Pricing a listing correctly in the Highland Lakes is harder than pricing one in a typical single-city market, because “the Highland Lakes” isn’t one market. It’s ten towns spread across four lakes, each with its own buyer pool, its own pace of sales, and its own quirks around waterfront value. A listing agent who only sells in one of those towns is pricing from a smaller, more limited data set than the market actually calls for.
I’m Robbie English, Managing Broker and Designated REALTOR for Uncommon Highland Lakes Realty, and I list property across all ten Highland Lakes towns: Marble Falls, Horseshoe Bay, Kingsland, Granite Shoals, Cottonwood Shores, Burnet, Sunrise Beach Village, Meadowlakes, Highland Haven, and Sherwood Shores. That range is what lets me price a listing against the right comps instead of the closest ones.
Why Cross-Town Comps Matter Here
A buyer shopping for lakefront on Lake LBJ is very often cross-shopping Kingsland against Horseshoe Bay against Granite Shoals against Sunrise Beach Village. They’re not committed to a single town, they’re committed to the lake. That means a listing in one of those towns is competing with listings in the others, whether the seller realizes it or not. Pricing a Kingsland waterfront home using only Kingsland comps, when the actual competing inventory sits across four towns on the same lake, is how listings get mispriced in either direction.
The same logic runs the other way for inland listings. A seller in Burnet or in the gated Meadowlakes community isn’t necessarily competing with lakefront inventory at all. They’re competing with other inland and golf-community properties, where buyers are weighing schools, HOA structure, and proximity over water access. Treating an inland listing like a lakefront one, or vice versa, misreads who the actual buyer is.
Lake Type Affects Marketing, Not Just Price
Lake LBJ and Lake Marble Falls are constant-level lakes: the Lower Colorado River Authority holds them within roughly a one-foot range year-round, which means docks, boathouses, and swim areas function the same way every season. Lake Buchanan, upstream near Burnet, is a water-supply reservoir that’s designed to fluctuate, sometimes by a significant margin, as it fills and draws down for flood control and water supply. A listing description that touts “deep water access” on a constant-level lake needs to say something very different than one near a fluctuating reservoir, and buyers who’ve done their homework will notice if an agent gets that wrong.
What a Highland Lakes Listing Actually Needs
Beyond pricing, the marketing mechanics are the same discipline wherever the property sits: professional photography, an accurate and specific listing description, staging guidance where it will move the needle, and a plan for getting the listing in front of buyers who are actually looking in that town or on that lake, not just a generic MLS syndication and a sign in the yard. For waterfront listings specifically, that also means being straight with sellers about dock permitting and any HOA or POA rules that vary from one lake community to the next, since those can affect both marketability and closing timelines.
About Robbie English
I’ve spent more than 40 years in real estate, and pricing strategy for sellers is where that experience shows up the most directly. I’m also a national real estate instructor, teaching other agents and brokers on pricing strategy and negotiation since 2016, work that keeps me sharp on my own listings here in the Highland Lakes.
If you’re getting ready to list in any of the ten Highland Lakes towns, let’s talk about what the right comps actually look like for your property. Call or text 830-953-5571, or reach out to my team.
