities include a 270-acre single-family development inside Wolff Cos.’ mixed-use community Beacon Hill on Highway 290 outside Waller as well as Morton Creek Ranch along Morton Road just west of the Grand Parkway.

Two years ago, Woodmere/Long Lake acquired 494 acres across the road from Bridgeland’s western edge in the Cypress area to develop a residential community there.

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