A limestone and stucco residence with steep gables, a cedar shingle roof, and olive trees along the front elevation.

78704, south of the river

South Congress, Bouldin Creek, Zilker, Travis Heights and Barton Hills. Five neighborhoods that price street by street rather than by name.

What 78704 is

A patchwork, on purpose

Nothing in this ZIP is uniform. A 1940s bungalow, a three-story modern infill house, a six-unit condominium and a purpose-built apartment block can share one block face, and often do.

That is why a neighborhood name tells you less here than anywhere else in central Austin. Two houses a hundred yards apart in Bouldin can differ by a floodplain boundary, a historic-district line and a decade of infill pressure, and the listing will mention none of it. The useful unit of analysis in 78704 is the street, sometimes the side of the street, and this page is written at that scale where the public record allows and says so where it does not.

It is also the ZIP where a full-service practice earns its keep. A condominium off South Lamar and a house backing onto the greenbelt in Barton Hills are the same five digits and nothing like the same purchase. Both are represented here, and so is everything between.

The five

Five neighborhoods, five different purchases

South Congress: The commercial spine and the part of the ZIP most visitors think IS the ZIP. Condominiums and townhomes along and just off the avenue, the highest short-term-rental density south of the river, and the most foot traffic. Quietest a block east or west of it.
Bouldin Creek: West of Congress, north of Oltorf. Bungalows from the 1930s through the 1950s on five to seven thousand square foot lots, and more of the two- and three-story infill that replaces them than anywhere else in the ZIP. The creek runs through it and so does its floodplain.
Zilker: Named for the park and priced for it. The closer a street is to Barton Springs Road the less the house matters and the more the lot does. Zilker Elementary sits in the middle of it.
Travis Heights: East of Congress, on the hill. Platted in the 1920s, six hundred lots sold by 1928, and the Travis Heights-Fairview Park local historic district covers a good part of it, which governs what you can do to a facade. Blunn Creek and Stacy Park are inside it, not beside it.
Barton Hills: South of the greenbelt, the newest of the five. Hilly, tree-lined, and mostly 1950s and 1960s ranch houses on larger lots than the rest of the ZIP, with construction that kept going into the 1990s. Backs onto the Barton Creek Greenbelt.

A living room with a limestone fireplace set between white oak built-ins, under a vaulted beadboard ceiling.

What the listing leaves out

Two creeks, and a map that moved

Bouldin Creek runs north through the neighborhood that carries its name. Blunn Creek runs through Travis Heights, where the nature preserve and Stacy Park sit along it. Both carry a mapped floodplain, and both floodplains have been redrawn.

In 2020 the City of Austin and its regional partners began a five-year remodelling of the floodplain maps using the NOAA Atlas 14 rainfall data, which revised Central Texas rainfall estimates sharply upward. The practical effect on this ZIP is that some houses which were not in the hundred-year floodplain under the old maps are in it under the new ones, and a seller who bought before the change may honestly not know. That is not a defect in the house. It is a change in what the water is expected to do, and it affects insurance, lending and what you can rebuild after a loss.

So on any lot within a few hundred feet of either creek, the option period is for pulling the City’s FloodPro map and the FEMA panel, and for asking whether an elevation certificate exists. If it does not, getting one is the single most useful thing you can spend a few hundred dollars on in this ZIP, because it is the document that decides whether flood insurance costs a little or a lot.

And the ground

Everything south of the river sits on expansive clay, and the housing stock here is old enough to have moved on it. Foundation movement on a 1940s pier-and-beam bungalow in Bouldin is normal rather than alarming, and the question is whether it has been levelled and how well. On slab houses in Barton Hills it is a different question. A structural engineer’s written report, when the inspector flags movement, is the routine second opinion in this ZIP and is priced on the buying page.

The listing says1948. The lotsays everythingelse.

Schools

Two feeder patterns, and a boundary that is moving

The ZIP splits roughly down Congress. West of it, Zilker Elementary and Barton Hills Elementary feed O. Henry Middle School and then Austin High. East of it, Travis Heights Elementary feeds Lively Middle School, which was Fulmore until it was renamed. Which side of that line a house sits on is decided by attendance boundary, not by neighborhood name, and the two do not align.

Two cautions. Austin ISD adopted a consolidation plan that closes campuses for the 2026 academic year and redraws attendance boundaries across the district, so a zone that was true when a listing was written may not be true at closing. The number of campuses has changed as the plan was revised, which is itself the point. And a school’s attendance zone is a district decision that can change; a house is not permanently attached to one. Confirm the current boundary with the district for the specific address before it is a reason to buy.

An entry hall with a console table under a tall mirror, light falling across a stone floor.

Getting downtown

Three bridges, one of them busy

Congress Avenue, South First and South Lamar are the three ways across the lake from this ZIP, with MoPac on the western edge for anyone heading north rather than into the core. Congress is the one to know about right now: the avenue between Cesar Chavez and Seventh is under reconstruction from January 2026 through the summer of 2027, so the most direct route into downtown is also the slowest one for the life of the works.

