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Of course, we will have a realtor, and we will do all of our own primary research, but we wanted to tap into the vast knowledge on this forum. We have been reading and enjoying this forum for about a year now as our relocation was processing for a move to Austin. We would love to hear the opinions of this board, which we will take in with many other inputs. We are going to share some very personal information, taking advantage of the fact that this site can be anonymous
About us --
We are a family of 4, kids are elementary age. Comfortable financially, but self-made and very down to earth. Value education above all else, with family values and our Catholic faith a close second and third. Other things important to us - safety, outdoors, friends/neighbors, diversity of experiences, things to do, etc. We are Mexican-American. We are probably conservative on the Austin scale, but liberal on the typical Republican scale, if that makes sense. There are some social issues at odds with our religous beliefs, but we live/let live and respect differences profoundly.
Our living situation --
Our budget is for a home is $700k-900k range. We dont mind some upgrading but we arent looking for a fix-up project. We are a one-job family and husband will spend some amount of working from home, some downtown, some RR, and some airport. So we dont think benchmarking to his possible commutes will work. We want to center more around where the kids will be in school and where we will all spend the most time on weekends, etc. We are thinking about Eanes ISD, with the option of still sending the kids to private school if we chose to (St. Andrews, St. Gabriels, etc.). If we send to private, it does not need to be a Catholic school, in fact, we would choose a great indepdent private school or public school over Catholic if the academics were more rigorous. I know some will say it makes no sense to be in an Eanes or Lake Travis ISD and use private, but we believe in buying in good school districts regardless, as a back up for education, real estate appreciation, etc.
So if you were us, where would you focus your search? We do like the Westlake/Bee Cave area, but we find the topography, space, house for money, etc. tempting up in the Steiner Ranch area too. Tarrytown and surrounding areas are beautiful! Hard to choose.
We are so excited to move to Austin and we thank you so much in advance for your thoughts. Best wishes to everyone on this forum and we can't wait to be your neighbor...
Of course, we will have a realtor, and we will do all of our own primary research, but we wanted to tap into the vast knowledge on this forum. We have been reading and enjoying this forum for about a year now as our relocation was processing for a move to Austin. We would love to hear the opinions of this board, which we will take in with many other inputs. We are going to share some very personal information, taking advantage of the fact that this site can be anonymous
About us --
We are a family of 4, kids are elementary age. Comfortable financially, but self-made and very down to earth. Value education above all else, with family values and our Catholic faith a close second and third. Other things important to us - safety, outdoors, friends/neighbors, diversity of experiences, things to do, etc. We are Mexican-American. We are probably conservative on the Austin scale, but liberal on the typical Republican scale, if that makes sense. There are some social issues at odds with our religous beliefs, but we live/let live and respect differences profoundly.
Our living situation --
Our budget is for a home is $700k-900k range. We dont mind some upgrading but we arent looking for a fix-up project. We are a one-job family and husband will spend some amount of working from home, some downtown, some RR, and some airport. So we dont think benchmarking to his possible commutes will work. We want to center more around where the kids will be in school and where we will all spend the most time on weekends, etc. We are thinking about Eanes ISD, with the option of still sending the kids to private school if we chose to (St. Andrews, St. Gabriels, etc.). If we send to private, it does not need to be a Catholic school, in fact, we would choose a great indepdent private school or public school over Catholic if the academics were more rigorous. I know some will say it makes no sense to be in an Eanes or Lake Travis ISD and use private, but we believe in buying in good school districts regardless, as a back up for education, real estate appreciation, etc.
So if you were us, where would you focus your search? We do like the Westlake/Bee Cave area, but we find the topography, space, house for money, etc. tempting up in the Steiner Ranch area too. Tarrytown and surrounding areas are beautiful! Hard to choose.
We are so excited to move to Austin and we thank you so much in advance for your thoughts. Best wishes to everyone on this forum and we can't wait to be your neighbor...
