Lost Pines and Tahitian Village – Homes Amidst the Trees
Lost Pines comprises over 6000 acres of the Loblolly Pine forest in Bastrop County, Texas. This area has resorts, hotels and a lot of Texas flavor – including down home Texas-style BBQ and is worth a weekend – or longer – visit.
Many people that aren’t content to merely visit this area of Texas, located Southeast of the Austin metropolitan area, own homes in the Tahitian Village subdivision. Tahitian Village is located a little Southeast of the old downtown Historic District of the City of Bastrop. The streets in Tahitian Village have names like Kaanapali Lane, Onini Court and Kulua Court and are lined with towering pine trees that provide shade from the blistering Texas heat in the summer and because they are evergreen, add much-needed color in the winter.
Homes in Tahitian Village are on septic systems. In some areas, more than one lot was required to provide suitable soil for the septic, and in others a single lot was sufficient. Two of the photos in the gallery that follow show samples of soil found in this area. Unfortunately, I like my dirt in photos and not on my hands so I can’t tell you what the relevant characteristics are but because of the need for septic in this area, you should educate yourself on septic-related topics if you are planning to buy in any area that isn’t on a city sewer.
Homes in in this area range from over 30 years old to brand new.
Real Estate Sales Data for 2009 and 2010 for Tahitian Village
The lowest selling price in Tahitian Village for 2010 was $70,000 for a 1685 square foot home built in 2004 on .43 acres. The highest selling price was $284,900 for a 3180 square foot home built in 1993 situated on 1.3 acres. Unlike many other subdivisions we have written about where lot sizes tend to be fairly consistent, the large range of lot sizes in Tahitian Village add an additional level of complication when analyzing and reporting on market data for the area.
9 of the 76 homes in Tahitian Village that sold in 2010 were foreclosures. Of these 9, the median selling price was $101,200 which is well below the median selling price of $148,700 for the area for 2010.
How are Median Values Determined?
When looking at the above real estate sales data for 2009 and 2010, pulled from the Austin Board of Realtors’ ACTRIS system, you might notice immediately that the numbers running across the line for Median values don’t seem to add up. The four charts that follow will hopefully explain why this is.
The Chart #1 (Yellow) contains 11 actual records from the 2010 sales data for the Tahitian Village subdivision. We’re going to look at these 11 records in a few different ways to find median values. The median value is the one in the middle of a sorted list, so in the examples that follow, it will be record number 6, with 5 below and 5 above. This records in Chart #1 aren’t sorted in any particular way. (Note however that there is a $32 range in the selling price per square foot of these homes, another reason why using this number is a poor way to ascertain the price of any given home in the absence of a comprehensive real estate appraisal to determine the home’s market value.)
Chart #2 (Bright Blue) shows the same transactions, sorted by size of the home. You can see that the Median Size of this set of 11 homes is 1490 square feet and that this particular home sold for $73,000 which is $49.33 per square foot.
Chart #3 (Orange) shows the same transactions, sorted by selling price of the home. You can see that the Median Selling Price of this set of 11 homes was $101,200 square feet and that this particular home was 1348 square feet and sold for $75.07 per square foot.
Chart #4 (Pink) shows the same transactions, sorted by Selling Price per Square foot. Sorted this way, the Median Selling Price per Square Foot was $66.75 for a home that was 1618 square feet and sold for $108,000.
With this information in hand, remember that when you’re presented with a set of numbers for real estate transactions data, you need to know that the data can be sorted and reported in many different ways and that if you really want to know the trends and activity for an area, you need to get your hands on the actual data and not someone else’s summarized version.
Now that we’ve concluded that mini lesson, let’s get back to talking about Tahitian Village in Bastrop!
Photographs of the Tahitian Village Subdivision in Bastrop
