Downtown and central Austin

Central Austin is the city the 1839 plan laid out, a grid between Shoal Creek and Waller Creek with Congress Avenue running up from the river to the Capitol, and the neighborhoods it grew into over the next century. Clarksville, west of downtown, was founded after the Civil War as a community of freed people and is listed on the National Register. Hyde Park, north of the University of Texas, was platted in 1891 as a suburb the streetcar reached, and North Loop is the plainer ground above it. 4 guides are listed below.

Two things set buying here apart. The first is how much the City governs the front of the house. Hyde Park is a local historic district, where exterior work needs a certificate of appropriateness first, and it is also a neighborhood conservation combining district, which fixes setbacks, lot sizes and how much can be added; a National Register listing like Clarksville's carries no local review on its own. The second is that downtown is a condominium market rather than a house market, so the questions there are the association's budget, its reserve, its insurance and what its declaration allows, rentals included, rather than the roof and the lot.