This Houstonian longs to buy her ancestral home in Sawyer Heights

Megan Elise Ortiz treasures her grandmother’s home in Houston. It was originally her great-grandparents’ home, where her grandmother was raised. It’s a single-family house in the Sawyer Heights neighborhood – an area filling up with new condos. Ortiz considered purchasing it in 2015 when she moved back to Houston but decided to wait. Now, with home prices soaring in Texas, she wonders if she’ll be able to make her dream come true.

Ortiz’s grandmother, Lela Mae Pruell. Courtesy photo

“If you’re familiar with real estate in 2021 you know that it was a grave mistake of mine to not buy the home. It’s a two-bedroom, one-bath house, I believe. Last time I checked it [was] appraised at about $650,000, which is just absolutely insane.”

“Not too far away from the home is the cemetery in Houston called Hollywood Cemetery … a very, very old burial area for Houstonians. And so from what I understand, the way that they plotted the land, it starts in the center and it goes out. So if you go somewhere near the center, you’ll find my great-great-grandparents.”

“It’s just amazing to me to look at the proximity of the home to the cemetery, to downtown. Houston used to be so small, and I believe at some point my grandmother told me that, you know, their home in Sawyer Heights was considered the ‘country.'”

“My grandmother passed on July 4th, 2019, like all 92 year-old firecrackers do, and I ended up being able to inherit a few different items and tchotchkes from her. …To be able to put those pieces into the home and be able to, you know, raise my two little ones in the exact same spot where my grandmother just went through so many different triumphs and struggles in life, it just would be a full-circle moment for us.”

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