Here’s how much it costs to buy in East Riverside right now

What does it cost to buy a home in the ever-more-popular East Riverside neighborhood these days?

In an ongoing series with Curbed Austin, real-estate analytics site NeighborhoodX took a close look at the range of sales asking prices per square foot in the area to find out.

Technically named East Riverside-Oltorf for city planning purposes, the central-city neighborhood starts just south of the river and east of IH-35 (its northern and western borders) and is bounded by South Pleasant Valley Road to the east and East Oltorf Street to the south.

East Riverside Drive, which cuts through the northern part of the neighborhood, has for decades been a busy corridor surrounded by relatively inexpensive apartment complexes (first primarily populated by University of Texas students, later becoming more popular with working people and families), strip malls, small local restaurants, and drive-through fast food. It also has been home off and on to large music clubs.

Development of the Town Lake trail and boardwalk just north of the area’s namesake street has brought higher-end condo and apartment projects to that area. The hills south of the road, especially close to IH-35, are sometimes called “Travis Heights East,” as they retain the markers of the area’s agricultural past as well as large, single-family homes from three different waves of development in the 20th century.

The current average price in the neighborhood is $243 per square foot, ranging from $117/per square foot (2103 Mission Hill Drive, an entire, six-unit condo building on the market for $425,000) to $455 per square foot (1106 Manlove Street, a future single-family home with views asking $1 million).

That’s quite the range, really, and it reflects the rapid change that the neighborhood, until recently basically college-rental alley, has changed. The diversity might not last, but right now there are multifamily properties on the affordable end of the range along with newer condo developments and single-family homes reaching the upper end seen in many of Austin’s popular central neighborhoods.