Behind a stretch of temporary orange fencing off Lost Creek Blvd, work crews are grading lots around a small plot of ground nobody is allowed to touch. It holds two graves. Robert and Eliza Eanes, the family whose name is on every school in the district, built a log cabin and the neighborhood's first schoolhouse here in 1872. Eliza was buried on the property in 1882. The state of Texas has since designated the plot a historic site, and MileStone Community Builders fenced it off rather than move it, then kept building 48 houses around it.
That's the scene at The Overlook at Westlake, the first new-construction community West Lake Hills has seen in years, and the reason it exists tells you more about this market than the price tags do.
Thirty-Seven Acres and One Family Cemetery
West Lake Hills is an incorporated city of roughly 3,700 people, hemmed in by the Barton Creek greenbelt on one side and the Colorado River on the other, with a zoning code built for large lots and low density since the 1950s. There is no undeveloped tract of any size left to speak of. So when MileStone Community Builders wanted to build something new, it had to assemble land the only way still available here: buying out the former Marshall Ranch parcel, all 37 acres of it, cemetery included.
The math on what that land is producing is public. The Overlook has 48 homesites at 1300 Lost Creek Blvd, with homes running from roughly 3,300 to 5,000 square feet on lots between a quarter acre and three-quarters of an acre. Pricing runs from about $2.85 million to $5 million, with a model home currently under construction and move-ins expected by late 2026. Engineering firm Kimley-Horn is building a $3 million water tower on the property's northeast side just to serve the community. Eight of the 48 lots had already sold as of the community's late-2025 launch, according to sales executive Lily Otis. Buyers here land in Forest Trails Elementary, West Ridge Middle, and Westlake High School, the same Eanes ISD zoning that anchors demand across the rest of the city.
None of that is a small undertaking for 48 lots. It's the kind of infrastructure spend a builder only makes when there is no other way in.
The Number That Looks Like Leverage
If you've been watching West Lake Hills from the outside, the public numbers this year read like an opening. Movoto's August 2026 snapshot put the median sale price at $2,974,500 across 22 closings, with homes sitting a median of 73 days before selling, up from 68 days the year before. Trailing twelve months of MLS data compiled through April 2026 showed something more pointed: 34 closings at a median of $2,816,410, average days on market at 81, and 46 percent of listings that hit the MLS during that stretch failing to sell at all.
An 81-day average and a 46 percent failure rate look like a market where sellers are losing pricing power. In most Austin-area submarkets, that combination would show up in falling price-per-square-foot figures within a quarter or two. It hasn't happened here.
| Snapshot | Window | Price | $ / Sq Ft | Days on Market |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Movoto | August 2026 | $2,974,500 (median) | $707 | 73 |
| HAR.com | August 2026 | $3,399,250 (average) | $800 | not reported |
| Trailing 12-month MLS data | Through April 2026 | $2,816,410 (median) | $687 | 81 |
Three data sets, same city, same general season, and a spread of over $500,000 in headline price and more than $100 in price per square foot. Part of that is genuinely different math (median versus average, one month versus twelve), but part of it is just what happens when a market has only 22 to 34 sales to draw from in a given window. One 30-day snapshot this year showed just two closings and a sale-to-list ratio that swung to 72 percent, a number that would be alarming in a market with real volume and is closer to statistical noise in one this thin.
Where the Other Half Goes
The 46 percent of listings that didn't sell over the past year raises an obvious question: where did those homes go? Not to a price cut, mostly. West Lake Hills' price-per-square-foot figures have stayed above $700 across most of this year's reporting windows, which isn't what you'd expect if nearly half the market were sitting unsold and getting marked down to move.
The more likely answer is that a meaningful share of that inventory went private. Off-market activity, sometimes called pocket listings or whisper listings, is a recognized feature of the 78746 luxury segment. Sellers here often aren't under financial pressure to sell, so when a listing doesn't draw the offer they want, pulling it from the MLS and shopping it quietly through a broker's own buyer list costs them nothing but time. It also means the days-on-market clock resets or stops entirely, which is part of why the visible DOM figures don't tell the whole story.
This is the same scarcity that made The Overlook's water tower and cemetery fence necessary. When there's effectively no undeveloped land and a thin, wealthy seller pool, nobody has to compete on price. They can simply wait, or step out of public view until the right buyer finds them through a different channel.
What the Comparison Actually Buys You
Buyers cross-shopping this stretch of West Austin are usually looking at Rollingwood next, since it shares both the zip code and Eanes ISD zoning. Rollingwood's market runs on a different mechanic: original 1950s and 60s ranch homes purchased for the land, torn down, and replaced with new custom builds, pushing its median into the $2.3 million to $2.9 million range and keeping its price-per-square-foot figures similarly above $700. The two cities aren't competing on inventory so much as on which kind of scarcity you're paying for, established hillside lots in West Lake Hills or teardown-and-rebuild opportunity in Rollingwood.
The commute math is part of what both are selling. West Lake Hills and Rollingwood run 10 to 15 minutes from downtown Austin without traffic, 20 to 25 minutes at peak. Lakeway runs 30 to 40 minutes without traffic and 50 to 70 at peak. Dripping Springs runs a similar 30 to 40 minutes off-peak with 45 to 60 during rush hour on 290. Lakeway also carries a different seller posture: a large share of its active listings carried a price cut earlier this year, the kind of discounting West Lake Hills sellers mostly skip in favor of walking away from the MLS. The proximity premium in West Lake Hills isn't abstract. It's the actual product being rationed.
What The Overlook Changes, and What It Doesn't
Forty-eight new homes sound like meaningful supply until you set them against a city with typically fewer than 30 active single-family listings at any given time and a total housing stock built mostly across the 1970s through the 1990s. Spread over a construction timeline running into late 2026 and beyond, The Overlook adds a trickle, not a flood, and its pricing starts at $2.85 million, in line with or above what resale buyers are already paying for comparable square footage elsewhere in the city.
What The Overlook actually demonstrates is how expensive it now is to create new inventory here at all. A builder had to acquire an entire ranch, engineer its own water infrastructure, and work around a legally protected 19th-century burial ground just to bring 48 lots to market. That's not a sign the scarcity is loosening. It's a measure of how tightly it's held.
For a buyer weighing West Lake Hills against Rollingwood, Lakeway, or Dripping Springs, the takeaway isn't that this year's longer days-on-market and softer sale-to-list ratios mean discounts are coming. It's that those numbers are measuring a market that's partly hidden from view, and the visible half is the one least likely to bend.
FAQ
Does new construction at The Overlook mean prices in West Lake Hills will soften? Nothing in the current pricing suggests that. The community is priced at or above prevailing resale rates for comparable square footage, and it adds a small number of homes against a housing stock that hasn't grown meaningfully in decades.
How would I see off-market or pocket listings in West Lake Hills? These typically circulate through an agent's existing relationships and buyer lists rather than through public search. Working with someone who has active connections in this specific market matters more here than in submarkets where nearly everything hits the MLS.
Is a 46 percent listing failure rate unusual? It's high relative to a typical suburban market, but it fits a pattern where sellers without financial pressure would rather wait or go private than accept a lower offer. It reflects the number of homes that didn't sell publicly within the study window, not homes that never sold at all.
If you're trying to figure out what a West Lake Hills listing, or the ones you're not seeing, actually means for your timeline and your offer, Austin Lakeside Properties can walk through the current inventory with you, visible and otherwise.