You are looking at the top tier of homes for that amount. You can even live on lake austin with a nice boat dock (I just saw a place for 870K) on lake austin near 2222 and 360. You will probably need to be more specific about your needs as pretty much anywhere in austin is available to you.
What things do you like to do? How big of a house? Acreage or not? Lake or not?
Just throwing it out there, even though I'm sure you've already researched this. Property taxes in Texas are high, sometimes upwards of 2.5%, so on your $900K home you may be paying $20-25K per year just in property taxes.
That said, you can afford an incredible home at that price range. Look along 360 in Westlake (78746), Barton Creek (78735), some areas in Highland Park West/Highland Hills/NW Hills/Courtyard/Cat Mountain (78731), and other areas around Lake Austin (like off City Park Rd). BTW, my experience in Westlake has been that MANY people send their kids to private school -- or even homeschool. So moving to Eanes and not using the schools is surprisingly common (and Eanes probably benefits anyway, they still get the property tax but don't have to take as many students). The Catholic Church in Westlake is St. John Neumann, which is in the process of construction of a brand new huge building: http://www.sjnaustin.org. In Cat Mountain, there is also St Theresa's: http://www.sttaustin.org/
$900K is too much to spend in Steiner, IMO. They certainly have palatial homes that cost that much (and a lot more), but that's not the norm as far as price/size in the area. If you are going to invest that much, I'd stick to something closer to town where the land values are high (more stable, IMO).
Thanks for the info so far. I tried to be thorough in my initial post, but clearly I failed a bit! Here are some more details.
- we dont want to be the most expensive home in our neighborhood, dont feel that is a good way to invest in a home. we would rather be the cheapest in the neighborhood
- while we could spend up to $900k or even a bit more, we would love to spend closer to $700k, if less, even better
- we are pretty intent on private schools, so living somewhere central to the best private schools would be important to us
- we want to take advantage of Austin's natural beauty -- we want hill country views, we would love to be on at least 1 acre, and of course close lake access would be wonderful.
- we dont want to spend all of our time in cars and traffic (something we are very worried about in Austin from a few visits), so access to schools, groceries, restaurants, oudoor activities important to us
- house needs to be at least 4 bedrooms/4 bathrooms or larger and we would prefer something that wont require a lot of work...
we anticipate that we can't have all of this in our price range, but would like to start with those assumptions and work backward... so what areas should we really focus on?
- we dont want to be the most expensive home in our neighborhood, dont feel that is a good way to invest in a home. we would rather be the cheapest in the neighborhood.
Since you have children going to school, I would focus on the areas of town that have wonderful school districts. Eanes ISD (Westlake) is really top notch. But so are the schools in the 78703 zip (Tarrytown and Clarksville).
I agree with the poster who suggested buying centrally. Sure, you could have a ginormous McMansion and be King of All the Joneses out in the 'burbs, where property is relatively "cheap". But when your property values drop -- and they will, eventually -- and you can't sell your home for as much as you paid for it, that investment suddenly is no longer an investment. Property values in Central Austin or anywhere near Central Austin remain stable.
It sounds as though you have your priorities straight when it comes to home ownership and realistic expectations of what it costs to live here. Welcome!
Thanks for the info so far. I tried to be thorough in my initial post, but clearly I failed a bit! Here are some more details.
- we dont want to be the most expensive home in our neighborhood, dont feel that is a good way to invest in a home. we would rather be the cheapest in the neighborhood
- while we could spend up to $900k or even a bit more, we would love to spend closer to $700k, if less, even better
- we are pretty intent on private schools, so living somewhere central to the best private schools would be important to us
- we want to take advantage of Austin's natural beauty -- we want hill country views, we would love to be on at least 1 acre, and of course close lake access would be wonderful.
- we dont want to spend all of our time in cars and traffic (something we are very worried about in Austin from a few visits), so access to schools, groceries, restaurants, oudoor activities important to us
- house needs to be at least 4 bedrooms/4 bathrooms or larger and we would prefer something that wont require a lot of work...
we anticipate that we can't have all of this in our price range, but would like to start with those assumptions and work backward... so what areas should we really focus on?
thanks again!
