Buyers who search for a Highland Lakes real estate agent usually aren’t choosing between houses first. They’re choosing between towns. The Highland Lakes region covers ten separate communities on four different lakes, and picking the wrong one before you start touring homes wastes more time than almost anything else in the process.
I’m Robbie English, Managing Broker and Designated REALTOR for Uncommon Highland Lakes Realty, and I work all ten Highland Lakes towns: Marble Falls, Horseshoe Bay, Kingsland, Granite Shoals, Cottonwood Shores, Burnet, Sunrise Beach Village, Meadowlakes, Highland Haven, and Sherwood Shores, not just one of them. That changes what I can actually tell a buyer before they’ve decided where to look.
Why “Which Town” Comes Before “Which House”
A real estate agent who only works Marble Falls will naturally steer every buyer toward Marble Falls, whether or not it’s the right fit. That’s not dishonesty, it’s just how single-market agents end up operating: their listings, their comps, and their market feel all live in one place. A buyer who’s genuinely undecided between a gated golf community, a working lake town, or an inland option needs someone who can compare those choices honestly, because they’ve actually sold in more than one of them.
The Lakes Behind the Ten Towns
The Highland Lakes are a chain of reservoirs the Lower Colorado River Authority built along the Colorado River between the 1930s and the 1950s: Lake Buchanan, Inks Lake, Lake LBJ, Lake Marble Falls, Lake Travis, and Lake Austin, with Lady Bird Lake downstream in Austin sometimes counted as an unofficial seventh. My service area sits on the upper end of that chain, and most of the ten towns map cleanly to one of two lakes:
- Lake LBJ: Kingsland anchors the north shore and Horseshoe Bay anchors the south shore, with Granite Shoals, Highland Haven, Sunrise Beach Village, and Sherwood Shores also on the lake.
- Lake Marble Falls: Marble Falls and Cottonwood Shores sit directly on it, and Meadowlakes, a gated community built around the Hidden Falls golf course, sits along its shore as well.
- Burnet: the one town in the group without direct lake frontage. It sits roughly ten miles from Lake Buchanan and Inks Lake and works as the region’s inland hub (county seat, schools, everyday retail) for buyers who want to be near the lakes without paying a waterfront premium.
That distinction is more than geography trivia. Lake LBJ and Lake Marble Falls are both constant-level lakes, pass-through reservoirs that LCRA holds within about a one-foot range year-round. Lake Buchanan, by contrast, is a water-supply reservoir designed to fluctuate, sometimes substantially, as it fills and draws down. A dock on Lake LBJ and a dock near Lake Buchanan are not the same proposition, and a buyer weighing waterfront property should know which kind of lake they’re actually buying on before they fall for a view.
Matching Buyers to the Right Town
Every buyer conversation I have starts with the same handful of questions: how will you actually use the water, if at all? Do you want a walkable downtown or privacy and acreage? Is a golf-course HOA a plus or a dealbreaker? Are you retiring here full-time or looking for a weekend place?
The answers tend to sort people fairly quickly. Buyers drawn to a downtown with restaurants and shops within walking distance usually land in Marble Falls. Buyers who want resort-style amenities and a gated community gravitate toward Horseshoe Bay. Buyers looking for more accessible lakefront pricing on Lake LBJ often end up comparing Kingsland and Granite Shoals side by side. Retirees who want a quiet, established golf community without direct lake frontage frequently choose Meadowlakes. And buyers prioritizing affordability and school access while staying close to everything else usually take a serious look at Burnet.
Full Buyer Representation, Region-Wide
Once a buyer has a town, or two or three, in mind, the actual work of buyer representation looks familiar: pulling comparable sales, scheduling showings, writing a competitive offer, negotiating repairs after inspection, and coordinating everything through to closing. The difference is that I’m doing all of that with current, first-hand knowledge of each town’s market instead of applying one town’s pricing logic to a different one.
See current Highland Lakes listings across the region.
About Robbie English
I’ve spent more than 40 years in real estate, and the Highland Lakes is the market I know best: all ten towns of it, not one. I’m also a national real estate instructor, teaching agents and brokers around the country on contracts, negotiation, and pricing strategy since 2016, which is knowledge I bring straight back to my own buyers here.
If you’re trying to figure out which Highland Lakes town actually fits how you want to live, that’s the conversation I’d like to have with you. Call or text 830-953-5571, or reach out to my team anytime.
