Steiner vs Lakeway vs ? (Round Rock, Cedar Park: homes, neighborhood, schools)

[jmplus3]

We have two toddlers and are looking for a place with excellent schools, a friendly Texas atmosphere, and has topography. Price range around 400K. Suggestions? Thanks!

[jmplus3]

To add, commute for one is in south RR, one is Parmer (east of Dessau by a mile), looking for less than an hour...

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by jmplus3

To add, commute for one is in south RR, one is Parmer (east of Dessau by a mile), looking for less than an hour...

great hills, northwest hills

[EzPeterson]

Or good chunks of Cedar Park and West RR.

[janejanejanejanejane]

Steiner would be closer to the north commute. Going south, that sounds like hell.
I suppose Lakeway is right in the center.

[texasgirl1]

I would say Canyon Creek, western parts of Cedar Park (Twin Creeks, Deer Creek)....should be about a 25-35 min commute

[mark311]

I'd really look at Forest Creek in Round Rock with those work locations in order to minimize your commute. It's a golf course community so it has a bit of topography. A lot of Dell employees live in there and there are executive type homes in there as well. Your $400K budget doesn't put you at the top or the bottom of the neighborhood. You could actually get down closer to $300K and still swing a pool if you want. It's a very family oriented neighborhood, it's close to Dell Diamond, Old Settlers, the Play for all Abilities Park, etc.

[10scoachrick]

Steiner...Lakeway? Sound to me like you need to re-locate your places of work to the western portion of 620. What a lousy commute, especially the Parmer/Dessau location. At least the RR commuter will have the 45 Toll road IF you can stomach the drive on 620 to get there.

It doesn't look like a great distance on the map; but I'd recommend actually driving the routes a time or two in order to get a real feel for them.

To the Great Hills, Northwest Hills recs, I'd add Balcones CC and Spicewood/Bull Creek areas. $400 might JUST get you in to something fairly up-to-date and roomy enough. I'll let others handle the school ratings; but golly...cut down on that commute!

[paul6835]

In NW Hills 400K will get you about 1800-2000 sqft, not really updated though. The nice part about NW Hills is that despite the name, its relatively flat. That is a huge bonus for someone like me who wants his toddler to be able to play outside and eventually ride his bike. If you want topography, Great Hills has a little more of that, though if you have toddlers, you may want to seriously rethink that. GH is about 20% less expensive than NWH. Homes in NWH are from the 70s and GH from the 80s.

SR is nice, but your east of Dassau commute is likely to be at the max of your hour commute. Lakeway isn't materially further than SR because getting out of SR takes about as long as it does to get from Lakeway to the SR exit.

[Klguess]

Crystal Falls! Just north of Lakeline and Osage - it's got topography, tons of family, great schools and you can zoom to nw austin on 183A or go over RR in about 15 min. Check it out.