The city skyline seen across open water at dusk, lit towers reflected on the surface.

Lake Austin waterfront, and who permits the dock

Frontage is a fact about the deed, not a distance from the water. The lake is held at a constant level. And the City of Austin permits the docks here, not LCRA.

33 homes for sale in Lake Austin waterfrontas of October 17, 2026 at 4:04 AM CDT

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The definition

Not a radius from the water

Every other page on this site selects listings by geography: a City planning area, sometimes cut along a street centerline the Census records. This one cannot. Frontage is a legal fact about a particular lot, and the lots that have it thread along a shoreline through several neighborhoods and past the edge of every planning area. There is no polygon.

Two tempting shortcuts are both wrong. Drawing a shape around the waterfront streets invents a boundary nobody published. And taking a radius from the published water edge calls the house across the road waterfront, which is the single most consequential thing you can get wrong about a lakefront purchase.

So this page uses the only honest signal available: the listing agent’s own declaration in the MLS. A listing is here because someone accountable for the representation marked it waterfront. That is not a survey and it is not a title commitment, and the page is not pretending otherwise. It is a statement by a licensed person, which is a great deal better than a measurement from a map.

Frontage isa fact aboutthe deed, nota distance.

Counted

33 listings, and none on this lake

Across all 5 central ZIPs this site tracks, 78701, 78702, 78703, 78704, 78705, there are 33 residential listings with declared waterfront, out of 1,010 in total, as of October 17, 2026 at 4:04 AM CDT. That is 3.3% of everything for sale.

Every listing with declared waterfront in the tracked ZIPs, dearest first
Asking	Sq ft	Per sq ft	Built	ZIP	Declared features
$4,450,000	2,713	$1,640	2022	78704	not stated
$1,870,000	2,032	$920	2022	78701	not stated
$1,590,000	1,594	$997	2019	78701	not stated
$1,425,000	1,386	$1,028	2019	78701	not stated
$1,195,000	1,169	$1,022	2011	78701	not stated
$1,050,000	1,172	$896	2019	78701	not stated
$899,000	1,221	$736	2020	78701	not stated
$895,900	1,036	$865	2021	78701	not stated
$885,000	1,743	$508	1983	78701	not stated
$798,000	1,221	$654	2022	78701	not stated
$798,000	1,221	$654	2019	78701	not stated
$630,000	1,252	$503	2006	78701	not stated
$630,000	1,288	$489	1983	78701	not stated
$625,000	796	$785	2019	78701	not stated
$624,950	796	$785	2022	78701	not stated
$599,000	821	$730	2014	78701	not stated
$585,000	1,459	$401	1983	78701	not stated
$579,000	618	$937	2022	78701	not stated
$579,000	1,465	$395	1971	78704	not stated
$565,000	685	$825	2014	78701	not stated
$524,500	1,533	$342	1983	78701	not stated
$509,000	798	$638	2005	78701	not stated
$499,000	1,459	$342	1983	78701	not stated
$475,000	750	$633	2005	78701	not stated
$475,000	999	$475	2013	78704	not stated
$419,999	900	$467	2013	78704	not stated
$369,000	1,288	$286	1983	78701	not stated
$339,000	756	$448	2005	78701	not stated
$334,900	698	$480	2013	78704	not stated
$298,000	564	$528	1971	78704	not stated
$280,000	573	$489	1971	78704	not stated
$260,000	579	$449	1971	78704	not stated
$209,000	388	$539	1971	78704	not stated

Here is the part worth stopping on. 33 of those listings are in 78701 and 78704, and 0 are in 78703, which is the only one of the tracked ZIPs that reaches Lake Austin. So none of what comes back when you search waterfront in central Austin is Lake Austin frontage. It is Lady Bird Lake and the river through downtown, which is a different lake with different rules, and the next section is about why that distinction is the whole purchase.

All 33 are condominiums. Not one is a house. If the picture in your head was a lawn running down to the water with a boat at the end of it, nothing currently on this list is that, at any price on it.

And the set is more concentrated than its size suggests. 11 of the 33 are units on East, which makes a median across this table substantially a report on one developer’s pricing. Read it as a list of what exists rather than as a market.

The honest limit on all of this: the data behind every page here covers 78701, 78702, 78703, 78704, 78705 and nothing else. The Lake Austin market that turns over in volume is west of MoPac, in ZIPs this site does not sync, and the frontage inside 78703 is a short stretch of shoreline held for decades rather than traded. If Lake Austin frontage is what you actually want, that search runs through me directly rather than through this page.

A pool terrace at dusk, stone coping and still water with planting beyond.

Two lakes

One word, two different purchases

Both are dammed stretches of the Colorado River, both are called lakes, and the MLS marks frontage on either one waterfront. After that they have almost nothing in common.

Lady Bird Lake, which was Town Lake until 2007, runs through downtown. City code prohibits gas powered motorboats on it outright. Electric motors are allowed up to five horsepower, and the whole lake is a no wake zone where boats move at four miles an hour. What frontage buys you there is a view, a kayak, and the hike and bike trail at your door. It is a genuinely desirable thing to own and it is not a boat lake.

Lake Austin sits upstream behind Tom Miller Dam, finished in 1940, and is held at a constant level. It is where the private docks, the boat lifts and the ski water are, and where a dock permit is the dominant question in a purchase. That is the lake almost everyone means when they say they want waterfront in Austin.

Which is why the count above matters more than it looks. Searching waterfront and getting a page of results feels like choice. If every one of those results fronts the lake where you cannot run a motor, and you wanted the one where you can, the search has told you nothing except that a checkbox exists.

