Ranch homes were popular in central Texas in the post-war era of the 1950s and 1960s. Thousands were built in Austin, Texas and the surrounding communities.

Many of them are in neighborhoods where the ownership doesn’t change hands very frequently, and many are a re-modelers dream when they come on the market.

These neighborhoods usually have something that is in high demand – big trees. In particular, as you look though the images in the galleries in this article, look at the glorious tree cover.

Characteristics of Ranch Style Homes in Texas

Some ranch style homes in central Texas have siding, but many have Texas limestone or brick (red, white, fewer grey) on the exterior. Most have composition roofs (like the one in the photo to the right), but some have seamed-metal roofs (usually silver, but the occasional green one pops up). Some, but not many, have concrete barrel-tile roofs.

Many still have the original aluminum-framed windows which are poor insulators against the blazing Texas sun.

Most are single-story ranch homes – the quintessential ranch – but the 1970s brought some two-level ranches in the split-level style to the area. These are uncommon, but more likely to be found in hilly neighborhoods (Northwest Hills, Westover Hills, University Hills for example). Two-level ranches are often built on sloped lots and it isn’t always obvious from the street that a house has more than one level.

Many ranch style homes in Austin have vaulted ceilings with exposed beams. Many also have Texas limestone fireplaces.

One interesting trend we’ve noticed over the last few years is that when homes in Austin are remodeled, they often get a brightly-colored front door (which will soon be another article!), and new numbers. The numbers are of a few particular styles – see if you can pick them out in some of the images of ranch-style homes on this page.

Remodeled Texas Ranch Style Homes

When these old ranch homes are remodeled, anything goes. The typical finishes are often particular to a neighborhood. Many homes are updated with decidedly modern finishes and/or with soothing tones and textures – think spa – and natural materials like slate, travertine and wood.

Occasionally, a ranch style home that has been remodeled perhaps in the 1970s or 1980s might look a bit like this one in Allandale. I pulled over, got out and waited for the traffic to clear just to take this one photo. It takes a lot to make me get out of the car when photographing houses, but the deep turquoise/teal of this one is uncommon for the area – and interesting. The vintage car sealed the deal.

 Examples of Ranch Style Homes in Austin

I spend a lot of time telling people how much I like their home’s ranch style when I stop to take a photo. Most people are a little confused when they see the big camera pointed at their home, but most break out in a grin when I tell them it’s because their house is “really cool”. Because, these are.  Seriously. Every single one.

Where to Find Ranch Style Homes in Austin

Allandale is a perennial favorite for folks who like to live in NW Austin and favor older homes. For the 12 months ending August 19th, 2014, homes in Allandale sold for a median of $455,000. And that price doesn’t necessarily get you a remodeled ranch style home.

Another area with many 1960’s era ranch-style homes is over off of 51st and Springdale, particularly in the southeast corner of that neighborhood (centered on Gladstone Dr.):

While much of the area north of 51st, and south of 290 has ranch style homes, one particular pocket (centered on Sunny Brook Dr, north of Bartholomew District Park) has quite a few larger ones (larger for this area):

More Photos of Ranch Style Homes in Austin

I dug through over 23,000 photos from my archives to pull out a few more examples of ranch-style homes. I get a kick out of remembering where a photo was taken as many were collected before GPS tagging (geotagging) was as common as is it today.

Oh, and a longhorn. This is Texas, after all.

Allandale is located east of Mopac/Loop 1, south of Anderson Lane, West of Burnet and north of Hancock Dr. This is an area of older homes.  Most are single-story ranch-style homes. Most streets have large old oak trees providing lots of nice shade from the hot Texas sun.

Many of the homes in this area have had the same owner for decades. That means when they come on the market they have often had minimal updating and can be a re-modelers dream.

I set out this past weekend to photograph the types of houses that are characteristic of the area and only manged to get through the little area in the northwest section of this map:

Allandale Real Estate Sales Activity

For the 12 months ending 8/19/2014:

• 98 homes sold for a median price of $455,000 (range: $277,500 to $856,250)
• The median age was 55 years old (range: built between 1938 and 2014)
• The median size was 1,750 sf (range: 816 sf to 3,419)

Why Live in Allandale in NW Austin?

This neighborhood has excellent proximity to Mopac/Loop1 as well as 183. At the northern edge is Anderson Lane, well known for furniture stores and a growing number of Austin-grown restaurants.

