You wrote last month asking, in essence, whether Spicewood was too far from town to be the right answer for your family. It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that it depends on a small number of things, all of which you can know before you commit.
On the drive.
Spicewood is, depending on which part of it and which time of day, between thirty-five and fifty-five minutes from downtown Austin. That sounds like a lot until you realize it is also roughly the distance many of our Westlake clients drive to their offices on a bad Wednesday. The difference is the kind of drive — Spicewood's is a country drive, on 71 and the smaller farm-to-market roads, with the hill country opening up on either side. Many of our clients tell us, after a year, that they have come to look forward to it.
The thing to be honest with yourself about is whether you have one trip a day or four. A family with two children in private schools in town and three weekly tennis matches is making a different calculation than a family with one remote-working parent and a child at LTISD.
On the land.
Spicewood is hill country in the truest sense — limestone bluffs, live oak, juniper, the occasional pecan, and a sky that, on a clear winter night, will show you more stars than you have seen in twenty years. A typical Spicewood property is between five and twenty acres. The very largest, on the Pedernales, can run to a hundred or more.
What you get for the land is privacy of a kind that simply cannot be bought closer in. What you give up is the morning walk to a neighbor's house. You will have neighbors — good ones, often — but they are a quarter mile away, not a hundred yards.
“What you get for the land is privacy of a kind that simply cannot be bought closer in.”
On the schools.
Lake Travis ISD serves most of Spicewood, and is, in our experience, an excellent district. Marble Falls ISD serves the western edge, and is also strong. Several of our families also send children to the private schools in town — St. Andrew's, St. Stephen's, St. Michael's — and find the drive manageable, if not always convenient.
On the houses.
There is no single Spicewood architectural vocabulary the way there is in, say, Westlake. You will see hill country traditional, modern ranch, true Texas farmhouse, and the occasional Mediterranean. Many of the best estates were built between 1995 and 2015 by families who intended to stay, and they show it — these are not flip houses. They come to market quietly, often, and they do not last.
A short letter cannot answer your real question, which is whether this is right for your family. But the questions above are the ones we would walk through with you if you came out for a Saturday — and we would be glad to do that, anytime.