The dock

The City permits it here, not LCRA

Assume for a moment that you have found the Lake Austin house. This is the detail waterfront marketing gets wrong most often, and it is not a technicality. LCRA governs the other Highland Lakes, Buchanan, Inks, LBJ, Marble Falls and Travis, and its exemption for residential docks of fifteen hundred square feet or less applies to those. Lake Austin is under the City of Austin’s jurisdiction, and the City sets the dock and safety regulations on it.

The City requires a permit for building a new boat dock, for repairs to an existing dock or bulkhead, and for removing sediment from the lakebed. That last one surprises people: dredging in front of your own property is a permitted activity. Questions go to Austin Parks and Recreation on 512-974-6700, and the City’s own page is austintexas.gov/boat-docks.

Which makes permit status the dominant question on any waterfront purchase here, and a records question rather than a visual one. A dock that exists is not the same as a dock that is permitted, and a permitted dock is not necessarily permitted in its current configuration. I am not going to print a dollar figure for what that difference is worth, because every number I could find for it came from a brokerage’s marketing page with no source and no date. Ask for the permit itself, in the option period.

The water

Constant level, since 1940

Lake Austin is the reservoir impounded by Tom Miller Dam, completed in 1940, and it is held at a constant level. That is the structural difference between it and Lake Travis, where a drought can leave a dock looking at mud a long way from the water. Here the shoreline you buy is roughly the shoreline you keep.

The exception is a planned drawdown, which the City and LCRA announce together and which lowers the lake for a period of weeks so that owners and the City can do shoreline and dock work. That is a scheduled inconvenience, and in fact the right window for dock repairs, rather than a risk to the asset.

Honestly

Who the waterfront is wrong for

Anyone who searched waterfront and thought they found Lake Austin: They almost certainly did not. Everything currently declared waterfront in the ZIPs tracked here fronts Lady Bird Lake or the river downtown, where gas motors are banned and the speed limit is four miles an hour. If what you want is a dock, a boat and a constant level lake, that is Lake Austin, it is west of here, and nothing on the list above is it. Searching one word gets you both lakes and tells you which is which only if you already knew.
A buyer who wants a house rather than a unit: Every declared waterfront listing in these ZIPs is a condominium. That is not a coincidence of the month: downtown frontage is where the density is, and the Lake Austin frontage inside this ZIP is a short stretch of shoreline held for decades rather than traded. A waterfront house in central Austin is a thing you wait for and move on quickly, not a thing you browse.
Anyone assuming LCRA permits the dock: On Lake Austin they do not. The City of Austin has jurisdiction here and sets the dock and safety rules, and a permit is required for a new dock, for repairs to an existing dock or bulkhead, and for taking sediment out of the lakebed. LCRA's exemption for small residential docks covers the other Highland Lakes, not this one. Plenty of waterfront marketing gets this backwards, which matters because it sends you to the wrong agency with the wrong timeline.
A buyer treating an existing dock as a given: Whether the dock is permitted, and permitted as it currently stands, is the question that moves the number most, and it is a records question rather than a visual one. A dock that is there is not the same as a dock that is allowed to be there, and inheriting an unpermitted one makes you the owner of the problem. Ask for the permit, not a photograph of the dock, and ask during the option period.
Someone expecting the water level to behave like Lake Travis: It does not, and that is the main structural advantage of this lake. Lake Austin sits behind Tom Miller Dam and is held at a constant level, so a drought does not leave your dock on dry ground the way it can further up the chain. The exception is a planned drawdown, which the City and LCRA announce in advance and which is a scheduled inconvenience rather than a risk to the asset.

On the market

Declared waterfront right now

Every listing in 78701, 78702, 78703, 78704, 78705 that its listing agent has marked as waterfront. From Unlock MLS through MLS Grid as of October 17, 2026 at 4:04 AM CDT. Closed sale prices are not shown: Texas is a non disclosure state, so every figure here comes from asking prices and days since listing.

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Listed by All Hands Real Estate; Berkshire Hathaway TX Realty; Brauman Realty, Inc; CB&A, Realtors; Christies Intl Real Estate Lone Star; Coldwell Banker Realty; Compass RE Texas, LLC; DEN Property Group; DENNY HOLT REALTORS; Douglas Elliman Real Estate; Kuper Sotheby's Int'l Realty; LPT Realty, LLC; Lenore Avant, REALTOR; Pure Realty; RE/MAX Fine Properties; Serhant Texas, LLC; Southwest Realty Advisors, LLC; The Agency Austin, LLC; Urbanspace; Via Realty Group LLC; eXp Realty LLC; eXp Realty, LLC.

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.

Nearby

The water-adjacent pages that do have inventory

Everything for sale across the tracked ZIPs, with filters, is on the search page.

Working here

Finding frontage when the search cannot

A waterfront checkbox returns both lakes and tells you nothing about which. If what you want is a dock and a boat, the search has to run on Lake Austin specifically, west of the ZIPs this site syncs, and it has to be run by somebody rather than saved on a portal. That is a direct search through the MLS on a boundary and a set of criteria that a public site will not let you express, and it is the only way to see the whole of a market this thin.

Then the dock. Permit status is the question that moves the number most on Lake Austin, the City of Austin rather than LCRA is the authority, and a dock that exists is not the same as a dock that is permitted in the configuration it is standing in. I ask for the permit itself during the option period, not a photograph of the dock and not the seller’s recollection of it, because inheriting an unpermitted structure makes it your problem on the day you close.

If that is the kind of help you want on a purchase or a sale here, start a conversation.

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 4:04 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.