The local community fought hard against the WalMart that now sits at the old Northcross Mall location on Anderson Lane (east of Allandale). Fortunately, the dire traffic jams that were predicted haven’t materialized, and the local businesses still have a lot of patrons.

Are Prices Going Up in Allandale?

The median price of homes sold in this neighborhood between 8/20/2012 and 8/19/2013 (the 12 to 24 months before this article, and before the sales numbers shared, above) was $400,000 (100 sales, range: $240,500 to $790,000).

That means that the price of homes has gone up in this area.

Images of Homes in the NW Corner of Allandale, in Austin TX

Google Map of Allandale

For your exploring pleasure:

A surprising number of homes have sold in the Wooten neighborhood in Central Austin in the last 12 months, despite the area being fairly small:

Wooten Real Estate Sales Data

For the 12 months ending 8/16/14, within the area bounded by Anderson Lane on the south, Burnet Rd on the west and 183 on the north and south:

• 56 houses sold
• Median closed price was $274,950 (range: $132,500 to $400,000)
• None were REOs (bank owned)
• 12 sold for cash
• The median size was 1,500 square feet (range: 743 to 2,741 square feet)
• The median age was 52 years old (range: 0 to 69 years)

You can see from that data that homes here are older, and smaller than the typical newer subdivision home in the suburbs. Many are one-owner homes, and not updated when they come on the market. Many still have the original 1950s pink and blue bathroom tile. Many of the smaller homes (concentrated east of the tracks) have just one little bathroom.

The entire perimeter of Wooten has commercial property, and railroad tracks run down the middle of the neighborhood. The southern edge has large school grounds by Wooten Park.  Occasionally small old houses sell, are torn down, and replaced by bigger contemporary homes. This is not yet common though, and certainly not as common as tear-down-build-big in east Austin.

Location Appeal of Wooten

This little triangle has excellent proximity to all sorts of goodies.  The southern edge is Anderson Lane, well known for restaurants in Central Austin.  Some of our favorites:

• Hopdoddy – burgers made from as much locally-sourced meat and produce as possible. Always packed, always delish.
• Cover 3 – upscale sports bar with great leather booths, great booze and dinner-date quality food. Our favorite is the nachos made with spicy jack cheese and shredded beef.
• Zen – japanese food fast. Zen offers sushi and tacos (!) as well as an awesome menu of rice+meat+veggie+sauce bowls.

Wooten also has great access to both 183 and Mopac/Loop 1, plus dozens of furniture, decor and tile stores.

Wooten in Central Austin – House Images

In my spare time, I drive around and take pictures of houses that interest me.  Here are a few from Wooten:

Google Map of Wooten

For your exploring pleasure:

Lockhart Texas – Houses with Character

We first wrote about Lockhart Texas back in 2011, as part of our “shooting the town” series.

A few weeks later, we wrote about Black’s BBQ. Oh my, that is some tasty tasty meat.

We still go down at least once a month for fun, or more specifically, for the barbecue.

We also head down regularly to perform real estate appraisals – to determine the value of property in Lockhart.

Now we’re going to share some Lockhart Texas houses real estate sales data, plus some photos of houses around town.

Yeah, we look at houses all day long but still go take photos of more in our space time. It’s … relaxing.

Lockhart Texas Real Estate Sales Activity

• In the 12 months ending 8/16/2014, 116 homes sold in Lockhart, Texas
• The median closed price was $120,500 (range: $20,000 to $730,000)
• 38 sold for cash
• 15 were REOs (bank repossessions)
• The median age was 31 years (range: 2 to 134 years old)
• The median size was 1,520 square feet

Lockhart Real Estate Sales Comparison: 2013 to 2014

• Compared to 1 year prior (8/17/2012 to 8/16/2013) for 106 sales:
• The median price was $123,000 (range: $16,000 to $299,000)
• 12 were REOs (bank-owned)
• 40 sold for cash
• The median age was 33 years old (range:  2 to 143 years old)
• Median size was 1,665 square feet (range: 280 to 3,992 square feet)

Lockhart Texas – Images of Houses with Character

Here are some photo we took of houses in Lockhart. These are not the ones that sold (perhaps some are/were) – these are houses we saw and thought were interesting, and wanted to share.

Google Map for Lockhart, Texas

These images were taken at Camp Pedernales on Old Ferry Road in Spicewood, Texas in February of 2013 and January of 2014.

