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Hillwood Plans $1.2 Billion Community Near Pilot Point

DFW: Hillwood is planning to expand its residential footprint in North Texas. The prolific commercial and residential developer has purchased more than 600 acres near Pilot Point in Denton County for a planned $1.2 billion, master-planned community that will include 2,000 homes. The Lantern will be located off of FM 1385 and Friendship Road and could eventually be annexed into Pilot Point. The Lantern development will have homes ranging from $350,000 to $600,000 and will include single-family homes, multifamily homes, retail and restaurant spaces, green spaces, parks and trails and perhaps an elementary school. Hillwood is no stranger to master-planned communities in Denton County. This will be its sixth development in the county and the third with the McCutchin family, which has roots in ranching and energy. Hillwood officials said the company would wait until at least 2027 before it begins work on the Lantern development to allow for current new-home construction inventory to stabilize. 

DFW: The Stockyards in Fort Worth will be getting a few more luxury beds. Delightful Development Co. of Fort Worth and Woodbine Development Co. of Dallas are partnering for a $160 million resort on a three-acre site in the historic district north of downtown Fort Worth. The developers’ plans include two hotels with a total of 225 rooms and suites, a resort-style pool that overlooks a nearby creek, plus restaurants and retail stores and a shared underground garage. Other amenities will include outdoor lounge areas with fire pits, thousands of square feet of meeting space and a spa. The public-private partnership is possible through an incremental tax financing district. The project is not expected to begin until late next year with a target opening date sometime in the first part of 2030. 

U.S.: During and immediately after the pandemic, numerous owners of vacant office high-rises across the country spent hundreds of millions of dollars converting them into residential or mixed-use towers. Now, a report from RentCafe shows that office-to-apartment conversions reached a record level earlier this year with more than 90,000 units in various stages of development. Dallas has had several high-profile conversions in the downtown area, but the majority of the projects are in bigger cities with high-density downtown high-rises, including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The conversions in those bigger cities have led to an overall 28% increase in office-to-residential conversions this year compared to 2025. Developers and city leaders in many parts of the country have created incentives to help with the conversions and retain tax revenue. 

U.S.:  Existing home sales across the country fell 1.7% last month from June, with much of the blame on higher home prices and mortgage rates. The National Association of Realtors says, however, that sales were up 0.7% last month, compared to the same period last year. Home prices have climbed every month for the past three years. In June, the median sales price nationwide hit a record high of $442,800. And mortgage rates continue to rise with the most-popular 30-year mortgage rate hovering at around 6.7%, the highest in the past year. Global tensions and disruptions, higher food and gas prices and economic uncertainty also have contributed to the rise in rates. But industry analysts say that while buyers are outnumbering sellers in many markets, sellers still retain a great deal of control over the properties on the market. There were more than 1.5 million homes unsold at the end of July, short of the average 2 million homes on the market prior to the pandemic.  

LALALAND: Even high-profile power couples have trouble selling their homes, even after price-drop-after-price-drop efforts. That’s what Chris Pratt, the Star-Lord of the Guardians of the Galaxy series, and star of other small- and big- screen series, and his wife Katherine Schwarzenegger have been dealing with for the past three years. The couple initially listed their six-bedroom, seven-bath Pacific Palisades home in July 2023 for $32 million. It has been lowered several times since then and delisted four times. It is now on the market for the second time at $19.99 million. The couple bought the home and property for $15.6 million in 2018, then razed the home and rebuilt a “modern masterpiece” on the site. Schwarzenegger is the daughter of Arnold, the former bodybuilder-turned-actor-California governor, and Maria Kennedy Shriver. 

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