436 Old Orchard Court

There are three kinds of gate

Staffed. A person in a gatehouse, logging visitors. Rare in this price band and expensive to run — you pay for it in the dues, every month, forever.

Controlled access. A code, a clicker or a card, with cameras on the entrance, and no staffing bill inside your dues. This is Bayou Park Sec 3 — and behind it, a private street that dead-ends rather than a grid a guard would have to watch.

Decorative. A handsome gate that stands open all day and closes at night, or never closes at all. It is landscaping. Some listings still call it gated.

None of these is wrong to buy. Knowing which one you are buying is the whole point.

The benefit is traffic, not security

A gate deters the opportunist and the bored. It does not stop someone who actually wants in, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. Buy a gate for what it reliably delivers, which is who is not driving down your street: no cut-through commuters, no door-knockers working the neighborhood, no one turning around in your driveway at eleven at night.

Here that effect stacks three deep. The section is gated. Old Orchard Court is a 60-foot private street, per the recorded survey. And it dead-ends in the cul-de-sac this house sits on. Nobody drives past this house on the way to anywhere, because there is no anywhere past it.

And the street and the gate are paid for

A private street is not the city's to repave, which is where most gated communities get expensive. Not this one. Bayou Park III's recorded declaration puts the private streets and the entrance gates in the Common Area and funds "lighting, improving and maintaining the private streets" and the "repair and maintenance of security equipment and entrance gates" out of the annual assessment — plus a reserve.

That assessment is $650 a year. One bill, once a year, covering a road, a gate and the cameras on it. Compare that to any gated community you have looked at and it is a short conversation. The full declaration and bylaws are posted below if you want to read it yourself rather than take our word for it.

The first floor

You come in under a two-storey entry with a wrought-iron staircase, a study behind French doors on one side and a formal dining room on the other. Past that the house opens up and does not close again: a living area framed by walls of windows two storeys tall, a stone fireplace running the full height of them, and exposed beams across the ceiling.

The kitchen sits open to all of it — granite, glass-tile backsplash, a copper farmhouse sink, double ovens, a gas cooktop with a pot filler, and an island with seating. Breakfast room off the kitchen, sunroom past that, utility room where it belongs rather than where it fit, and a three-car garage off it — the third bay tandem, which is where the boat or the workshop goes. The primary bedroom is on this floor, with a bay window over the back yard, a herringbone-tiled bath with a freestanding tub and separate shower, and a walk-in closet fitted out with built-ins rather than a rod and a shelf.

Upstairs

A bonus room almost nineteen feet long that looks down over the living area, a separate media room beside it — no windows, which is the whole point of a media room — and four more bedrooms, so the fifth bedroom is a real bedroom and not a converted study. Two full baths up here as well.

That is five bedrooms, three full baths and a half, a study, a formal dining room, a sunroom, a bonus room and a media room, in a house where none of those had to borrow space from another.

And then the part nobody photographs and everybody needs: walk-in attic storage, the kind you stand up in and walk into rather than crawl through with a flashlight. It does not appear on the plan sheets below because attic space is not living area and does not get measured — ask to see it when you walk the house. Christmas decorations, luggage, the things a five-bedroom house accumulates go up there instead of eating a closet or a garage bay.

Out back

The lot is the thing you cannot add later, and this is .646 of an acre — fully fenced, on sprinklers, at the closed end of the court. Look at the aerial: the pool, the sport pad and the covered patio all fit along the back of the house and the lawn beyond them is still bigger than most entire back yards in this price band. Most .646-acre lots are mostly house. This one is mostly yard.

The pool and spa went in 2021 — free-form, with a raised stone spa spilling into it, a rock water feature, travertine decking and a covered patio off the back of the house.

Down the side of the yard there is a sport court — poured concrete with a basketball goal already standing on it. Not a hoop bolted over the garage door. An actual court, ready to play the day you move in.

Past it sits a second slab, with plumbing stubs and electrical already run to it. Outdoor kitchen, casita, pool bath, workshop — if you have been sketching something, the concrete and the utilities are already sitting there waiting for it. And if you have not, put a couple of chairs on it and watch the game. It does not ask anything of you.