We decided to try out Google’s beta tour builder, which permitted images to be loaded next to an interactive map of the area. The map has historical imagery – photos from years before the drought. Totally worth the time to wait for the player to load:

Take a tour with Google Earth.

These stark images show what the on-going drought in Texas has done to this once-vibrant river, a popular place for boaters to launch.

Texas Drought Map August 12th 2014

The most recent map of Texas from the US Drought Monitor shows the current drought intensity by Texas county:

So, let’s look at the data in that chart a little more closely:

82.74% of the state is considered to be “Abnormally Dry”, which is terrible. Fortunately, it is an improvement over three months ago when 91.18% of the state had that rating. The best news in the chart is the drop in area that is in “Exceptional Drought”. That area dropped from 20.73% of the state three months ago to just 2.62% as of August 12th, 2014. It is also an improvement over 1 year ago when 3.84% of the state was experiencing “Exceptional Drought”.

Images of the Dry Pedernales River

If you’re unable to load the tour of Camp Pedernales above, here are the photos of the area:

And here is the area on Google Maps:

This is the summer where small houses, and  itty bitty houses – ranging from microhouses, to tiny houses to just merely small houses are all the rage on the Internets.

The tiny house movement has been picking up steam for years. Just recently two tiny house builders’ tiny houses have been shared so many times, it is almost impossible not to run across the articles:

• MiniMotives – a woman loses her regular home to foreclosure, then builds a tiny home from salvaged parts
• hOMe – a couple with two children lives in a 207 sf (plus 110 sf loft) tiny house

Fascinated yet?

Well, we sure are.

We’d love to live in a tiny house one day, but for now we’re just going to write about them, starting with merely small houses in Austin and working our way towards tiny.

Where are the Small Houses in Austin?

To answer that question, we turned to the local MLS to look at sales data.  In the past 12 months (so, between 8/14/2013 and 8/13/2014), 112 houses smaller than 800 square feet have sold.  Here is a map of where they were located:

•  The median price for these small houses was $201,500 (range: $59,000 to $540,000).
• The median size was 720 square feet.
• The smallest house was a mere 336 sf and sold for $59,000.
• The most expensive house was 779 square feet (and sold for $540,000) in Bouldin (a very hip, urban area of Austin).
• The median age of these 112 small Austin houses was 64 years old.
• You can see from the map that most are clustered east of I-35, east of downtown.

Photographing Small Houses in Austin

Well, clearly it was time to drag out the camera and go take some photos. But where to start?  How about in this neighborhood, south of E 7th Street:

• The median price of these 18 homes was $281,325 (range: $160,000 to $340,000).
• The median size was 720 square feet.
• The median age was 75 years old.
• Most sold in average-to-poor condition and half sold for cash.

I wish I could share which house sold for what, but I can’t – that data is confidential.

I set out to photograph those 18 houses, and soon ran into a snag – the streets in this area are narrow and tend to have cars parked on both sides. Several streets had road construction crews tearing up the asphalt and quite a few houses were undergoing serious rehabilitation, which means dumpsters and lots of work trucks parked out front.

So, I gave up shooting the 18 small houses in this area that sold this year and instead took photos of a whole bunch of little ones – ones that looked to be 800 sf and under, to share here.

Here is a tidy chart produced by Austin Title with sales stats from the Austin Board of Realtors.

YTD single family homes sales increased to 11,841 through the end of May 2014, vs. 11,476 through the end of May 2013. The median sale price for the same period increased from $217,000 to $230,000.

Of the 11,841 homes that sold, 456 (3.85%) were REOs (bank owned) properties.

Isn’t that the million dollar question?

Many parts of the Federal government shutdown on October 1st, 2013 and as a result, around 800,000 federal workers are furloughed (not working) and another million are currently working without pay. Many government websites are turned off, many consumer-help phone lines aren’t being answered, and most critically, lots and lots of paperwork is not being processed.

How does that impact Austin real estate?

Let’s talk specifics, about the stuff we “know”: most single-family properties are bought with cash, or financed, or some combination of the two (and some much smaller number have other arrangements for their transfer, but that is a different topic).

