Live in Montrose

J. W. Link's Houston Land Corporation platted Montrose in 1911 as a streetcar suburb of four wide boulevards, and Link built his own house there. Deed restrictions kept shops out of parts of it until 1936; when they lapsed, businesses moved into the houses along Westheimer Road and Montrose Boulevard. This guide covers the City of Houston's Neartown - Montrose super neighborhood: about 2,096 acres from Buffalo Bayou to the Southwest Freeway and from Shepherd Drive to Taft and Bagby streets, where the 2020 census counted 33,282 residents, 14.9% more than on the same blocks in 2010. Wikipedia draws Montrose with the same streets but calls it 7.5 square miles, more than twice the City's polygon.

There is no zoning here, so what can go up next door depends on the block. Six small City historic districts, Courtland Place and Westmoreland among them, sit inside the line: about 168 acres, 8% of the area. Inside them, new building, demolition and exterior changes need a certificate of appropriateness from the City. Outside them, the only rules on use are the deed restrictions recorded for a subdivision, where any survive, which the City Attorney can enforce, and the City's rules on how land is subdivided. Where the 24-hour Disco Kroger stood until 2021, five floors of apartments over two of parking are due in late 2027.

Most people rent. In 2020 renters held 12,038 of the 18,965 occupied homes, 63%, and 2,293 more stood vacant. No price index follows the super neighborhood's line. Zillow's figure for ZIP code 77006, which holds half the residents, was $561,915 in August 2026, down 0.1% on the year; 77019 was $689,218 and 77098 $695,828. The Greater Houston median single-family sale was $330,000. On the 2025 rates the eight taxing units charge a homestead at the 77006 figure about $8,341 a year and the same home without the exemption about $11,942; the arithmetic is on the Houston page.

The management district is the unknown. The Montrose Management District covers about 85% of the area. It levied 12 cents per $100 on commercial property until lawsuits and a 2018 vote to dissolve left it dormant, and in 2024 it came back with a plan for 9 cents. Private homes are generally excluded, and so are apartment buildings of 25 units or fewer, but this guide could not confirm what the district levies for 2026. For a condominium, a townhouse on a shared lot or a house with a business in it, read the property's own appraisal district record.

The bayou is the flood line on the map, and not the only one. FEMA's effective map puts 4.4% of the area in the 1% annual chance zone, 2.3% of it regulatory floodway, but census blocks holding only 20 residents and 596 more in the 0.2% zone. About 83% of the area drains to Buffalo Bayou and the southern 17% to Brays Bayou, and the Flood Control District says a major flood occurs somewhere in Harris County about every two years and that everyone lives in a flood zone. No rail station is inside the line; the Red Line's Ensemble/HCC stop is about 1.3 km east in a straight line, and METRO's 82 and 56 buses run along Westheimer and Montrose Boulevard.