A two-story residence at dusk, limestone and dark timber under a low roofline, its windows lit and live oaks overhead.

78705, where the year begins in August

West Campus, North University, the Drag and the university itself. A leasing calendar that runs on the semester, and the tallest zoning in Austin outside downtown a block from some of its most protected streets.

Guadalupe

One street, two sets of rules

Guadalupe Street, the Drag, runs along the western edge of the campus, and almost everything a buyer needs to know about this ZIP is which side of it a property sits on.

West of Guadalupe

West Campus

Since 2004 this has been the University Neighborhood Overlay, a zoning district written to put students in towers rather than in the bungalows they were filling. It began at 175 feet, in exchange for a tenth of the units held for tenants under 80 percent of median income, and it has been raised since to a range of 50 to 300 feet by block. Icon, at 300 feet and thirty-three floors, finished in 2025 as the tallest thing in the area. Nearly every building leases by the bed, on the academic year, and a condominium here is an income asset first and a residence second, whoever is living in it.

East and north

North University

From 27th to 38th, Guadalupe to Duval: houses from the 1910s through the 1940s, a scatter of small apartment buildings, and Aldridge Place inside it, platted in 1912 as a City Beautiful suburb on the streetcar line and made a local historic district in 2017, with design review to match. Across 38th is Hyde Park, on the National Register since 1990. The campus itself fills the ground between the Drag and Interstate 35. On this side of the street the purchase is a house, the rules are a neighborhood plan and a historic district, and the tower is something you can see from the porch.

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

The calendar

A year that starts in the autumn before

Every other ZIP on this site trades on a twelve-month clock with a spring peak. This one trades on the semester, and the four months below decide more about a unit’s income than anything in the listing. A buyer who closes in March is buying a lease that runs to July and, very often, a second lease already signed for August. That is not a complication. It is one of the more predictable income streams in central Austin, provided it is read as what it is.

SeptemberRenewal notices go out to every student tenant in the ZIP, with a deadline a few weeks off. The owner learns whether next year is spoken for before the leaves turn.
OctoberPre-leasing opens for the following August. By the end of the month the rent for a year that has not started is a signed number, and the best-located units are gone.
MayThe semester ends and the ZIP empties. Leases run to late July, so the summer is paid for, but it is the one stretch when a unit may sit vacant, and it is when every turn happens at once.
AugustMove-in week. Fifty-five thousand students arrive inside a few days, the streets west of Guadalupe are lined with trucks, and the year begins.

The rent fornext Augustwas setlast October.

The overlay

Three hundred feet, and a question about six hundred

The overlay is a bargain written into the code: build taller than the base zoning allows, and hold a share of the beds for tenants under an income line, or pay a fee toward the City’s housing fund instead. It has produced most of the skyline west of the Drag and a large share of the income-restricted units the City’s density bonus programs have produced anywhere. For a buyer in one of those buildings it also means the association’s budget carries set-aside units on different terms, and the declaration says how.

In early 2025 the Planning Department recommended raising the caps again, to 600 feet along Guadalupe, 420 a few streets west, stepping down to 90 near Lamar, and lowering the income line for the set-aside to half of median. A Council vote was set for the fifth of June 2025, postponed so that the university could meet with City staff, and as of April 2026 had not been rescheduled. So a unit facing west from a mid-rise on Rio Grande, or a house on the North University side whose back alley is the overlay’s edge, is bought with that question open. The map of which blocks fall under which cap is public, and it is the one document about this ZIP that a buyer on either side of the street should read before the option period ends.

The water

Shoal Creek on the west, Waller through the middle

The ZIP’s western edge is Shoal Creek, running beside Lamar Boulevard, and on Memorial Day 2015 it rose 21 feet and put Lamar under water. The floodplain was remapped afterward and again under the 2018 Atlas 14 rainfall study, and the blocks between Lamar and Rio Grande are where that map matters: a garage below grade or a ground-floor unit there is a question for the City’s FloodPro tool, by address, before it is a question for an inspector.

Waller Creek runs north to south through the campus itself, and while the tunnel that drained its downtown reach begins below this ZIP, the creek above it still floods in the way an urban creek does, fast and briefly. Very little housing sits against it here, because the university owns both banks through most of the ZIP. It is worth knowing which parts of the campus close in a storm, because they are the parts a student walks through.

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

The university

The neighbor that owns the middle

The University of Texas enrolled 55,000 students in the fall of 2025, the most in its history, and its 2013 master plan set out to add around 150 acres by acquisition. It opened a medical school in 2016 and a 15,000-seat arena, the Moody Center, in April 2022, whose event nights put concert traffic on Red River and Dean Keeton. None of that is a neighbor a buyer can negotiate with. It is the ground the ZIP is built around, and its plans move the market here more than any developer’s.

