Holy Crap!!! Lake house in the Texas Hill Country!!

The Wife and I have just started our search for some Lakefront property for the weekends and as our eventual retirement place.
We started looking at Lake Livingston and found many places in our price range.
Decided what the hell lets look in the Texas Hill Country....
Yeah....NO!!!
The prices are insane!!!
Your looking at a minimum of 6 to $700'000K for a decent place with averages getting up into the $2.5 million range!!
Kinda discouraging to say the least!!
Guess we're a little to ghetto for the Hill country.
We're looking to top out at around $400K...
Thought for sure we could find a place in the Hill Country with there being so many lakes in the chain of lakes.
Nope!!!
Hows that saying go...something or another and Caviar Dreams?
Anyone know of any easy Banks to Rob?

 

What about a train? Hit it up like the Van Der Linde gang back in 1800's
(red dead redemption 2 reference)

Prices are a little ridiculous, not just where you're at, gang.

 

Be thankful. Around here, 600k gets you a fixer upper.

 

We just built our retirement home on Lake Buchanan in Burnet County. A half acre lot runs about $175K for 'sometimes water front' (the lake is not constant level). Then you have to build the house, drill a well, and put in a septic system. The well and septic together cost about 40K. The house is whatever you want to spend. We have been here for about 2 months now (bought the lot 5 years ago). There is a .36 acre lot in the neighborhood for $37K, located a block off the lake. Our neighborhood has 5 boat ramps that you can use if you join the property owners association ($100 a year). We are about 15 minutes from HEB/?hospitals/food. The nearest 'large city' with tons of fast food and entertainment is 25 minutes away. DM me if you want more information, or if you want to come out and check out the hood.

 

Might just do that.
We're pretty familiar with the Hill Country.
Had two places on the South Llano which I kick myself in the ASS for selling!!
Especially the second place!!
8 acres with 150 yards of River front a house and two cabins.
$350k....
But the drive from Katy took almost 4 hours!!!

 

No chance finding a cheap lake house in this part of the state. Everything is stupidly overpriced here.

 

Lake Front = minimum $1M for pretty much everything.
I kinda want a 5-10 acre land to build, have a dedicated garage with lifts....

 

You can thank covid. EVERYBODY decided they wanted waterfront when those lock downs hit. I'm glad for having built prior and the boosted value but not the excessive boat traffic and turds who can't drive said boats.

 

just wait, my neighbors are pumping their wells dry as fast as they can, it’ll be worthless in no time.

 

That’s becoming a big problem. I’m told by those in the know that Lampasas and Goldthwaite have put a stop on new wells. I’ve got friends who live 5-6 miles from me and they had to drop another thousand feet on their well a few years ago.

 

Depends on where ya live.
You can get water front for as little as $300k and less but it's not gonna be in the Texas Hill Country thats for sure.

 

Thats one thing you can say about the South Llano.
It never gets low....yet.
I'm sure once it gets built up it'll happen.
That river is loaded with springs!!
We had five of them on our ten acre piece of land and they never stopped flowing when we had the place.

 

Right....but waterfront location is always not cheap.
I am not saying man-made water front, but actual nature water front....

 

The only natural lake in Texas of any size is Caddo Lake along the East Texas Border.
While it looks really cool that MFer is Loaded with Alligators!!!
And Huge Cypress Trees!!!
Most Texas lakes are kept at pool level all the time so there's very little fluctuation as far as waterfront goes.
I cant say I've ever seen a lake go below pool level anymore than a couple feet.
Have heard about LBJ going dry from the old timers during an extremely long drought but it hasn't happened in my almost 60 years.
We generally get a shitload of rain in the central and eastern parts of the state.
Here in Houston it's around 50 inches a year.
To put that in perspective Seattle only gets around 39.5 inches a year.
And it's known as a really wet state.

 

I bought at 235k in 2015, and its worth a little over a million now. The acre lot next door i bought for $30k got too much interest when i told a real estate company i wanted $250k. Now i ask for a cool million.

i plan to sell out, right before the water wars, and carve out a decent place for decent humans on the edge of one of the great lakes.

