We Ran 1,074 Austin Metro Listings Through the Purchase Test. Three Cleared It.

By Steve Waller · September 11, 2026

What we pulled

Every active single-family listing in northern Travis County and all of Williamson County — at least 1,000 square feet, built between 1950 and 2010. North Travis is defined by zip code: the corridor running from Jollyville and Anderson Mill across to Wells Branch, Harris Branch and Pflugerville. That is 1,074 active listings.

Then one test on each, the same test whether the buyer means to flip the house or keep it and rent it: purchase price against 75% of after-repair value, less repairs, less closing costs. If the asking price sits above that number, the difference is cash out of the buyer's pocket at the table. We ran it at 70% as well, because that is where most first-time borrowers actually price.

Of the 1,074, we carried the cheapest hundred per square foot forward and underwrote 99 of them against closed sales inside each property's own subdivision. Three clear at the asking price.

The band that works in Houston does not exist here

Our Houston and San Antonio screens run $80,000 to $300,000. That band is where the arithmetic lives in those markets — it returned 3,658 listings in Harris County and 2,105 in Bexar.

Run the identical band across the Austin metro and it returns 219 listings in north Travis and 205 in Williamson. Not because the market is small. Because Austin is not priced like Houston, and a screen built for one metro quietly starves in another.

We widened to $450,000. Nothing else about the method moved. That is worth saying plainly, because the most common mistake in market comparison is holding a filter constant and believing you have held the question constant.

Nothing clears in ordinary condition

We report two after-repair values on every property. The first is the median closed price per square foot in that subdivision, applied to the subject — what the house is worth finished to the standard of its street. The second is a renovated exit: the same median with a premium, capped at the best sale that subdivision has actually produced in the last twelve months.

On the first number, not one property in either county clears the test at either advance. All three that work require a genuinely renovated exit — a finish at the top of what the street has ever paid.

That cap matters more than the premium does. A renovation premium with no ceiling will manufacture a passing deal out of any house. Tied to the subdivision's own best result, it stops being a hope and starts being a comparable.

The rental category barely exists here

We look separately for tenant-occupied listings — houses for sale with a lease already in place, which is the cleanest entry a rental buyer can get.

Harris County returned 195 of them. Bexar returned 124. North Travis and Williamson, combined, returned four.

Two of the four cannot be responsibly valued at all — one is a condo in a project with no matched closed sales, the other carries no subdivision name in the listing record. The two that can be valued miss the purchase test by $111,000 and $166,000 respectively.

The lesson is not that Austin rentals are bad. It is that Austin landlords are not selling with tenants in place at this price point, so a buyer who wants that entry has to go and find it off market rather than wait for it to be listed.

Property tax is the Austin variable

We pulled the tax rate on every file rather than assuming a metro average. Across these properties the rates run from 1.77% to 2.94%.

That is more than a full point of spread inside two counties, and it lands on identical houses differently depending on which district and which municipal utility district a street sits in. On a $400,000 finished value, the difference between the bottom and the top of that range is roughly $370 a month.

That figure is invisible in the purchase formula. It does not change the maximum you can pay. It changes whether the property carries itself afterwards, which is the entire question on a rental. Anyone underwriting Austin on Harris County tax habits is going to be wrong by a wide margin in one direction or the other.

What got thrown out, and why

The rejections are the useful part of any screen. Four from this run:

• A short sale that was not in the remarks. It sat fourth on the Travis board on the arithmetic. The disclosure field said short sale; the marketing copy said nothing. A third party controls the price and the timeline on those, so the number on the board was never real.
• A house demoed down to the studs. It cleared the test on paper by roughly thirteen thousand dollars. Our repair allowance for a property of that vintage assumes cosmetic work. A studs-out shell is three to four times that figure, which erases the margin and then some. It is also cash or owner financing only.
• The cheapest price per square foot in north Travis. Always the first property anyone pulls, and it missed by $75,000. It is far larger than anything else that sells on its street — a low price per foot that reflects a house nobody in that neighborhood is shopping for, not a discount.
• A deed restriction nobody reads for. One of the three that clear sits in an active-adult community in Georgetown. Age-restricted resale pool, and it cannot be rented to a general tenant. The arithmetic is genuinely the strongest on the board. The exit is narrower than the arithmetic suggests, and that belongs on the first page of anyone's analysis, not the last.

Where the closing-cost number comes from

Closing costs are the line most spreadsheets get lazy about, usually as a flat percentage. A percentage breaks down at the bottom of the market — three percent of a $90,000 purchase is $2,700, which will not cover origination, title, survey and prepaids on any file we have ever closed.

We now run a banded schedule: $10,000 up to a $200,000 purchase, $15,000 from $200,000 to $300,000, $20,000 from $300,000 to $400,000, with the band chosen off the purchase price the formula produces rather than off the asking price.

Twelve of the sixty-one maximums on this run landed within a few thousand dollars of a band edge, where no single figure is self-consistent. Every one of those is taken at the higher closing cost and the lower maximum. When a rule is ambiguous, the conservative reading is the one a borrower can actually close on.

Want the addresses?

The property-level board — addresses, subdivisions, comparable counts, repair allowances and the maximum supportable purchase at both advances — is licensed MLS data. It goes out one to one, not on a public page.

If you are buying in north Travis or Williamson and you want this week's list, reply or call and it comes straight over. If you already have a property in mind, send the address and we will run it through the same test and tell you what it supports — before you write the offer, not after.

Sources

• Houston Association of Realtors MLS — Travis and Williamson County active listings and closed sales, accessed 10 September 2026

Market data is from public sources and is provided for information only. Nothing here is an offer of credit, a rate quote, or investment advice. Financing is subject to underwriting, lender approval, appraisal or valuation, title, insurance, property eligibility and program availability.

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