Hey Westoplexians,
We asked for rain all summer. We did not specify a delivery schedule. So the sky sent the whole order on one Thursday morning, right at rush hour, and now half of us are standing in the yard looking at our gutters like they owe us money.
It was that kind of week all the way around. Something old in the Stockyards went quiet, something old on the west side is about to wake back up, and the housing numbers are saying two different things at once.
Here's what caught my eye this week.
-josh
🌧️ DFW Got More Rain on Thursday Than in July, August and September Combined
That's not me exaggerating for effect. That's the actual math from CBS Texas. Most of the Metroplex picked up more than 4 inches, some spots closer to 6, and Thursday went down as the ninth-wettest October day DFW has ever recorded. The whole thing was the leftovers of Hurricane Polo wandering up through Mexico.
The city knew it was coming. Fort Worth put out free sandbags Wednesday morning, 750 at each of two sites, planned to run until 5:30 p.m. Five hundred per site were gone in the first hour. They shut it down around 9:30. By Thursday morning more than 8,600 Oncor customers in Tarrant County were in the dark and DFW Airport had canceled over 300 flights.
Out west, the Ross Fire burn scar in Palo Pinto County took 1 to 3 inches in a single hour. A month ago we were watching that same ground burn.
If you drive I-30 at Hulen or cut through West 7th, you already know those are the spots that go under first. The city keeps a live map of its flood warning flashers, and it's worth a bookmark before the next round.
⭐ The Neon Went Dark at the Star Café
One of the oldest restaurants in the Stockyards appears to be done. Staff posted this week that it was the Star Café's last day, and Chef Victor Villarreal shared a video of the neon "open" sign switching off.
The place goes back to the 1930s, when it opened as Edna's Star Café. It wore a few names after that, including a run as one of the original Black-eyed Pea restaurants in 1979. Betty and Don Boles bought it in 1980, put the Star name back on the door, and ran it for more than forty years before selling in 2022. It changed hands again in 2024. The current owner hasn't said anything publicly.
So there's no official word, no explanation, and no plan. Just a dark sign on Exchange. The Stockyards has added a lot of shiny new things in the last few years, and I'm glad for most of them. But the new stuff only works because the old stuff is standing next to it.
Maybe somebody picks it up. I hope so. There’s more news like this going down in the Stockyards that I’m working on stories for… seems like the local mom & pop’s are being pushed out for more national brands.
I’m going to break protocol here and give my personal opinion: I think that is exactly what the historic Stockyards DOESN’T need. “Don’t Dallas my Fort Worth”, we’re not trying to be Nashville, all the sayings… We are Fort Worth and we need to protect that.
🛒 Roy Pope Is Coming Back, Just Not as a Grocery Store
Now for the other side of that coin. City Council signed off on a restaurant at the old Roy Pope Grocery on Merrick Street, just off Camp Bowie. The grocery closed May 31 after 83 years. Westland Hospitality, the group behind Margie's, JD's Hamburgers, Pulido's and Curly's, took over the lease the very next day.
The plan is a Southern coastal menu, lunch and dinner, with a bar, in the same 7,218-square-foot building Roy and Rose Pope opened in 1943. The name stays. Not everybody on the block was thrilled, and the worry was parking, which is a fair worry on Merrick. Westland sat down with the West Byers neighborhood association to work through it, and council approved it anyway.
Here's the detail I love. Westland's managing partner, Bourke Harvey, sacked groceries at Roy Pope as a teenager. And Roy Pope himself once went in with a fellow grocer named Charles Kincaid on a second store down Camp Bowie. You know that one. It sells hamburgers now.
So a west side grocery turning into a west side restaurant isn't exactly breaking tradition. It might be the tradition.
🏠 Fort Worth Has Nearly Two Sellers for Every Buyer. Rates Just Hit 7.28%.
Two numbers landed this week and they're pulling in opposite directions.
First one: Redfin counted about 12,556 home sellers in the Fort Worth market in August and about 6,704 buyers. That's 87% more sellers than buyers, one of the widest gaps in the country. The median Fort Worth sale price was $348,772, down 2.6% from a year ago, and 73% of homes sold for less than their original asking price.
Second one: the average 30-year mortgage rate jumped a quarter point in a single week to 7.28%, according to Realtor.com. That's a three-year high.
So buyers have more room to negotiate than they've had in over a decade, and the money to do it with just got more expensive. Both of those are true at the same time. Nationally, about one in five listings took a price cut in September, the most for any September since 2018.
Here's where I land. This isn't a crash and it isn't a bargain bin. It's a slow, picky market where the house that's priced right and in good shape still sells, and the one that isn't just sits there. Which is how it's supposed to work, if we're being fair about it.
🔦 Your House Just Went From Bone Dry to Soaked. Go Take a Walk Around It.
A month ago I told you to water your foundation. Then the sky did it for everybody, all at once, which is not how that's supposed to go.
Our clay soil shrinks when it's dry and swells when it's wet. After a summer like this one, it had pulled back from a lot of slabs and left gaps. Then it took on several inches of water in a morning. That fast swing is what's hard on a house, more than the drought or the rain by themselves.
So while the ground is still wet, do a ten-minute lap:
Gutters and downspouts. Three months of dust and leaves, then a flood. If water poured over the edge instead of out the spout, they're clogged. Downspouts should dump at least 4 to 6 feet away from the house.
Standing water. Anywhere it's pooling against the slab, the ground is sloping the wrong way. A few bags of soil to tilt it back is a cheap Saturday fix.
Ceilings and the attic. A dry summer hides a leaky roof. Look for fresh stains now, while they're easy to trace.
Doors and cracks. A door that suddenly sticks or a new hairline crack isn't a reason to panic. Take a photo with the date on it and check again in a few weeks.
Most of what you find will be small. Small is the whole point. It's a lot easier to deal with in October than in the spring when it's not small anymore.
Anyway, that's my lap done. My gutters failed the test.
💡 Tuesday Night, Turn the Porch Light On
National Night Out is Tuesday, October 6, from 6 to 9 p.m. The rest of the country does this in August. Texas moved it to October because nobody wants to stand in the street meeting the neighbors when it's 104.
The idea is simple. Come outside, say hello, find out who lives three doors down. In Fort Worth you don't even need a permit to throw a block party that night, as long as it's inside those hours. Weatherford's police and fire departments are hosting their own, with a "You've Got a Friend in Me" theme.
After a week where a lot of us were texting the neighbors to ask if their street was flooded too, the timing feels about right.
Before You Go
"Into each life some rain must fall." That's Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from a poem called "The Rainy Day," written in 1842. People usually quote it like it's bad news.
I read it the other way this week. The ground needed it. Go check your gutters, eat somewhere old while it's still open, and say hi to your neighbors on Tuesday.
That's the week in Fort Worth. As always, if you have questions about the market, want a free home value estimate, or just want to know what's happening in your neighborhood - I'm one reply away.
See you next week,
Josh Harville
Real Estate Professional | Fathom Realty, LLC | SA-0682306 Westoplex Region: Fort Worth · Aledo · Weatherford · Benbrook & surrounding communities
📞 817-917-8923
✉️ [email protected]
🌐 http://joshuaharville.fathomrealty.com/
Instagram: @Westoplex_Harville
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