 

Interesting....

 

Canyon and Travis have been below pool for years now.

 

The thing that makes it difficult is the house we currently live in is most likely worth around $425K at least.
We bought it 10 years ago for around $350K in a master planned community and home prices have done nothing but go up.
Personally?
I'd sell the place tomorrow and move into a condo to help pay for the retirement place until we were ready to move in permanently.
Figure the longer we wait to buy the weekend/retirement place the price is going to just continue to go up.
The Wife being a Banker has told me not to worry that She has a plan.
I gotta trust Her since She's never let me down when it comes to this sort of stuff.
And I know She hates living in the city as much as I do.
And I wont pretend to know anything close to what She knows when it comes to Finance.
Hell,Her Boss has Her doing His Finances and He's worth a Bundle!!!
A Huge Bundle!!!

And ya gotta remember.
A house in Texas worth this much is far more valuable than say a house in California in each its own market.
While $425 might not buy you much more than a shitty condo in California it'll buy you far more here.

Our neighbors moved here from California and were Shocked at what they could buy here after selling their so called modest house in California.
I'm just gonna leave it up to the expert...my Wife.

 

Well thats weird...
We just took the boat up there a month or so ago.
You can tell where the normal pool level is in whats known as the Bathtub ring.
It's a white ring of rock around the lake.
It was only about a foot low which is pretty common in the summer months.
I've seen it far lower than that.

 

Again thats not uncommon.
A year or two of wet years and it'll be back.
Of course the more people who move there and tap into the resource the worse it's going to get.
And with all the Yankees moving here for work the worse it's going to get.
As a Machinist,now retired,I watched the yankees flood Texas because they couldnt find work up north.
They always cried about the pay down here,but when you'd remind them that you couldnt find a job up north due to the inflated union pay they'd just scoff and say they were getting ripped off.
Yet they dont leave...
Funny that..

 

Yeah..the Wife and I have considered a move out of country.
I'd really hate to leave Texas though.
Moved here from Washington state when my Dad got the job as head trainer for the then new Houston Rockets.
Have a lot of History here that I'd hate to leave.

 

Lived here since 08. I’ve seen the levels a lot worse than they are and I’ve seen them opening the dams to let it out. We are overdue for a fill up though. Georgetown has been good but we’ve been getting rain that Travis and canyon haven’t been.

 

I've lived on Caddo Lake for over 40 years and have been over every square foot of it with my at least once weekly bass fishing jaunts and I've seen a whooping ONE gator! Don't believe what you read or hear - it isn't loaded with gators.

 

Hmmm...read a lot about Caddo over the years.
And it appears you're right.
There's been a drastic decline of them over the years.
When we first moved to Texas around 1970 my Dad took us out to look at some property on Caddo.
We saw a Shitload of em!!!
Kinda sad they're disappearing.
We have a fishing lease just outside of Cleveland Texas thats loaded with Gators!!
So much so we have to keep the Boxers on a leash so they dont get eaten!!

 

I get it.
Pretty familiar with our local lakes having fished them for decades.
With most lakes being held behind dams they just release more water.
While it can cause problems down river there are many codes letting people know that that can be a possibility.
Those in flood prone areas build on stilts.

 

Yeah..Hurricanes are no joke!!
Living just outside of Houston we've been hit plenty of times.
We're just far enough inland that they normally die down before hitting us.
Although we do get hit occasionally by storms that dont die down much.
Watched a neighbors roof get torn off but it wasn't the Hurricane but a tornado spawned by the hurricane.
We werent more than a hundred foot away.
The pressure change in the air is Crazy!!
Feels like your eardrums are going to burst!!

 

I can attest to point #1

I can wholeheartedly agree with point #2.

 

Yeah, I'm in the Hill Country. Bought the creekside 20 acres in '98 for $37.5K, built the modest 2400sqft house and 1200sqft metal outbuilding, high fenced it, sunk two wells (one completely off grid). 2400sf garden, 3000sf orchard, 100yd gun range. Would go now for $1.5M. It's nuts, all right. I'll never sell. The kids will get it at the higher cost basis.