Zilker closes streets for Austin City Limits in October and the Trail of Lights in December, and Barton Springs Road carries most of that traffic. A house in Bouldin or Zilker is a ten-minute drive from the core on a Tuesday in February and something else on a Saturday in October. Both are true and a listing will only tell you the first.

Short-term rentals

The rules changed, and the platforms now enforce them

South Congress carries the highest short-term-rental density south of the river, and a meaningful share of the condominiums and small multifamily near the avenue were bought on that income. The ordinance the City Council adopted through 2025 permits a non-owner-occupied rental as an accessory use in residential zoning, but only with a license, with density caps, and with a thousand feet required between an operator’s sites. From the first of July 2026 the platforms must show the license number in the listing and remove anything without one.

For a buyer that means two things. A unit marketed on its short-term history may not be able to repeat it, and the seller may not know that yet. And a property that has been operating without a license is not a bargain, it is a liability that transfers at closing. Underwrite on long-term rent, treat anything above that as upside, and ask for the license number before you ask for the revenue history.

Honestly

Who 78704 is wrong for

A buyer who needs certainty about the lot: Two creeks with active floodplain, a remapping that moved houses into it, and a historic district with a design review process. If a surprise on the survey or the elevation certificate would end the purchase, this ZIP produces more surprises than most.
Anyone counting on short-term rental income: The ordinance now caps density and requires a thousand feet between an operator's sites, licenses are getting harder to obtain, and from July 2026 the platforms delist anything unlicensed. Underwrite on long-term rent or do not underwrite at all.
A buyer who wants a new house on a quiet street: There are new houses. They are infill, they sit between 1940s bungalows, and the street they are on was chosen by the builder for lot economics rather than for quiet. The genuinely quiet streets in Travis Heights and Barton Hills are the ones with the old houses still on them.
Anyone who has to cross the river at five o'clock: Three bridges serve the whole south side, one of them feeds a Congress Avenue under construction until the summer of 2027, and Zilker closes roads for ACL and Trail of Lights every autumn. The commute is short on a map.

Counted

Street by street, on today’s inventory

This page says 78704 prices by the street rather than by the neighborhood. Here is that claim against what is asking as of October 17, 2026 at 8:53 AM CDT: every street with at least four listings for sale, by median asking price per square foot, against a ZIP-wide median of $500. Asking is not closing, and four listings is a small sample, so read the order rather than the decimals. The spread between the top and the bottom of this list is the point.

$867: Congress4 listed
$790: Travis Heights4 listed
$750: Brackenridge4 listed
$601: 2nd7 listed
$585: 1st15 listed
$579: Barton Springs16 listed
$577: Live Oak4 listed
$571: Kinney8 listed
$562: 5th6 listed
$498: Woodward4 listed
$489: Riverside5 listed
$459: Wilson9 listed
$451: East Side5 listed
$428: Thornton6 listed
$424: Bluebonnet6 listed
$420: Newning6 listed
$403: Valley View5 listed
$394: Lamar14 listed
$386: Menchaca11 listed
$378: Post7 listed
$374: Clawson8 listed
$341: Oltorf5 listed
$334: Lightsey4 listed

On the market

78704 right now

Residential listings for sale in the ZIP, from Unlock MLS through MLS Grid, as of October 17, 2026 at 8:53 AM CDT. Closed sale prices are not shown and never will be: Texas is a non-disclosure state and the MLS does not permit publishing them, so every figure here is derived from list prices and days since listing.

Active listings: 304
Median list price: $727,000
Median per sq ft: $500
Median days listed: 68; of the active listings, since each was listed

The 12 most recently listed of 324, newest first. All of them, with filters, are on the 78704 market page.

Listed by Allegiant Realty; Compass RE Texas, LLC; Joseph Properties LLC; Kuper Sotheby's Int'l Realty; Thompson Realty Group; Tranzon Asset Advisors of Texa; van Heuven Properties.

Drag to pan, pinch or use the buttons to zoom. Hover a price for a preview and click it for the listing, or tap it on a touchscreen. Every one of these is also in the grid above.

The one figure

The effective property tax rate in this ZIP is 2.0464 percent of appraised value for tax year 2025, counting Austin ISD, the City of Austin, Travis County, Central Health and Austin Community College. It is the same five entities across all of central Austin, so it is the same rate in the four ZIPs beside this one. It does not include any special district a specific address may carry.

The prices, inventory and days on market above come straight from the MLS with their own timestamp and change daily; this is the one figure on the page that does not. What is not published is what the creek does, which side of Congress the school is on, and whether the short-term-rental income in the listing is repeatable. Run the affordability figures on the buying page, which carries this ZIP’s tax rate already.

Inside it

The neighborhoods of 78704

Each one written up on its own, with its listings selected by the City’s own planning boundary rather than by a line drawn to suit the page.

Nearby

The other four central ZIPs

MLS GRID logo slot

Listings courtesy of Unlock MLS as distributed by MLS GRID

Based on information submitted to the MLS GRID as of October 17, 2026 at 8:53 AM CDT. All data obtained from various sources and may not have been verified by broker or MLS GRID.

Any use or search of data on the website, other than by a consumer looking to purchase real estate, is prohibited.