Home on the Ranch

Fort Worth loves this architectural style for homes the most

Spring Branch Central home for sale 4211 Birchton Street

Toss a cowboy hat in any direction, and you'll hit a ranch-style home in Fort Worth.

Photo courtesy of Redfin

In Texas, which boasts the most ranches of any state in the country, it’s fitting that ranch-style homes are the most popular architectural style for residences. Fort Worth especially loves ranchers.

A survey by Trulia, an online marketplace for residential real estate, found that ranch-style homes push aside other types of homes — including Colonial, Cape Cod, Victorian, midcentury modern, Tudor and Georgian — for likability among Texas adults.

As a refresher, ranch-style homes are single-story structures with features like a low roofline, open floor plan, rectangular or L shape, and a stucco, brick, or wood exterior.

In Texas, you can find the most ranch-style homes on the market in the Fort Worth-Arlington area, Trulia reports. Here are the top areas in the state for ranch-style homes listed on Trulia, ranked from the highest percentage to the lowest:

1. Fort Worth-Arlington
2. San Antonio
3. El Paso
4. Dallas-Plano-Irving
5. Austin
6. Houston

Overall, the Trulia survey shows Americans favor craftsman-style homes (43 percent), followed by ranch (41 percent) and Colonial (36 percent). However, most U.S. adults 55 and over (52 percent) vote for ranch-style homes.

“Each architectural style across the country adds character and charm to a neighborhood, making each one unique,” Lynnette Bruno, Trulia’s vice president of communications and research, says in a release.

Closure News

Big Lots hosts going out of business sales at all Fort Worth stores

dallas.culturemap.com

Big Lots trademark color is orange.

Discount retail chain Big Lots is hosting a massive "GOB" — going out of business — sale, in anticipation of a possible company-wide closure.

The Columbus, Ohio-based chain has not come out and said it is going out of business — but instead that is holding the going-out-of-business sales to protect the value of the company.

"We all have worked extremely hard and have taken every step to complete a going concern sale," Big Lots President and CEO Bruce Thorn said in a statement. "While we remain hopeful that we can close an alternative going concern transaction, in order to protect the value of the Big Lots estate, we have made the difficult decision to begin the GOB process."

The sell-off comes after a stalled sale of Big Lots to Nexus Capital Management, which was in motion after Big Lots initiated bankruptcy proceedings under Chapter 11 in September.

At that time, they executed a first round of closings — a total of 344 stores that included one in Fort Worth. They followed that with another round of closures in October that took three more Fort Worth-area stores.

On December 19, Big Lots determined that the sale would not be moving forward.

According to Fast Company, Big Lots did not explain why it was unable to complete a sale to Nexus, other than reports that an appraisal of Big Lots' inventory came in below expectations, which would make it unviable for Nexus Capital Management buy the company.

While they continue to look for alternatives, the plan now is to do the GOB sale in anticipation of a company shutdown.

Fans will miss Big Lots for their good-quality furniture, household goods, seasonal items, and gourmet foodstuffs, as well as basics like cleaning products and cereal.

There are currently six stores remaining in the Fort Worth area:

Arlington, 2110 S. Cooper St.
Arlington South, 5781 SW Green Oaks Blvd.
Bedford, 2853 Central Dr.
Fort Worth, 6300 Rufe Snow Dr.
Keller, 1580 Keller Pkwy. #50B
Lake Worth, 6708 Lake Worth Blvd.

closings