When a house is sold, the buyer and seller don’t just shake hands and hand over the deed. Lots of paperwork has to be processed: paperwork that confirms the seller has the right to sell, paperwork that confirms the buyer has the ability to buy, paperwork that records the sale in the public records and so on. Some of that paperwork is handled by banks, some by title companies, some by governmental agencies and lots more is handled by people in all sorts of other positions – it’s not a simple process, even for the simplest of transactions.

If the government isn’t open for business, some of the paperwork for home purchases can’t be processed, and some transactions will stall, or fail.

Let’s talk about some of the actual numbers for Austin-area home sales and how they could be impacted by the shutdown of the Federal government.

How the Shutdown Can Impact Cash Sales (Homes Purchased for Cash)

According to the Austin Board of REALTORS (ABOR), 3,409 single-family homes sold in the city of Austin in the 3 months before the shutdown (July, August and September of 2013). (3,409 were listed in the MLS, so the actual number is higher). Of these, 693 sold for cash (about 20%). Although cash transaction still have a lot of formal paperwork (they still have to go through a title company, for example), they don’t generally depend on government paperwork to qualify the buyer’s ability to purchase the property (which is often the case with financed purchases).

Of course, that 3-month period is before the shutdown, but it gives you an idea of the number of properties that changed hands in that amount of time . . . and an idea of the number that might change hands in the coming months. And yes, we can talk about all sorts of related topics (consumer confidence, interest rates, changes in unemployment numbers that will all shift depending on what happens in Washington over the coming weeks – but let’s save those for another article, or the comments on this one).

Some of those 693 cash sales in Austin in July, August and September of 2013 were HUD-owned properties. HUD is the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. If the owner of a home with a federally-backed mortgage defaults, HUD ends up with the home, which is then re-sold.

Of those 693 cash sales in Austin in the last 90 days, 30 were foreclosures, and of those, 9 were HUD homes (and one was owned by the VA).

So, it seems reasonable to suggest that the government shutdown, had it been in effect during that 3-month period, would have only directly impacted a smaller percentage of the cash purchases in the Austin area. During the shutdown, HUD is running on a skeleton staff (beware, that link is a download of the actual HUD contingency plan for the shutdown), with only 4% of employees still on the job (349 out of 8,709 employees). That means that HUD doesn’t have many people to process the paperwork necessary to sell a HUD-owned home, but these sales are only a small number of the overall sales figures for single-family cash purchases in the city of Austin.

(I’d really like to hear from people that can explain some of the areas where cash sales intersect with governmental agencies, and how the shutdown could impact these sales in the coming weeks or months. If you’re a cash buyer, investor, or part of the chain of folks necessary to get a deal closed, please send me email, comment in the comments, and so on, to get this discussion going. And, of course, if you’re not in that chain, but still interested in the topic, please weigh in.)

Financed Purchases are a Whole Different Ballgame

Most home purchases are financed.

Financing the purchase of a home requires a lot of formal paperwork processing, and some of that paperwork is processed at the Federal level (the part of the government impacted by the shutdown). One of the forms most lenders use to verify income is Form 4506-T (Request for Transcript of Tax Return) that comes from the IRS. During the shutdown, the IRS isn’t generating those forms. For purchases already well underway at the time of the shutdown, the forms were probably already in-hand (received back from the IRS) and the processing of those loans can proceed. For other transactions, the applications for those IRS forms are piling up and there will be a backlog that need attention when the government reopens. The longer the shutdown, the bigger the pile, the longer the delay. Fortunately, some lenders have workarounds in place (see last paragraph).

So, most financed purchases need forms from the government (the IRS) that aren’t being processed right now. And some of those purchases also need FHA case numbers, if the financing is an FHA loan. (In addition to processing paperwork to sell HUD-owned homes, HUD also produces FHA case numbers for homes that are purchased with an FHA loan.)

What kind of numbers are we talking about, for financed home purchases in Austin that requires some paperwork from a governmental agency impacted by the shutdown?

Of the 3,409 closed sales in the 3rd quarter of 2013 (July, August and September of 2013), we’ve seen that 673 were cash purchases, a small number of which would have been impacted by the shutdown.

That means up to 2,736 single-family homes sold in Austin that needed some type of financing. Of those, 273 were bought with FHA financing and another 102 had a VA loan. Without getting in to the specifics of those loan programs, the takeaway from that number is that at least 13.7% (375 of 2,736 purchases) of the non-cash purchases required at least some interaction with Federal agencies in some way for the transaction to go through.