You can have a lot of this.
But if you are after private schools and want to live close, you probably want something reasonably central. (Also, if you live farther out, you will end up in one of the more pricier homes in your area.) At your price point, there are many neighborhoods around Tarrytown or Westlake where you would be on the lower end of the house price range, if that's what you're looking for.
If you buy very close to St. Gabriels, in the Barton Creek neighborhood there (which is beautiful), the public schools are not as highly rated as Eanes or Casis (Tarrytown) options. (of course this gets confusing, because there is a neighborhood called Barton Creek West that is actually in Eanes, but most of "Barton Creek" proper is AISD). My point only being that if you are going to spend that type of money, you might be better off buying in a district where you would still be content moving your kids to public schools, if the need or desire arises.
When you compare a district like Eanes to the private schools, the differences in academics aren't so great (with the exception perhaps of time dedicated to writing). It really becomes more of a decision of wanting your child in a smaller, more protected environment or wanting smaller class sizes come high school, or preference to have religious instruction in the curriculum. I know multi-millionaires who choose to keep their kids in EISD or AISD....they can certainly put their kids in private school but are very satisfied with public.
So having a public option that you can fall back on might be a good strategy. I have several neighbors that have pulled kids out of private to put them in the local public.
And I have kids in both...I'm not advocating either. It really depends on the child and your personal preferences. But I would keep the options open by choosing a neighborhood with a good public option.
However, if you live close in, it's not real easy to have over an acre for $700K. It's possible, but your choices will be limited. Farther out, that's a lot easier to do. But that's not going to happen in Tarrytown, for example.
All of the posts have been extremely helpful, thanks to everyone. Blakely, we found your post particularly helpful. We know that we want to be in a good public school district to "fall back on", we just aren't sure if its worth being in Eanes and paying the extra "tax" to live in that district when we "probably" won't ever use it. Versus being in say, Lake Travis ISD. So a question we have is whether or not there is pretty significant daylight between Eanes and the other ISDs, or these days has the gap pretty much closed?
The 1 acre+ is nice to have, but not mandatory. We realize that if we are close in we arent going to get that. To be clear, if we are better moving out west a bit and spending less money, that would be fantastic. We work hard for our money and arent just dying to spend it. No trust fund babies or .com money here
Tarrytown seems beautiful, but on a short visit we didnt find anything uniquely "Austin" or "Hill Country" about it. Very charming, upscale, big trees, shade, close to downtown. In our experience, every major city has an area close to downtown like it. Dallas - park cities, San Antonio - alamo heights, etc. Nothing negative about it, but we were kind of hoping to get a bit more of the "hill country feel", with the expansive views, live oaks, a little room/land, etc. Can we get that in Westlake? Or do we need to be further west?
Nothing negative about it, but we were kind of hoping to get a bit more of the "hill country feel", with the expansive views, live oaks, a little room/land, etc. Can we get that in Westlake? Or do we need to be further west?
thanks!
Yes, you can ... just keep driving on Bee Caves road, and there are some gorgeous properties around that area.
I also love Oak Hill -- it has that cute rural-ish thing going for it -- but admittedly know zip about the school districts in that area.
Versus being in say, Lake Travis ISD. So a question we have is whether or not there is pretty significant daylight between Eanes and the other ISDs, or these days has the gap pretty much closed?
Actually, I think this could be a very good solution for you.
Lake Travis schools are very good. The district is highly regarded and my guess is the differences between LT and Eanes, for example, is marginal. Also, there you'd be more likely to get more land and even possibly a coveted view.
The only part that might become an issue is the drive to private schools. I guess it depends which school and which area of LT you plan to live in. I personally wouldn't want to drive from parts of Lakeway to St. Andrews lower school, for example. Yes, it's doable, but I'd personally rather not have that distance between home and school.
So first I'd decide on the school you want and then back into the home that meets your needs. Lake Travis covers a big area...once you pick the school you can try to find a home that meets your driving needs.
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