We Are Hot on Heath And This Texas Transitional From Rick Shipley Custom Homes

What luxury community with the hottest new Texas transitional home, is within a half hour of downtown Dallas? You may think it’s Southlake, Lewisville, or Allen. Wrong. It’s Heath! A few luxury custom builders have known for a long time that just across Lake Ray Hubbard, Heath is hot and getting hotter.

I talked a bit of history yesterday with Rick Shipley of the design-build firm Rick Shipley Custom Homes. Candy and I got a tour earlier this month of his simply spectacular Texas transitional at 426 Sunrise Ridge Drive in the Ridge Lakes of Heath.

“Production housing did not hit Rockwall and Heath until the 90s,” Shipley said. “It was all true custom homes, a small volume, but they were nice homes. If you worked in downtown Dallas when AT&T came in and wanted a nice home in the late 1980s you went east because you could get a beautiful home for somewhere in the $350,000 range. We probably built 425 houses around Lake Ray Hubbard back then.”

Shipley knows his construction history and his industry. He grew up in the building business, working with his dad, Mike Shipley, who ran Medco Construction. Medco is the construction division of Baylor Hospital. Think about that for just a second. Medco is responsible for Wadley and Barnett towers at Baylor, the Tom Landry Health & Fitness Center, and the Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center at Dallas, to name the tip of the iceberg of what they’ve constructed.

“My dad was a stickler for detail,” Shipley said. “Just working around a hospital where they are open 24/7, we had to learn not to be just construction people.”

And that is exactly what you want in luxury home construction. Someone that is not just a construction person, someone that has an eye for detail, that is a problem solver, and an innovator. You want Rick Shipley!

What’s on offer in this stunning Texas transitional is two fold. You have flawless construction and the most exciting new luxury community in the area.

Ridge Lakes of Heath is a residential development by Talus Development Group (TDG). It has trails, a park area, two lakes with water features, underground utilities, a 4,000-square-foot minimum build, and it is only 10 minutes from Lake Ray Hubbard and Chandler’s Landing Marina. It’s also in the unbeatable Rockwall ISD school system, and as we mentioned, Dallas is 30 miles away.

“Ridge Lakes is the nicest development I’ve seen in my entire career,” Shipley said. “TDG came in and took a great piece of land, and spent the money that needed to be spent on development. When I saw the waterfront lots, I bought all four. I was excited about the land, the location, and the size of the product going in.”

Shipley wanted to build a Texas transitional product that had not been done in Heath, and now he had the right lots in the right place.

“People want the transitional to modern styling, and until now, it had never been available in Heath,” Shipley said. “I have a builder friend that owns cjb Homes and builds this style in Devonshire. I was driving around and realized the homes I liked were his. He helped me pull it off. He was a great coach and director about that style. Everything is clean and precise.”

Shipley sums up what is so compelling about Heath: “The whole environment is great. We are offering the same home you’d find in the Park Cities, with more square footage, for less money. It’s a great value. You don’t have to worry about education. Rockwall and Heath have great schools, and the traffic is not bad.” Sounds like a win-win to us!

If Shipley’s first effort in the Ridge Lakes of Heath is anything to go by, we cannot wait to see what he comes up with next. This Texas transitional is 7,302 square feet set on a large lakefront lot of almost an acre. There are five bedrooms, five full bathrooms, three powder baths, four fireplaces, a large game room, exercise room, and the loveliest outdoor living area we’ve ever seen.

By now you all know how I feel about staging, so when Shipley engaged my pal and fellow stager George Bass to create a setting any buyer will love, he had my vote for the builder of the year. It’s hard to connect with an empty home. When you throw a party to showcase it to other Realtors, and of course, CandysDirt.com staff, well, we need sofas to sit on while we sip our champagne!

“It’s time Heath had this look,” Bass said. “It’s different for Heath — beautiful, and well appointed. The younger generation of upwardly mobile professional buyers is drawn to this style. It’s what they see in magazines and on the residential blogs.”

Candy and I were blown away, and we are pretty darned hard to impress. Everyone did such a magnificent job on this Texas transitional. The feedback is, according to Shipley, “100 percent WOW!”

Our advice is to call Briggs Freeman’s Carla Perez and get your hands on this terrific Texas transitional listed for $2.275 million before someone else does, because let’s face it, Heath is hot, and it’s just going to get hotter!

Karen Eubank is the owner of Eubank Staging and Design. She has been an award-winning professional home stager and writer for over 25 years. She teaches the popular Staging to Sell class and is the creator of the online course, The Beginners Guide to Buying Wholesale. She loves dogs, international travel, history, white paint, champagne, artificial turf, and homes with personality. Her father was a spy, and she keeps secrets very well. Find Karen at www.eubankstaging.com