Add to that the loans where the lenders required Form 4506-T from the IRS to proceed. Not all lenders require this form (during period of normal government operations), but many do as they seek to reduce the risk of borrowers being unable to repay home loans. During the shutdown, some lenders will proceed without the form (and verify later), but others won’t. That last link is a really facts-dense link but the details in it are critical: it explains specifically the stance adopted by some of the nation’s biggest lenders on how they will proceed with regards to Form 4506-T during the shutdown. Some
are requiring the tax transcripts to have already been pulled (the results of Form 4506-T) while others are requiring just that the signed forms be in the loan application file, with the transcripts being pulled later. The lenders’ stances are, of course, based on the underlying requirements of other agencies and entities to which they may later re-sell the loans (if the lender re-sells the loans, not all do).

You Can Still Buy a Home in Austin During the Shutdown

If you are in the market to buy a home in the Austin area, make sure you call your lender and ask specifically about which parts of the loan process might be impacted by the shutdown. Listen carefully to the answers, and make sure that you and your real estate agent write the contract in a way that allows enough time to accommodate potential delays. Fortunately, the standard TREC contract for purchasing single-family homes in Texas is very specific about the timeframes for performance, including specific language on financing. When you have a good agent and a good lender on your team, your transaction has a better chance of going through with fewer hiccups. That is true during “normal” home buying periods, and especially true during this shutdown.

1607 homes listed in the Austin-area MLS were purchased by cash buyers in the last 90 days.

One question we hear is, “If I have the cash, and I don’t need a lender to give me a loan, why would I spend the money for an appraisal?”.

The short answer is: to get an independent opinion of the value of the home. Because you’re making a BIG decision and extra information to inform that decision is a good thing. Because after the inspection (by a licensed home inspector, to determine the condition of the property), you might want to re-negotiate the contract terms (before your option period runs out). Having the results of the inspection AND the results of an appraisal will give you information that can help you weigh your options if you decide to re-negotiate.

And, in particular, if you’re a cash buyer because the house needs too much work to qualify for a loan, then an independent opinion of the value of the property can help you decide if you really want to do the deal. You can order an appraisal for a cash purchase that provides both an AS-IS and AS-REPAIRED value.

What does it take to order an appraisal? Just call (512) 541-2107. We can usually schedule the inspection within two days, and have the report back two days later.

After appraising thousands of homes in the Austin area in the last few year, one thing we know for sure: people have a lot of stuff.

All. Sorts. Of. Stuff.

Does the Appraiser care about the stuff?

For the most part, not really. The appraiser cares about the actual property, not the stuff in it.

The Appraiser cares what the house is built out of (the overall quality of the construction), and the condition it is in (whether or not the maintenance is current). As long as the Appraiser can move about the house and can see the current condition of property, then the stuff shouldn’t matter.

Now the stuff in the photo would matter, because it would keep an appraiser from getting into that back hallway. In a case like this, it’s a good idea to make sure a clear path to all areas of the house is open. That makes sure the appraiser can actually see the whole home, and that it is safe for him or her him to move around. (In case you’re wondering, that is my own home, while the kitchen was being renovated – an extra stove sat in the dining room for several months!).

Canyon Creek Subdivision in Austin Texas

Most of the homes in this area have mature trees in both the front and back yards, with brick or limestone on the exterior of the home. Sidewalks making walking easy, and Canyon Creek Elementary School (RRISD) is located within the boundaries of the subdivision (but not all of the houses map to it.) Most homes have mature landscaping, and most yards are well-kept.

For the 12 months ending August 17th, 2014:

• 81 homes sold, with a median price of $395,000 (range: $239,900 to $557,000), in a median of 4 days on the market.
• The median size was 3,050 square feet (range: 1,643 to 4,448 square feet)
• 19 homes are currently for sale, ranging from $339,000 for 2,338 square feet built in 1994 to $615,000 for 3,696 built in 2004.

Contrast that with these stats we published almost 2 years ago:

For the 6 months ending September 20th, 2012:

• 63 single-family listings sold for a median price of $335,000 (range: $230,000 to $449,500) in a median of 7 days.
• 14 properties are currently for sale ranging from $225,000 to $449,900.
• Of the 92 properties with market activity in the last 6 months, sizes ranged from 1,658 square feet for a single-family detached condo in the Villas at Canyon Creek to 4,449 square feet for a home built in 2004 with 5 bedrooms and two bathrooms.
• Lot sizes for these 92 homes ranges from .135 acres to .336 acres.

