Ed Neuhaus 
A couple months ago a homeowner in Bee Cave called me after getting a Zestimate alert. It said her home was worth $847,000. She was thrilled, started doing the math in her head, thinking about her next move. I had sold a comparable home two streets over the week before for $915,000.
She was leaving $68,000 on the table before we even had a conversation.
That’s not a knock on her. That’s just how this works in Texas. Zillow built a machine that estimates millions of properties with limited data, and Texas is one of its blind spots. But we’ll get to that.
The question “how much is my home value in Austin TX?” is exactly the right question to ask. The problem is where most people go to find the answer. So lets walk through this properly, because if you’re thinking about selling, or just curious what you’ve built over the last few years, you deserve a real number, not a guess dressed up as an algorithm.
First, the Three Different “Values” You’ll Hear About
This trips up a lot of homeowners, and it matters because these three numbers can be wildly different. They also serve completely different purposes.
Market Value
Market value is what a buyer would actually pay for your home, today, in the open market. Not what you think it’s worth. Not what you paid for it. Not what your neighbor got in 2022 during the frenzy. What a motivated buyer with financing would pay, right now, competing against the other options available to them.
This is the only number that matters if you’re thinking about selling.
Tax Appraised Value
Every January 1st, your county appraisal district (Travis, Hays, or Williamson, depending on where you live) estimates what your property is worth for tax purposes. This is a mass appraisal. They’re doing thousands of properties at once using formulas, not a boots-on-the-ground evaluation of your specific home.
It’s better than nothing, but it’s not a market value. It lags. It misses specific improvements. And it definitely doesn’t account for the view from your back porch or the fact that your lot backs to a greenbelt instead of your neighbor’s fence.
Assessed Value (What You Actually Pay Taxes On)
This one is important, and it’s where Texas homeowners with a homestead exemption get a meaningful break. Your assessed value is your appraised value minus your exemptions, and it can only increase by a maximum of 10% per year while the homestead exemption is active.
So if you bought in 2018 and your market value has climbed 60% since then, your taxable assessed value has been capped the whole time. Lower tax bill, yes. But the interesting side effect: your assessed value can be substantially lower than what you could actually sell for.
I’ve talked to homeowners who assume their home is “worth” whatever their tax bill implies. Those are two separate numbers with two separate purposes, and conflating them is expensive when you’re trying to figure out your real equity position.
The Zestimate Problem in Austin (Worse in the Hill Country)
Ok, so why does Zillow keep getting it wrong here?
The short answer: Texas doesn’t make home sale prices public record. In most states, when a house sells, the price is recorded and available to anyone. In Texas, it’s not. So Zillow’s algorithm does its best with incomplete information, and their own data shows the result. Texas scores one out of four stars in their accuracy rating. They estimate that close to 60% of Texas Zestimates are off by more than 10%.
On an $800,000 home in Bee Cave, 10% is $80,000. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a new kitchen and a truck.
And then you get into Hill Country specifics, and the problem compounds. The algorithm can handle a neighborhood of 1990s ranch homes where every lot is 8,000 square feet and a dozen similar homes sold in the last year. It cannot handle this:
- Two acres of limestone ridge with a hill country view versus two acres of flat, rocky, barely-buildable land
- A pool and outdoor kitchen that adds real value in this climate
- A community with private lake access that has a two-year wait list to join
- Homes in Lake Travis ISD versus homes that look geographically similar but feed a different school
These things don’t compute. Literally. The algorithm doesn’t have the data to price them, so it defaults to something generic and wrong.
I’ve seen Zestimates that were 20% low and 15% high on the same street in the same week. The houses were different. The algorithm couldn’t tell.
What Actually Drives Home Value in Bee Cave, Lakeway, and Dripping Springs
This is where local knowledge matters most, and it’s surprisingly specific.
