Duplex communities or small houses (Austin: apartment, rental, safe neighborhood)

[txtroubadour]

My boyfriend and I will be looking for a new place this summer, and we're tired of apartment living. We've been doing some preemptive searching just to get a feel for what we might like and would be able to afford. We were hoping to find a small house, but we also thought it would be a good idea to look into a duplex. But we're finding it really hard to find any information about duplexes online. Are there any duplex communities in Austin with websites or other information we could check out? We really don't even know where to start because searches for "duplexes for rent in Austin" don't turn up many results, and even searching for duplexes on austinhomesearch.com tends to just give results for apartment communities, which we're trying to avoid. Any help would be much appreciated!

Just for the record, here's some info about what we're looking for...
-Location isn't a big factor because we both have jobs that require us to work all over the city, but we would like to stay South/Southwest because that's where most of our friends are. That's negotiable though.
-We're both grad students so we would like a quiet neighborhood
-We want something with a yard, even a small one, for our dog
-Our budget is $1000/month for rent (I realize this is on the low end for a decent rental in Austin)
-We want a safe neighborhood, although I know people have differing opinions about what constitutes safe. We currently live in a neighborhood that is considered kind of a "bad" part of town, and we love it.

I know that's a lot and it's likely that we won't find anything meeting all those specifications, but does anyone have any advice as to where we might look? (If you think we're too picky and would be better off just sticking to an apartment, that's fine too. All input is appreciated!)

[Cob1969]

It's going to be real hard to find any duplex in a decent area with a budget of $1,000, you are looking at at least $1,200 I would say.

[centralaustinite]

No you won't find any websites! Most duplexes are owned by private landlords.

You could try a realtor/locator like Habitat Hunters to help you. Otherwise, drive around! Lots are off Stasseney in South Austin. As well as around St. Edward's (but will probably be out of your price range, but you never know!)

[Komeht]

1,000 isn't anywhere close to the "low end for a decent" duplex. Sorry.

[Cob1969]

In a decent area it is, I have seen TONS of duplexes lately and three are a lot in the $700-$1,000 range, but the condition and areas they are in are not very good, the OP said they were wanting to live in the South/Southwest area, I have been searching for small houses and duplexes in this area for someone for over a month now and I can't find anything decent for under $1,000.