What you can get for around $250,000 in Williamson County, Texas

April 22, 2008 at 8:31 am , by Jenel Looney

This morning, I ran a search for homes that are active on the market in Williamson County, priced between $245,000 and $255,000, so we could compare how far that much money will take you from town to town. As you can see, Round Rock has the greatest number of homes for sale in this price range, with 39 of the total 98. (By the way, Pflugerville and North Austin don’t really count because only a small portion of each of these cities lies in Williamson County.) Georgetown comes in second with 24 homes in this price range. Cedar Park and Leander are lumped together as two MLS areas - CLN and CLS - and they’re not far behind with 22 homes. The one Georgetown East home is a condo, as is one of the Cedar Park/Leander South homes. The rest are single family.
Assuming 10% down and an interest rate of 5.88%, I came up with a monthly payment of $2,183 including taxes and insurance on a $250,000 home. I hope my mortgage lender friends out there will correct me by posting a comment if this number is inaccurate. This is the amount on a conventional, 30-year fixed rate loan. Don’t have $25,000 to put down? Our local FHA lending limits have gone up to about $288,000, which means you could get a home in this price range for as little as 3% down. This really opens up this price range to a lot more buyers. Give me a call if you’re interested in learning more about FHA loans, and I’ll put you in touch with one of those mortgage lender friends I just mentioned.

Georgetown home for sale, listed with Rachel Logue of Moreland Properties $249,000

	Taylor’s average square footage for homes in this price range is by far the highest. However, since Taylor only has one home currently listed in this price range, it’s not a very meaningful “average.” The homes listed in the “Other” category are in the Williamson County East and Williamson County West MLS areas. The square footage of the homes may not be as high, but they’re on acreage. I was going to do a chart showing the average acreage of all of these homes, but many are listed with zero acres. The only ones that could truly have zero acres would be the condos. The other homes should have at least something, even if only .1 acres. This shows that the MLS system is only as good as the agents who input the information. There are 10,980 agents in our MLS system, and some are more diligent than others about fully entering all property details.
I feel that an agent who does not enter every single detail of a property is not serving his or her client’s needs. There are buyers out there who are looking for a minimum of .2 acres, for example, so I would set these buyers up on a search that specifies this as a criterion. If an agent hasn’t entered a number in this category, then their listing would not come up in my buyers’ search, even though it might match what they’re looking for.
This is why it’s so important to hire a REALTOR who truly understands how to use today’s technology to your benefit. We have all sorts of tools at our disposal, but a lot of agents are intimidated by these tools, so they never bother to learn how to use them. Please call me at 512-876-6544 or drop me an email at jenel@HometownGeorgetown.com if I can help you.