A friend and associate at the Keller Williams Lake Travis office stood up at our sales meeting and held up some newspaper clippings.  They had been used as packing material and were dated as having been published in 1993.  What she read to us was from the real estate section.  Take a look.

Cherry Creek now home prices in 1993

Austin homes starting in the $80,000s?  Prices as low as $45 per square feet?  Wow!  I was here in Austin in 1993, but I had bought a home and was too busy as a Regional Operations Manager with Kinko's to pay attention to what was going on with home prices in other parts of Austin.

Year-to-date, there have been 6 homes sold in Cherry Creek that were built in 1993 or later.  The average price was $200,417  The average sold price per foot was $102.38.  So if you had bought a house in Cherry Creek in 1993 and sold it this year, you would have seen a 10% rate of appreciation per year.  That's not bad!

 

Lake Travis waterfront and view lot and home prices in 1993

So here is another interesting ad from 1993.  Ridge Harbor is in Spicewood and it is close to an hour from the downtown Austin area.  Back in 1993, it was really far out because the quality of roads into town kept things kind of slow.  Homes back in 1993, according to this ad, were starting at$79,900.  The most recent home sales in Ridge Harbor were averaging almost $400,000 for homes without lake frontage.  The last lakefront home that sold went for just under $1 million.

Remember the 10% appreciation in Cherry Creek?  If you had bought in Ridge Harbor in 1993 for $80,000 and sold this year for $400,000, you would have seen an increase in price of almost 27% per year.  It is all about being near the lake.  People wanting Lake Travis property often don't have a clue how property values have increased.  This is an excellent example.