Round Rock housing community Teravista inked 272 new-home starts in 2012, earning it the No. 1 spot in the Austin area in a study by national market research firm Metrostudy.

Teravista's new-home starts, or the construction of new homes, saw a 42 percent increase from 2011 to 2012. The division benefits from Austin's housing market and a program that is working to broaden Teravista's new home offerings, said Vaike O'Grady, marketing director for Teravista's developer, Newland Communities, in a news release.

The community, which encompasses 1,550 acres near the intersection of South I-35 and University Boulevard in Round Rock, also sold 239 homes in 2012, compared with 212 in 2011, a 12.7 percent increase.

Teravista offers homes ranging in price from the high $100,000s to more than $600,000, and it was the first community to open a model home featuring Lennar and Village Builder's multigenerational NextGen floorplan, which is designed to facilitate multiple generations of the same family living in the same home.