NW Austin: Live N or S of the lake? (Cedar Park: relocation, budget)

[orionid]

Hello,
As many seem to be, my wife and I, and two boys, are aggressively pondering a relocation from San Diego to the Austin area. After some electronic research, we have decided to look deeper at NW of Austin in either the Eanes school district (south of Lake Austin, Westlake HS, etc.) or the Leander school district (north of the lake, Cedar Park HS, etc.). Any opinions of the differences between the two would be great to collect from all of you. Some of our important aspects we haven't yet concluded on:

1) People: Snobbish? Entitled? Good sense of community?
2) Land: Rocky, hilly, flood-prone? Aesthetics?
3) Bugs/Pests: Any better or worse than the other for the typical scorpions, fire-ants, mosquitos, blah blah blah?
4) Cedar Park HS vs Westlake HS; any thoughts out there? Academics? Sports?
5) Sports resources for kids (leagues, "good" kids, "good" coaches, etc.)
6) Access to shopping, restaurants, activities?

...or anything else that would affect quality of life that I can't specifically ask about due to my ignorance of the local scene (i.e. Crime wave in Steiner Ranch?? Drug cartels in Bella Lago??? Houses shifting to 45 degrees of center near the lake????)
Sorry for the poor attempts at humor. Any help would be great.

[AustinGuy]

There is a huge price difference between living in Cedar Park and Westlake. Have you scoped out properties in the various areas?

Living in Leander North of Lake Travis will mean you are in for a heck of a commute depending on where your job is.

All of the communities you mentioned are nice, so I don't think you'll have to worry about drug cartels popping up.

[gigi927]

Well...I don't think anyone would disagree that the Eanes school district is pretty much known to be the best in the Austin area. Leander is a great school district; I would recommend that you look into specific schools within the district if you do decide on homes in the LISD as there are a few schools within LISD that are not as highly rated.

We live in LISD and I have a special needs 4 year old that attends a special preschool at Laura Bush Elementary and we have been nothing but bowled over by the quality of the staff and the services he receives.

You will make a tradeoff in housing most likely if you have any sort of cap on your housing budget and you choose Westlake area over the other. You just don't get as much for the $ - but you get the better school district, proximity to downtown, perception that you are in the high end area of town.

There are more choices for new construction (meaning tract-y homes) north of lake v. south of lake. I love our part of NW Austin in that it is one of the hillier areas in town (reminds me of southern California - Laguna area a bit).

NW you have proximity to Arboretum, Lakeline Mall and depending on where you choose to live, you'd be anywhere between 15 and 45 minutes from downtown. Westlake area is just a hop skip and jump from downtown and is more central to everything.

The only con I've heard regarding Westlake and Westlake HS is that there do tend to be a lot of kids who have a strong sense of entitlement and perhaps flash around the silver spoons that are in their mouths. If you go to greatschools.net and read the parent/student reviews of the school you will see what I mean. This could be total rumor, but my hairdresser who lives in the Eanes district said there was recently a heroin ring bust at Westlake - maybe someone can confirm or deny that.

Good luck!

[gigi927]

p.s. I assume that when you say north of Lake that you mean Lake Austin and not Lake Travis....? it looked from austinguy's post that he took your post to mean Lake Travis...my comments would change substantially if you're talking north of Lake Travis!

[orionid]

Thanks! and Yes, I mean Lake Austin. Basically, we are looking at realtor.com and seeing homes in the Bella Lago area (Westlake) just south of the lake, and then also in Steiner Ranch area (Cedar Park HS) just north of the lake. Of course any other neighborhoods in these basic areas would be great to hear about our points listed in the starter post of this thread.

[AustinGuy]

Sorry, I was confused by that part that said Leander school district north of the lake.

You might want to also consider River Place next to Steiner or Circle C down in SW Austin.

[gigi927]

I highly recommend River Place if you don't need new construction (I'm biased though, I live there). Steiner is also great, it's about 10 minutes farther into downtown than River Place. Both feed into exemplary elementary and middle schools. They have purchased land to build a new high school right near River Place, but I don't think they've passed the bond or whatever the thing is called to actually fund it just yet. When that happens, it'll be a great boon for property values in this area.

If you have any questions about RP - feel free to PM me - we love it here!