EricBramlett

I'm biased b/c I live here and have owned a few homes in the neighborhood over the past 10 years. (I lived in NW Hills until 2 years ago, though, so became a resident in March 2013.) That said, I love the neighborhood. Shoal Creek is one of my favorite streets in Austin. The streets are wide, there are tons of trees, and the lot sizes are big (average ~0.25 acres, but go up to 0.75 acres on some lots.) There's a really wide bike lane on Shoal Creek that dead ends into the Shoal Creek trail, which takes you all the way to downtown. So, you can bike to downtown in ~45 minutes or so on a leisurely ride.

Burnet Rd has literally exploded since ~2013. There are tons of restaurants, bars, gyms, (and funnily enough hydro grow shops.) I guess everyone likes to go out to eat, work out, have drinks, and grow "tomatoes." NW Park is awesome for the kids. Phil's Icehouse has a great playground, as does Hat Creek. Pacha & Monkey Nest for the coffee drinkers. Maru is a super underrated sushi restaurant with little to no atmosphere, but affordable, great sushi.

Mopac access (which is important if you commute or have to drive around the city) is excellent. The *only* downside is that Lamar Middle isn't considered "excellent" and neither is McCallum. However, Lamar jumped from a 4 to a 7 on greatschools.org in about 2 years, and I think it's on its way up. Not so sure about McCallum, since high schools have larger populations and are hard to turn around. Still, it's not a bad school, just not "great."

Real Estate prices have really jumped since the recession. They're up by at least 30% and probably closer to 40%. Prices are easily up 100% from 10 years ago. As of today (9/4/2016) you'd want a ~$500k budget to get something decent that you could remodel. New specs are now going for ~$1.3M. Remodeled houses are in the $700k to $900k range.

Hyde Park is an iconic neighborhood in that everyone who's lived in the city longer than a year knows about it and knows where it is. My favorite bike shop (The Peddler) is in HP. There's a cool section of the neighborhood w/ a handful of restaurants (Hyde Park Grill, Asti, Mother's, & Quack's.) It's all walkable (walkability is always debatable June-August, though.) My only complaint about Hyde Park is Mopac access. You're a lot closer to I-35, and everyone knows that 35 is THE WORST. So, you have to cut across town to hit Mopac if you want to go north south. On the flipside, the UT shuttle runs through HP, so it's great for students. There's also great access to public transportation. So, if you don't leave central Austin much, the less-than-ideal Mopac access is a non-issue.