In May 2024, CultureMap put together a South Austin neighborhood piece and used me for the local read. It's still up: South Austin: Eclectic energy in the heart of the city.
I reread it this month. Most of it held. One part didn't, and it's the part that costs buyers money.
What held up
The character read. I called 78704 "vintage Austin in the heart of the city" in 2024 and I'd say it again. Barton Springs still sits around 68 degrees in February and in August. The Continental Club still books people worth driving for. You can still walk out of a house on a side street and be somewhere within ten minutes.
The housing stock point held too. I told them the style of homes here runs from old Victorians to modern builds, and that's still the honest description. Two houses on the same block in Bouldin Creek can be eighty years apart.
None of that is the reason to read the piece twice, though.
What didn't
The article is a lifestyle feature, so it doesn't carry prices. Fair enough. But the story underneath it in 2024 was that South Austin was still a place a normal buyer could get into. That stopped being true, and it stopped being true while the rest of the metro sat still.
| Austin metro, single-family | May 2024 | May 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Median sale price | $461,292 | $459,000 |
| 30-year mortgage rate | 7.06% | 6.44% |
| Median days on market | 46 | 57 |
Two years, and the metro median moved less than half a percent. Rates came down sixty basis points. Homes took eleven days longer to sell.
Now 78704 over the same stretch. Single-family, trailing twelve months ending July 2026: a $1,192,500 median on 4,367 sales, up 16.9% year over year. The twelve monthly medians in that window ran from $870,000 to $1,325,000.
So the metro went nowhere and 78704 went up almost 17%. That's the part the 2024 piece couldn't have told you.
It isn't only a 78704 story either. Tribeza froze six Austin homes at roughly a million dollars in 2023, and three years later those ZIP codes have pulled so far apart that the metro median is nearly meaningless. I went through all six in Tribeza's $1 Million Houses, Three Years Later.
The caveat, because it matters: 16.9% is a year-over-year move built on a median of twelve monthly medians at each end. A single July-to-July comparison on a series this size says as much about which months were busy as about the market, which is why I leave year-over-year out of the ZIP breakdowns in What "Central Austin" Actually Means. The level is the sturdier number. Read the 16.9% as direction, not as a valuation of your house.
What to do about it
Stop shopping "78704." It isn't one market and it hasn't been for a while. It's at least three, and the spread between them is wider than the spread between some Austin ZIP codes. I took the whole central-Austin version of this apart in What "Central Austin" Actually Means, the South Austin guide has the sub-area detail, and the ten-year market page has every month since October 2015 if you want to see this ZIP's run against the metro's yourself.
The practical order of operations, if you're looking here this fall:
- Pick the sub-neighborhood before the budget. Zilker, Bouldin Creek and Travis Heights have different housing stock and different feeders. What value looks like in one tells you nothing about the other two.
- Confirm school zoning by address, not by neighborhood name. The AISD feeder boundaries cut straight through this ZIP. Zilker feeds Zilker, O. Henry and Austin High. Travis Heights and Bouldin feed Becker or Travis Heights, then Lively and Travis Early College.
- Budget for the premium honestly. Park adjacency in Zilker is priced in, and ACL turns those streets into a parking lot every October. Some people never notice. Some people hate it. Go stand there on a Saturday first.
The 2024 piece was right that the answer is usually "here" in South Austin. It just costs a lot more to make that the answer now, and you should know which version of "here" you're buying.
Source: Unlock MLS (ACTRIS), single-family, trailing 12 months ending July 2026, for the 78704 figures. Metro figures are Redfin, single-family, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, for the months shown. Median sold price is not a guarantee of value for any specific property.