School District Lines
In this part of Austin, the school district your home sits in can be worth $50,000 to $100,000 on its own. Lake Travis ISD carries a premium. Eanes ISD carries an even bigger one. Dripping Springs ISD is excellent, and that’s been showing up in prices as families realize they can get considerably more house further west.
Two homes on the same road, similar size, similar condition, one feeding one school and one feeding another, and they’re not the same value. An algorithm working from zip code data doesn’t know where those boundary lines actually run.
Lot Usability, Not Just Lot Size
A lot that sounds impressive on paper might not be. Two acres in the Hill Country can mean a flat, beautifully landscaped yard, or it can mean two acres of limestone slope where you can build on maybe a third of it. The Zestimate sees: 2 acres. It doesn’t see: usable land.
You can’t divide a comp’s price by square footage when one lot sits on a ridge and one sits in a valley. The view premium is real. The usability premium is real. Neither shows up in automated estimates.
Pools and Outdoor Living in the Upper Brackets
Above $800,000 in Bee Cave and Lakeway, a pool isn’t a bonus anymore. It’s expected. A home without one is competing at a disadvantage because the buyers in that price range have options, and they will move on to the home that has the full outdoor living setup.
Does that mean a pool adds exactly what it cost to install? No, the math doesn’t always work that way. But not having one when every comp does means you’re pricing against homes that are simply more desirable in this climate and in this market.
How the 2026 Market Shift Affects Your Home’s Worth
Here’s what’s changed, and what it means for your number right now.
We’re sitting at about 4.6 months of inventory in the metro and 12,800 active listings. Average days on market is around 89 days, the highest we’ve seen since 2011. Over half the active listings have had a price reduction. That’s the market saying: the first price was wrong.
This doesn’t mean values crashed. Bee Cave and the closer-in Hill Country communities are holding value better than outlying areas. What it means is that the days of pricing 10% over market and watching buyers fight over it are done for now. Pricing accurately from day one is the entire game in 2026, and pricing accurately requires knowing what accurate actually is. Which is exactly why a CMA matters more now than it did in 2021.
So What Is a CMA and Why Does It Work?
CMA stands for Comparative Market Analysis. It’s how real estate professionals determine what a home should sell for, and it’s the methodology behind every properly-priced listing in this market.
Here’s how it works in plain terms. I look at every home that has sold in your area in the last 90 to 180 days. Not asking prices, actual closed prices. Then I find the ones most similar to yours in terms of size, age, condition, lot characteristics, and location. Those closed sales are your comparables, or “comps.”
Then comes the adjustment part, which is where human judgment and local knowledge do the actual work. If your comp sold for $875,000 but it had a pool and yours doesn’t, that comp needs an adjustment downward. If your home has a greenbelt view and the comp doesn’t, add it back. If your home is on a busier street, take something off.
An experienced agent who has worked this specific market isn’t guessing at those adjustments. They’ve seen what pools, views, school districts, and lot grades actually do to prices in your neighborhood. That information isn’t downloadable.
At the end of a proper CMA, you get a well-supported price range, not a single magic number, and an honest assessment of where in that range your home lands based on condition and competitive positioning. That’s the information you need to make a real decision.
Where People Go Wrong: Trusting the Wrong Numbers
The Zestimate is fine for curiosity, terrible for pricing strategy. The county tax value tells you what you owe in taxes, not what you could sell for. And what your neighbor “heard” his house sold for is unreliable even when it’s true, because you don’t know what seller concessions were buried in that deal or what condition issues drove the price down.
The single most expensive mistake Austin sellers are making right now is overpricing based on 2021-2022 comparisons. Those were years when buyers paid $50,000 over asking with no inspection. That market is gone. The sellers pricing for that market are the ones sitting at 90 days on market wondering what happened.
The sellers who price accurately using a real CMA? They’re still selling well. The market hasn’t collapsed, it’s just gotten honest. Homes that deserve their price are finding buyers. Homes that don’t are sitting until they reduce, and by then they’ve damaged their listing with a long DOM history.