Schools for the Canyon Creek Subdivision

Some of the homes in Canyon Creek map to Round Rock ISD (RRISD) and others maps to Leander ISD.

Amenities for 78726

When I first moved to Austin in 2004, the shopping along 620 was pitiful: a few places to buy rocks and swingsets and a handful of other businesses. In the last 8 years, a giant HEB opened up on the corner of Anderson Mill and 620 and a huge Home Depot opened as well. Now the whole corridor has a decent selection of places to buy stuff you need without having to drive “in to town”. Stuff like moving boxes, BBQ and even bigger swingsets.

Images of Homes in Canyon Creek 78726

Google Map for Canyon Creek Subdivision in Austin TX

View Larger Map

I hear about folks who are worried about what their home is worth. They want to know what they can do to improve the value of their home. This is especially true when the home is about to go on the market and the owners (sellers) are hoping to get top dollar.

Often they overlook what they’ve done to decrease their property value.

So, here are some of the ways to lower the value of a home. Once things like this have been taken care of, then it makes sense to think of projects that can be done that can actually add value.

1. Let your six Rotweilers tear up the backyard and chew holes in the fence.
2. Install burgandy and forest green carpet, especially in the bathrooms. Especially up and over the edge of the tub surround.
3. Be as ecletic as possible, and make sure the paint and wallpaper in each room has a theme such as “Barbie’s Palace”, “The Tiki Lounge” and “The Dino Den”, complete with plastered and textured boulders on the walls.
4. Paint the solid wood cabinets with cheap flat paint in bright colors.
5. Let the drains leak under the sinks to make sure the cabinet interiors are nice and rotty.
6. Patch the roof with different types and colors of shingles. Bonus points for red or yellow.
7. Put on an addition and make sure you don’t pull permits.
8. Drain the pool and let it fill with rainwater, leaves, dead rodents and mosquitos.
9. Tape up broken windows instead of replacing them, since a little water coming in never hurt anything.
10. Install a drop-down ceiling on a metal grid, instead of scraping the popcorn or abating the old asbestos ceiling texture.
11. Make sure the flooring is mix-n-match, and buy whatever is on sale for dirt cheap at the local home improvement center. Bonus points for low-quality laminate flooring in the kitchen and other wet areas (unless, of course, those areas already have carpet).
12. Don’t clean up after your pets. Everybody loves cats and dogs, and no one will mind the accumulated thatches of hair stuck to the baseboards, especially in the kitchen near the food bowls.

Who Buys Homes Like This?

Each item on that list is a real nuisance to remedy. If you’re okay with selling your home at a discount, then just leave this stuff for someone else to fix. That often knocks out a lot of potential buyers since many have no idea what it might cost to fix each of the items on the list. Others might have an idea of the cost to repair something but don’t want the hassle.

The most likely purchaser for a fixer-upper (and yes, these items put a house into that category) is an investor, flipper or bargain hunter.

If you’re considering doing any of these things to your home . . . don’t. If you must paint a room in a theme, be prepared to neutralize it before you put the house on the market.

Clean It Up Before You List

When I sold my own home last fall, I re-painted all of the rooms that were overly-customized (Purple! Stencils! Ceiling Clouds! Orange!), and installed new carpeting that matched in all of the bedrooms. I even carpeted over a gorgeous (in my mind) custom concrete floor in the downstairs master bedroom because the agents in my real estate sales office thought the swirls of charcoal and black would be a deterrant to potential buyers.

The gigantic custom loft came down in the boys’ bedroom because it obscurred a window, and a handful of cracked windows were replaced (as were ALL of the screens, since many were warped, some were torn, some were missing and all were a little tatty after 25 years). A custom mesquite bathroom countertop that had water damage was replaced with granite (expected in the area).

Although I don’t have dogs, I have kids, and they had completely trashed the grass in the backyard. It took a few months for the new sod to take root and fill in, so if you’ve got a similar problem make sure to leave enough time before you list the home to get the grass looking good again.

If you’ve seen horrors like the list above in homes in your area, please share your stories in the comments, below!

And . . . a hat tip to Ryan Lundquist. His Sacramento Appraisal Blog sets the standard for appraisal blogs and this article is my twist on his post from a few weeks ago.

