“If anything, we’ll have a steady, slow increase [in the market] until some type of crash [will] come,” Shiflet said.

Brian Talley, a Realtor with Regent Property Group, said buying a home remains appealing in a competitive market such as Austin.

“Job stability and job growth have created an environment of extremely low supply and high demand in Austin,” he said.

Home sales accelerate in summer

Shiflet said since he started in the industry 19 years ago, the Austin housing market—usually booming in the spring—slows down in the summer when many Austinites get out of town to avoid the heat.

This phenomenon—which contradicts the rest of the country’s housing market trends—changed last year, however, when Austin had a “very slow spring and an incredible summer,” Shiflet said.

He said he is starting to see this trend occur again in 2016 and attributes the change to the heavy rains in the spring, which likely kept people indoors.

The Austin market peaked in 2013, the year California raised its state income tax for the wealthy, and Californians fled to Austin for its affordability, he said.

Location, schools, lake interest

With Lake Travis now full, Shiflet said homeowners who have waited for the lake to fill are rapidly putting their lakefront homes on the market.

“When the [lake] level is down, we can’t give away those homes on Lake Travis that don’t have waterfront anymore,” Shiflet said.

Douglas Hunter, an operating partner in the development of Serene Hills, 4896 Serene Hills Blvd., Lakeway, said although the full lake helps its luxury custom homes sell quickly, other factors, such as the high-ranking Lake Travis ISD and the neighborhood’s proximity to the Hill Country Galleria, Lakeway Regional Medical Center and surrounding golf courses, help drive sales.

Serene Hills is advertised as “a boutique community in the Texas Hill Country.” The neighborhood is a 456-acre development with 350 acres reserved for preserve land. With a 10,000-square-foot minimum lot size, homes are priced from $550,000-$1 million.

Hunter said when the first 68 lots were being developed in 2011, he was unsure of how the homes would sell and was pleasantly surprised when they started selling quickly.

“We were just fortunate we had the right product at the right time,” he said. 

Because of the high demand, Serene Hills added 32 more lots to the 68 existing lots to form the La Campana section, which was 95 percent sold out as of the end of June 2016, Hunter said.

With the addition of the Serene Hills sections of Las Colinas Estates and Los Senderos, only 20 lots remain as of June 28 out of the 271 lots developed, he said.

Hunter said buyers include local residents from the West Austin area looking to buy an additional home; young families buying their first home; and relocating families from other parts of Texas and other states, such as Nebraska, North Carolina, Florida and California.

Talley, who launched Regent Property Group in Austin in 2007, said homes in LTISD—which include the cities of Bee Cave and Lakeway—are constantly going on sale and selling fast. The continuation of new construction is helping offset shortages in the resale market, he said. 

Inventory is healthy in Lake Travis ISD and anemic in Eanes ISD, Talley said, because homebuyers have options in the $300,000-$400,000 price range in cities such as Lakeway, where there are opportunities to build and homebuyers have access to highly ranked schools. [totalpoll id="164130"]

Inventory is low in EISD, but homes are selling faster and are more expensive there, he said. In the last 180 days, the average LTISD home sold in 79 days, compared with 59 days for a home in EISD, he said.

Talley said the West Lake Hills and Rollingwood areas, which make up EISD and border Southwest Austin, have been “a primary [target] for redevelopment.”

“The land is very valuable,” Talley said. “We’ve been seeing houses turning over on a lot-by-lot basis for quite some time.”

Condos coming

In addition to single-family homes, condominiums are also selling well in the area, said Gene Arant, head of sales for Waterfall on Lake Travis, 5939 Hiline Drive, Austin, a five-story condominium complex expected to be ready for residents by September.

The lifestyle that Waterfall on Lake Travis offers is drawing people in, he said.

The luxury gated complex, with 36 residences on more than 14 acres, features views of the lake, a pool and cabana, wall-to-ceiling windows, a private marina and boat ramp, and covered parking. Condo prices range from $429,000-$899,000.

Arant said many buyers are looking to get out of the bustle of downtown Austin and enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle on the lake.

“[Waterfall on Lake Travis] is a little bit more of a downtown loft-type feel than a traditional lake condo,” he said.

Arant said other buyers include empty nesters; Dallas, Houston and San Antonio residents who may be looking for an additional home; and University of Texas graduates who are interested in purchasing a weekend home to come back to their alma mater for football games.

Steady business for builders

Lance Poling, vice president of Preston Homes of Texas, has been building on the north side of Lake Travis for years and said he does not foresee business slowing down anytime soon.

“I have been doing this for 17 years, and I haven’t seen it quite this busy,” he said. “We have all we can handle.”

Poling said there is plenty of land available on the north side of the lake, and many of his clients are looking for additional homes or retirement homes. He said about half of his clients have owned the land for a long time and have recently decided to build, with half being new buyers purchasing the land and building right away.

“People are trying to get a little bit bigger piece of land and elbow room,” Poling said.