After 15 Years in East Dallas’ Casa View Haven, The Only Constant is Change

This was the year it happened. Mark it down in your history books and alert the media, because 2022 was the year that Casa View, an East Dallas neighborhood that had been fighting to reinvest in itself for the better part of the last two decades, has finally arrived.

How do we know Casa View has arrived? We got a Starbucks — complete with a drive-through, natch.

Staying Power

We searched all over East Dallas and part of Oak Cliff to find our first home in 2007. I joke about it all the time because there were so many homes on the market and we were in no hurry at all to find the right one. Remember when the market was like that?

When we finally settled on our post-war traditional in Casa View Haven, I had that moment of panic that almost all new homebuyers have after they’ve signed a bajillion closing documents and have been handed the keys to their new home. My mind raced. “What if we don’t like the neighborhood? It’s in ‘transition’ after all,” I said to myself. “What if it’s too far from everything? What if it isn’t safe?”

Simpler times, for sure. Now we worry about how many flips are in the neighborhood, why some contractors can’t seem to use a magnet to pick up all their stray nails and screws, and how the heck another dumpster showed up in a driveway like a mushroom overnight.

With all the turnover in our neighborhood, I’ve been asked more than once if we were going to cash in on the hot market and sell our house. I often joke that, no, a part of our contract said that the only way I could move from this address was in a body bag. Or that I’m allergic to packing so we can’t move. Or that my son says we can’t sell the house because he plans to live with us forever.

Still, I’ve dug my heels in here in Casa View Haven. And I’ve fought to stay here long enough to see it arrive in a way.

Moving In, Moving On

A few weeks back, I saw our nearby neighbors packing up a moving van. I didn’t stop and chat. Of recent, neighbors move in and then move on. Few have the desire to be a part of the fabric of the neighborhood and get to know their fellow “Havenites,” as we’ve occasionally referred to ourselves.

But what really fascinated me was that the neighbors had chosen to sell their home to Opendoor instead of using a Realtor and selling on MLS. After appearing for a while on Opendoor Exclusives, the platform’s recently launched off-market sales division, the property just hit MLS. It was flipped and listed in 2018 and covered right here. The listing price back then was a neighborhood record of $310,000.

The listing price today? $401,000.

That’s almost four times what I purchased my house for in 2007. It’s a little shocking to me, but it’s not uncommon among the other investor flips in Casa View Haven.

Little has changed in the three-bedroom, two-bath home since it was last sold just four years ago. It’s gotten some paint on the kitchen cabinets, some wallpaper in the den, and some built-ins for the passthrough between the den and kitchen. Other than that, it’s largely the same house.

But the neighborhood is not the same since the property was sold last.

During my evening walk with my dogs, I counted three dumpsters on one street alone and four homes flipped in the last two years on streets bordering that one. The fabric of the neighborhood is less a stitched-together quilt of families and more like a bin full of pricey hankies — no less valuable, but not connected.

But hey, guys. We have a Starbucks.