1015 20th Street

On Galveston Island, windstorm is a separate policy from flood, usually written through the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA), and a missing windstorm certificate is the most common reason an island contract falls apart. Whether this house holds a current WPI-8 Certificate of Compliance: being confirmed. What the record does show: storm shutters, a slate roof of unknown age, and no known roof defects. The seller has never filed a damage claim of any kind other than flood, and has never been paid on a claim without doing the repair. No premium is quoted here; get your own quote from your own agent before you write an offer. On a house of this age the carrier will ask about roof age, electrical, plumbing and foundation before it asks about anything else. What underwriters actually flag on a historic Galveston home.

Zone AE. The property sits wholly inside the 100-year floodplain. That is a Special Flood Hazard Area, and it is the single most important fact on this page to underwrite, so it is not buried. The seller's disclosure marks the property as located wholly in a 100-year floodplain, and the 2019 survey carries the same note from the surveyor. With a federally backed mortgage, flood insurance is required here, not optional. AE is the one-percent-annual-chance zone and it comes with a published base flood elevation, which means an elevation certificate can be measured against a real number rather than guessed at.

What the seller discloses alongside that: present flood insurance coverage is in place. No previous flooding from a natural flood event. No previous water penetration into the structure from a natural flood. No claim ever filed under the National Flood Insurance Program. No FEMA or Small Business Administration flood assistance ever received. A house that has been standing on this corner since 1886 with none of those answers is worth more than a favorable zone letter on a newer build.

The specifics, so you can hand them to an insurer today: Zone AE, FEMA panel 48167C0441G, effective 15 August 2019, inside the Special Flood Hazard Area, community of Galveston. The parcel is not within 250 feet of a different flood zone, so there is no boundary argument to have with an underwriter and no obvious exposure to the line moving at the next map revision. Whether an elevation certificate exists for the structure: pending. On a pier-and-beam house in AE that certificate moves the premium more than anything else on this page, so get a real quote during your option period rather than an estimate. What Zone X, X500 and AE actually cost you on the island.

The rules changed in January 2026, and they are stricter than the ones most listings still describe. The City of Galveston now regulates short-term rentals directly, having taken that authority from the Park Board. A short-term rental is any residential dwelling, or part of one, rented for fewer than thirty consecutive days.

What operating one now takes: annual registration at $250 per property, due 31 December, with a $500 late fee after that. A designated local contact reachable around the clock who can physically reach the property in roughly thirty to sixty minutes. Occupancy capped against bedroom count and the property's sewer capacity. Generally one off-street parking space per bedroom. Required guest information posted inside, flood-evacuation guidance included. Lodging tax runs 15% in total — 6% state, 9% local — on top of the fee. Airbnb and VRBO now have to display a valid Galveston Vacation Rental registration number and pull listings without one. Three violations at one property inside twelve months revokes the license.

Short-term rentals are permitted in every zoning district on the island except R-0. This parcel's classification is being confirmed with the city rather than assumed from the block: pending.

Read the parking requirement carefully before you underwrite rental income here. The city generally wants one off-street space per bedroom, which is three for this house. What conveys is a one-half undivided interest in a two-car garage and driveway shared with the house next door. If you are buying this as a short-term rental, settle that with the city in writing first, because it is the part of the ordinance this property is least likely to satisfy. Then underwrite against the full 15%, the annual fee and a real local-contact arrangement, not a nightly rate off a listing site. The 2026 rules in full.

Yes. Lost Bayou, one of Galveston's four locally designated districts, alongside East End, Silk Stocking and Strand/Mechanic. The house also carries a historic designation of its own: the seller's disclosure marks both "located in historic district" and "historic property designation", and the MLS record lists historic restrictions on the parcel. One thing is still open: where the parcel sits in the district's own grading — Contributing, Compatible, Non-Contributing or Intrusion — which is being confirmed with Development Services: pending. That matters for the tax freeze further down rather than for the review rules, which apply either way.

Here is what the designation actually means. The Landmark Commission reviews exterior work — additions, demolition, new construction, window and door replacement, anything visible from the street. Interiors are never reviewed, so a kitchen or a floor plan is yours to change with an ordinary building permit. Minor repairs, most fencing and rear decks are handled by staff at the permit counter rather than at a hearing. A full review runs four to six weeks, because the city notifies surrounding owners first, and the Commission meets the first and third Monday of the month. Plan exterior work around that calendar rather than discovering it afterward. What the Commission does and does not review.

The same designation carries an incentive that rarely reaches a listing: put at least 50% of the building's pre-improvement value into a qualifying rehabilitation, have the Commission and City Council approve it, and the City of Galveston freezes its portion of the property tax at the pre-improvement value for ten years. County and school district taxes keep billing on the new value. It applies to buildings classified Contributing or Compatible, and to individually designated Galveston Landmarks — and the seller has already disclosed a historic property designation on this one, which is the door into the program. How the tax freeze works.

2.0161%, and no MUD, PID or LID. Water and sewer come from the City of Galveston, so there is no utility district riding on top of the bill, and the property is not in a groundwater conservation or subsidence district either.

The part that catches buyers: the current owner claims both a homestead and an over-65 exemption, and neither of those transfers to you. Underwrite the unexempted figure, which the tax record puts at $6,572 for 2022, not whatever the current owner is paying. Ask your lender to escrow against the unexempted number in year one. What a MUD, PID or LID actually costs you.

One bay of a shared garage on the alley, and a shared drive. Nothing is attached to the house. The detached structure at the back is a two-car footprint, roughly twenty feet square on the survey, and it is split down the middle: each of the two houses owns half. The seller discloses it as "one half of a 2 car garage and driveway", co-owned in undivided interest, and the survey draws the structure at the south property line rather than inside it. Each half measures roughly ten feet wide by twenty deep, which is why the listing calls it a golf-cart garage. A cart fits with room to spare. A full-size truck does not.

A garage on the alley is the island's oldest building pattern, not a workaround. Galveston was platted in 1838 with fourteen narrow lots to a block and twenty-foot alleys running down the middle of each one. Carriage houses, stables, quarters and later garages have filled those alleys and back lots since the city's first decades — enough of them that they have their own scholarly history in Ellen Beasley's The Alleys and Back Buildings of Galveston, and the city's historic design standards treat garages and alley houses as their own regulated building type. That twenty-foot alley is on the 2019 survey, running behind this lot. The lot is also a corner, so there is street frontage on two sides.

Worth knowing if the bay sounds small: golf carts are street legal in Galveston on roads posted at 35 mph or less with no more than two lanes each way, once the cart is registered, inspected and plated with the city. Whether that half-interest is recorded, and how the two households actually divide it, is being confirmed: pending. If you are counting on three off-street spaces for a rental, read the short-term rental answer above first.