How Many Homes Are in 2727 Kirby? Four Published Counts, and the Document That Settles Them

Nobody publishing about this building agrees. The counts in circulation are 78, 90, 93 and 96, each presented as fact, and the architects' own current page gives no count at all. This site does not pick one, because none of the published sources is the document that would settle it.

Wikipedia's article says 78. The building's page on the Houston Association of Realtors says 90 units and one penthouse. The curtain wall consultant that carried out remedial work on the building says 93. An archived copy of the architects' own project page, as it read in 2010, says 96. Those are four different numbers from four sources that each look authoritative, and there is no version of this building in which more than one of them is right. What settles it is the recorded declaration of condominium, which under Texas law must describe the boundaries of every unit it creates and allocate each unit its interests. That document sits in the Harris County real property records, and anyone can pull it.

Because they are copying one another rather than reading the record, and the copies have drifted. The clearest evidence is Wikipedia's own footnote: its count of 78 is sourced to the architects' website, and the archived version of that exact page says 96.

A second example sat inside a single page. Until recently one building page could be read as saying two different things at once: a data table giving 90 units, and prose a few paragraphs above it saying there were 93 flats in total. That page is one this team publishes; it has since been corrected, and the archived copy is linked here so both versions can be checked. The pattern is ordinary and worth recognising anywhere. A number gets typed once, an aggregator picks it up, a second aggregator picks it up from the first, and by the third copy nobody remembers which document it came from. The cure is not a better search. It is reading the instrument.

It says 96. Wikipedia footnotes its figure of 78 units to the architects' website and links an archived copy of that page from 2010. The archived page describes a four-hundred-foot, thirty-story tower and calls it a ninety-six-unit building. The footnote and the number above it do not match.

This is worth being precise about, because it is the most checkable thing on this page. The citation in the Wikipedia article carries an archive link, the archive still serves the page, and the page is four paragraphs long. Anyone can open both in two tabs in under a minute. It does not follow that 96 is the right answer either: the archived page was written before the building opened, in the future tense, describing what the building would contain. What does follow is narrower and more useful. The most authoritative-looking citation behind the most widely repeated count does not support that count, which leaves the count with no published source at all, and leaves the question to be answered from the record instead.

The recorded condominium declaration and its amendments. The Harris County Clerk's real property index shows the condominium instrument filed on 7 May 2009 under file number 20090193056, and a supplement filed on 4 May 2012 under file number 20120196965, both indexed to 2727 Kirby Condominiums.

Later instruments in the same chain are indexed as amendments to the First Amended and Restated Declaration of Condominium: a sixth amendment recorded in July 2018, a seventh in September 2018, and a tenth in August 2021 whose index entry describes it as concerning the reallocation of parking spaces. Under the Texas Uniform Condominium Act a declaration must describe the boundaries of every unit it creates, including each unit's identifying number, and must allocate each unit its interests. Adding units later is done by recording an amendment that numbers the new units and reallocates the allocated interest among all of them. So a declaration, plus a supplement, plus amendments running at least to a tenth, is a regime that has changed shape over time, and reading them in order is what produces a number you can rely on. The clerk's index is free to search by file number.

Thirty storeys, on every source checked, and roughly four hundred feet. The architects' archived page and the curtain wall consultant both state four hundred feet exactly. Wikipedia's infobox gives a roof height of 123.4 metres, about 405 feet, with no citation attached to that figure.

The storey count is the one headline figure this building's published record is consistent about. The architects say thirty on their current page and said thirty in 2010, the consultant says thirty, the realtors' building page says thirty, and Wikipedia says thirty. Height is a smaller disagreement of the ordinary kind: four hundred feet is a rounded architectural figure, and a roof height measured to the metre will not match it. Neither figure changes anything a buyer decides. They are here because a page arguing that the unit count is unreliable owes the reader an account of which of the other headline figures are unreliable too, and which are not.

Also disputed. Wikipedia gives a construction start of 2006 and an opening in 2009. The Houston Association of Realtors building page gives a year built of 2008. The consultant that carried out the facade repairs says the building was originally constructed in 2010.

These are less contradictory than they look, and the reason is worth knowing. A tower has several defensible completion dates: the year the structure topped out, the year the certificate of occupancy issued, the year the first homes closed, and the year the appraisal district first assessed it as complete. Different records pick different ones. For a buyer the practical answer is the date on the appraisal district's record for the specific home, because that is the one that follows the home through valuations and insurance. What none of the published years supports is treating this as a new building. On any of them it is well past the point where a buyer should be asking about the age of the building systems, and about what has been replaced since.

The record does not say why, only that it happened. An amendment recorded in August 2021 is indexed as the tenth amendment to this condominium's declaration and is described as concerning the reallocation of parking spaces. Reallocation is a formal act, recorded in the county records, rather than an informal swap between owners.

It matters because a parking space at a building like this is not a courtesy. It is an interest described in the declaration and attached to a specific home, and a home's value can depend on how many spaces it carries and where they sit. If those assignments have been formally reallocated, the current allocation is whatever the most recent amendment says, and a listing written from an older document can be honestly wrong. The check is mechanical: pull the declaration and every amendment by file number from the county clerk, read them in order, and confirm the spaces described for the specific unit. Do that before the option period ends rather than after.

Because it is the denominator under almost every number that follows. Common expenses are allocated across units by the declaration, so the count determines each owner's share of the budget, of a special assessment, and of the reserves. It also sets how thin the resale market for your own home will be.

The Texas Uniform Condominium Act requires the declaration to allocate to each unit a fraction or percentage of the undivided interests in the common elements and in the common expenses, and a portion of the votes, and to state the formula used. That allocation is what decides how much a repair to the facade costs you personally. A building with fewer, larger homes concentrates that cost; a building with more homes spreads it. The count also governs the voting arithmetic that decides whether a project happens at all. On the resale side, a building where fewer than ten homes trade in a year gives an appraiser very little to work with, which is a real effect on financing and on timing. None of that can be reasoned about from a number nobody can source. The building itself is set out in the guide to the building.