While developers look further and further north in Collin and Denton counties to build new homes, this week’s High Caliber Home of the Week, sponsored by Lisa Peters of Caliber Home Loans, is a great reminder of what opportunity lies just south of Dallas. Enter this gorgeous, brand-new builder’s own custom home located in scenic Cedar Hill, listed by Rob Elmore of Dave Perry-Miller Real Estate.
The grand, four-bedroom 5,323-square-foot home was built by Les Meredith of Meredith Investment Properties to be his family’s own home. Of course, life happens, and plans changed for the Meredith family so they ended up listing the 2022-completed home for sale. Thankfully, the builder’s taste was exquisite and it flew off the market in 18 days.
“We had three open houses for the home and each one was well-attended with I’d say 25 people or so at each one,” Elmore says. “This was a home that the builder did for himself, so all the extra detail and quality is there.”
There are sexy details like the glass-walled office with custom-built desk and a wow-worthy wall of shelves cabinets, and drawers in a yummy gray tone.
Elmore says one open house-goer asked why the office had a lock on it. “I said the builder had young children and that pretty much explained it all.”
(Surely you remember those early pandemic days when your 5th grader wandered onto your conference calls because the laptop he called school was acting weird, right?)
Then there are seemingly mundane details like the 5/8-inch fire-rated sheetrock that Meredith used. But those are the details you get when a builder is building for himself.
Builders typically use 1/2-inch sheetrock for a home’s walls and reserve 5/8-inch fire-rated sheetrock for ceilings because it’s mandated by most building codes. Meredith used 5/8 throughout the house and put extra foam insulation between the rooms to ensure it’s both nice and quiet, and well-insulated against energy loss.
The open floorplan home features a kitchen, living room, and dining room that blend together with soaring 24-foot ceilings and a wall of windows that look out onto the huge backyard and basketball court. The modern kitchen features a Zline eight-burner gas range, a built-in double Fisher & Paykel refrigerator, two islands, and a walk-in pantry with a glass door. (Love that idea!)
Then we come to the owner’s suite. Oh, the owner’s suite with its nearly panoramic windows to mature treescapes and the most elaborate coffered ceiling we’ve seen. The primary has an elegant ensuite bath featuring a double shower, heated towel bars, a garden tub, a huge custom closet, and vanity with a backlit mirror.
The home is located on a cul-de-sac in the prestigious Lake Ridge, a master-planned community of neighborhoods with two neighborhood parks and an award-winning community park.
Cedar Hill is perched atop one of the highest elevations in North Texas, offering panoramic vistas of Joe Pool Lake. The city is historically naturally dense in trees, which I know sounds like gibberish. But it means that home lots like this one already have tall mature trees across the landscape. Whereas plains like Frisco, Celina, and Prosper were former farmlands, so builders have to plant trees from scratch.
Here the hills are full of Cedars.