What the Numbers Look Like by Submarket
To give you grounded context, here’s where things stand right now across the submarkets we work most:
Bee Cave is running $850,000 to $925,000 as a median range, but that hides a lot of variance. Falconhead and the communities around Spanish Oaks are holding the top end. Properties without pools or with deferred maintenance are seeing longer days on market and price reductions. The buyers here are sophisticated and have done their homework before they walk through the door.
Lakeway is $725,000 to $830,000 median, and it’s a little more payment-sensitive because the buyer pool skews toward move-up buyers who are watching their monthly number carefully. Lake access and newer construction are commanding premiums. Older inventory without updates is competing harder than it used to.
Dripping Springs is $550,000 to $650,000 on average, and this market has outperformed expectations for two straight years. Families are finding significantly more house for less money, and Dripping Springs ISD is genuinely excellent. The extra 15 minutes of commute is increasingly worth it for buyers who are working from home three days a week.
These are medians. Your home might be above or below depending on condition, lot, views, and updates. The only way to know where yours falls is a CMA on your specific property.
What Else Affects Your Home’s Value Right Now
Beyond the neighborhood medians, here’s what’s moving the needle in 2026:
Condition above everything. Buyers have options. When they have to choose between a well-maintained home and one with deferred maintenance at the same price, they choose condition, every time. Small things matter more than they used to: fresh paint, working HVAC, updated fixtures. These aren’t just cosmetic, they’re signals about what else might need attention.
Energy efficiency and new systems. Newer HVAC, recent roof, solar, and updated insulation are showing up more in buyer conversations than they did three years ago. With Texas electricity costs and summer heat, buyers are paying attention to what a house costs to run, not just to buy.
Finishes and kitchen updates. Granite counters were a premium in 2010. They’re baseline now. Quartz, soft-close cabinets, and primary bath renovations are what buyers expect in the $700K-plus range. If your finishes are dated, your CMA will reflect that.
Days on market history. If your home sat for 90 days with a price reduction, buyers remember. In a market where MLS history is visible, a long DOM creates doubt even when the price reduction made the home fair. Price right from day one, because a bad start is hard to recover from.
How to Get a Real Home Valuation in Austin
You have a few options, and I’ll be straight about what each one actually gives you.
You can use Zillow or other automated valuation tools and get a ballpark that might be 10-20% off. That’s fine for casual curiosity on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s not fine for making a real financial decision.
You can call your county appraisal district and get your assessed value. That tells you what you’re paying taxes on. It’s not your market value, and in a lot of cases it’s significantly lower, especially if you’ve owned for more than a few years and have a homestead cap working in your favor.
Or you can request a proper CMA from an agent who works your specific submarket. In our case, that’s the Hill Country and West Austin communities we’ve been focused on for 16 years. A real CMA doesn’t cost you anything and doesn’t obligate you to anything. It’s a conversation about what your home is worth, backed by actual closed sales data, with someone who can walk you through every adjustment and explain why your home lands where it does.
That Bee Cave homeowner I mentioned at the top? She got a proper CMA. She listed at $912,000. She sold for $906,000. Not $847,000.
That’s the difference between a Zestimate and a real market analysis.
Frequently Asked Questions
Request Your Free Austin Home Value Analysis
If you’re in the Bee Cave, Lakeway, Dripping Springs, or West Austin area and you want an actual number, reach out to us at Neuhaus Realty Group. We’ll put together a proper CMA, walk you through what the closed sales data shows, and give you an honest picture of where your home stands in the 2026 market.
No obligation. No pressure. Just real information you can use.
If you want to go deeper before we talk, the most common mistakes Austin sellers make is worth reading, as is our look at the 2026-2027 market forecast and how to price your home strategically in this market.
The market has shifted. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad time to sell. It means how you sell matters a lot more than it used to.