The next of those plans is not the university’s but the city’s. Light rail is scheduled to begin construction in 2027 and run in 2033, and its northern terminus is 38th and Guadalupe, with a station at the West Mall. Guadalupe becomes a rail street, most of its on-street parking goes, and 27th and 29th are proposed as rail and pedestrian corridors. A property on or near the Drag is buying six years of that construction and then a station.

Schools

Less of the price here than anywhere

Fewer buyers in this ZIP are buying for a school zone than in any other central one, and the zone is still worth knowing, because it is split. North University is zoned to Lee Elementary, Kealing Middle School and McCallum High. The blocks toward Lamar were zoned to Bryker Woods Elementary, which Austin ISD closed this school year with students reassigned to Casis or Brentwood, and the southern blocks fall under Mathews. Confirm the current boundary with the district for the address before it is a reason to pay for it, and expect it to be less of a reason here than across MoPac.

Honestly

Who 78705 is wrong for

A buyer who wants neighbors who stay: West of Guadalupe the population turns over on a four-year cycle and a good share of it every August. That is not a flaw in the neighborhood, it is the neighborhood. A buyer who wants to know the people on the landing in ten years is buying on the wrong side of the street, or in the wrong ZIP.
A house buyer who has not read the overlay map: In North University the line between a single-family block and a block that may take a 90-foot building runs down alleys, not avenues. The map is public and the lot behind a 1920s house is either under the overlay or it is not. Read it before the option period ends, because nothing in the listing will tell you.
An investor pricing on twelve months of rent: Rent here is by the bed and by the academic year. Price on the signed lease, on the fact that August turns are universal and summer is the vacancy month, and on an association budget that may carry set-aside units built under the overlay's affordability terms. A twelve-month pro forma from a market report is the wrong instrument.
Anyone treating the 600-foot question as settled: The City's planners recommended towers to 600 feet on the Drag in early 2025. The Council vote set for June 2025 was postponed and had not been rescheduled in April 2026. A West Campus unit is priced with that unresolved on both sides: the view that may go, and the floor plate that may be allowed. Neither is a certainty to pay for.

Counted

The associations, on today’s inventory

Of the 124 residential listings for sale in 78705 as of October 17, 2026 at 4:03 AM CDT, 111 are condominiums, which is the whole story of who owns here: units in buildings with associations, mostly bought to be leased by the bed. The median asking price across them is $380 per square foot, and among the 108 with monthly dues on the listing, the median is $0.41 per square foot per month, which on a thousand-square-foot unit is a second payment the pro forma has to carry. The bedroom mix of what is listed, 33 one-bedroom, 62 two-bedroom, 12 three-bedroom, says the same thing: this is stock built to be rented by the room.

And the towers are newer than the inventory. Of the 111 condominiums with a build year, only 9 were built in 2015 or later. The overlay’s new towers are mostly rentals, so what trades in 78705 is mostly the older stock west of the Drag and the small buildings east of it, with their older budgets and older reserves. A buyer here is reading a certificate from an association that has been running a student building for a long time, and the question is how well.

On the market

78705 right now

Residential listings for sale in the ZIP, from Unlock MLS through MLS Grid, as of October 17, 2026 at 4:03 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: 124
Median list price: $319,450
Median per sq ft: $389
Median days listed: 123; of the active listings, since each was listed

The 12 most recently listed of 135, newest first. All of them, with filters, are on the 78705 market page.

Listed by All City Real Estate Ltd. Co; Austin Evolution Residential; Coldwell Banker Realty; Compass RE Texas, LLC; Keller Williams Realty; Moreland Properties; Pure Realty; Real Broker, LLC; Talley Real Estate.

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 is 2.0464 percent of appraised value for tax year 2025, across Austin ISD, the City of Austin, Travis County, Central Health and Austin Community College. It is the same rate in every central ZIP. What differs here is who pays it: an investment unit carries no homestead exemption, so the full appraised value is taxed, and that belongs in the same arithmetic as the signed lease.

The market figures above come straight from the MLS with their own timestamp, and they change daily; this is the one figure on the page that does not. What is published about 78705 beyond them is a rent per bed, and it is published by every operator on the Drag. What is not published is which cap the block behind a house falls under, whether the August lease is already signed, and which blocks of Lamar were under water in 2015. The affordability figures, with this ZIP’s tax rate already in them, are on the buying 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 4:03 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.