It usually depends on two things:

1. The local ordinances (code) for where vehicles can be parked

and

2. Whether or not your HOA (Home Owners Association) allows it.

In many areas, if you don’t have an HOA, then where you can park is usually determined by the city, or town. HOAs can further restrict parking from the rules set by the city or town, but they can’t make them more permissive.

Austin Parking Code

A handy dandy search for “Austin Parking Code” yielded this rule:

“The City of Austin’s Restricted Front Yard and Side Yard Parking Ordinance prohibits parking a motor vehicle in the front or side yard of a residence except in a driveway or a paved parking space. These areas are designated on the Restricted Parking Area Map.”

If you click on the link for the ordinance (above), you will find a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) with a lot more detailed information about what is, and isn’t permitted for parking areas (old, new, grandfathered-in).

Not suprisingly, the area where the photo is taken isn’t shown on the map as being subject to additional approved parking restrictions. Although several other homes in the neighborhood had multiple vehicles, included RVs, parked in front and on the side of homes, this one really caught my eye (hence the photo).

If you don’t want to see yards covered in vehicles like this in your neighborhood, make sure you know what the HOA restrictions are before you buy. And by the same token, if you have a bunch of cars and stuff you want to keep on your property, make sure you buy in an area where it is allowed.

Older Homes from the 1970s and 1980s in Austin

The small pocket of older homes in 78729, east of 183 and north of Anderson Mill, is commonly called Anderson Mill East. This area has small pockets of newer homes (built after 1990) mixed in with the subdivisions of Anderson Mill Village, Forest North Estates, Springwoods, Village Oaks, Northwest Woods and Jolly Oaks.

When you drive around this neighborhood, you see trees. Lots and lots of towering trees. Some lots have so many tress, you can barely see the houses.

In the mornings, even in the hot Texas summer, you will often see people out for a walk, for a run, or working in their yards. You might notice how many streets don’t have sidewalks.

View Larger Map
This area has quick access to 45/620, 183 and Parmer. Several shopping centers have small specialty businesses as well as the standard fare (dry cleaning, restaurants, etc.).

Anderson Mill East Real Estate Sales Activity

For homes built before 1990, in the 6 months ending September 14th, 2012:

• 27 properties have sold.
• The sizes of the sold properties range from 1,695 square feet to 2,800 square feet.
• The median selling price was $155,000.
• The highest selling price was $259,000 and the lowest was $106,378.
• The median days on the market was 13.

The home that sold for $106,378 was a short sale, with 1,428 square feet that needed foundation repairs.

Many of the older homes in this area have not been updated when they come on the market. Popcorn ceilings and cultured-marble vanity tops are common.

Of the homes in Forest North Estates that sold in the last 6 months, most of the lots were between .3 to a little over .4 acres and are on septic systems. Most of these homes sold at the higher end of the price range.

Looking for a home with sweeping Hill Country Views in the Austin city limits?

Take a drive through River Place off of 2222 near 620 and see the variety of homes and views that are on the market this Spring.

Homes in this subdivision range from the low-to-mid $300s all the way up to several million dollars. Homes have been built in this area since the early 1990’s and are still being built in 2012.

River Place Real Estate Sales – January 1st to April 25th, 2012

As of April 25th, 2012:

• Currently, 24 homes are for sale with a median price of $607,000. (Median means half were above that selling price and half were below).
• The least expensive home for sale in River Place is $364,000 for a 3 bedroom home with 2 bathrooms and 3,016 square feet of living space on two levels.
• The most expensive home for sale is listed for $4,150,000 and has 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms and a 3-car garage. This home is on the river, has a boat dock, a multi-level deck, a swimming pool and high-end finishes in the interior and on the exterior.
• Since January 1st, 2012, 20 homes have sold for a median price of $431,000. These 20 homes ranged from $320,000 to $855,000. Another 16 are under contract.

Characteristics of Homes in River Place in Austin, Texas

If you drive through River Place, you will see a lot of limestone exteriors, and limestone mixed with brick. Some homes also have stucco exteriors, often mixed with brick or limestone as well.

Many homes have gorgeous, sweeping Hill Country views, and most of the older homes have mature trees and landscaping.

On the interior, most homes have higher ceilings, and many that have sold recently (or are for sale) have granite countertops and hardwood floors.

River Place is in the Leander Independent School District.

Google Map for River Place

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