He Was Told His Rebuild Couldn’t Be Two Stories, Then Built Past 4 Stop-Work Orders. A Texas Court Ordered the Addition Removed.

In February 2020, a neighborhood architectural committee in Houston told a builder that the house he was rebuilding could not be two stories. The 1959 deed restrictions for his section of the subdivision allowed one story, or one and a half with the committee’s approval. He answered, “[W]e can take [this] to court,” and kept building.

The City of Houston then posted four orders on the property to “STOP ALL UNPERMITTED WORK.” He finished the two-story rebuild anyway. In 2021 a Harris County judge ordered him to remove the second-floor addition, and a Texas appeals court upheld the order in June 2022.

He had bought the lot in July 2019 with an abandoned house on it, court records show, and decided it needed a complete rebuild. The city had issued a repair permit, but no permit for a rebuild. He had been in construction for more than 15 years. What an addition may be under a lot’s recorded rules, and what the permit covers, is the check a contractor runs before pricing one.