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Central East Austin, where the discount is not one

A condominium here costs about what a house costs per square foot, which is true nowhere else in central Austin, on ground a 1928 city plan set aside on purpose.

46 homes for sale in Central East Austinas of October 17, 2026 at 4:03 AM CDT

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On the market

Central East Austin right now

Every residential listing whose location falls inside the Central East Austin planning area, in 78702. That is the boundary the City of Austin publishes, and the one this page uses. From Unlock MLS through MLS Grid as of October 17, 2026 at 4:03 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.

For sale: 45
Median asking: $544,900
Median per sq ft: $457
Median days listed: 101

All 46 of them, newest first. Sort by price either way below. Everything across 78702, filters and all, is on its market page.

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Listed by Austin Choice Homes; Berkshire Hathaway TX Realty; Christies Intl Real Estate Lone Star; Compass RE Texas, LLC; Compass RE Texas, LLC.; DEN Property Group; E-Rae Realty; Icon Realty Texas LLC; JBGoodwin REALTORS WC; JBGoodwin REALTORS WL; Jeremy Kunzinger, Broker; KWLS - T. Kerr Property Group; Keller Williams - Lake Travis; Keller Williams Realty; Kifer Sparks Agency, LLC; Kuper Sotheby's Int'l Realty; Local Life Realty, LLC; Luisa Mauro Real Estate; Metro Realty Advisors, LLC; Outlaw Realty; Pauly Presley Realty; Realty of America, LLC; Redfin Corporation; Spyglass Realty; StarPointe Realty CTX, LLC; Team Price Real Estate; Team West Real Estate LLC; Twelve Rivers Realty; 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.

1928

A plan that could not say what it meant

The City Council commissioned a plan for Austin in 1927 from the firm Koch & Fowler, delivered early the following year. Its longest-lasting effect was to name East Austin the city’s “negro district”. The firm’s own survey had recorded that Black residents were at that point living in small numbers in practically every section of Austin, except the ground just east of East Avenue.

They could not do it by zoning and they knew it. The Supreme Court had struck down racial zoning in Buchanan v. Warley in November 1917, and the plan says as much, that the matter could not “be solved legally under any zoning law known to [them] at present”. The recommendation instead was to draw the Black population to the district: put the schools that served them here, put the parks here, and put them nowhere else.

It worked, with help. The city withheld sewers and paved streets from the freedmen’s communities scattered across the rest of Austin, which is the same pressure the Clarksville page describes being applied there. Redlining did the rest. By 1932 almost every Black resident of Austin had moved east. That is why there is a dense, central, historically Black neighborhood on this ground, and it is the beginning of any honest account of what is happening to it now.

They drew peoplehere on purpose.Then came backfor the land.

Counted

The rate that does not fall

There are 46 residential listings here as of October 17, 2026 at 4:03 AM CDT, 24 houses and 22 condominiums. Almost everywhere, a condominium costs meaningfully less per square foot than a house, and that gap is the real reason it is the cheaper way into an expensive area. Here is that gap, measured in every neighborhood on this site with enough of both.

Median price per square foot for houses and condominiums in every neighborhood with at least four of each, sorted by the ratio between them
Neighborhood	House	Condo	House ÷ condo	Median sq ft
Central East Austin78702	$451	$461	0.98	2,162 vs 942
Rosewood78702	$414	$386	1.07	1,218 vs 1,136
Govalle78702	$451	$411	1.10	1,749 vs 1,563
Holly78702	$532	$479	1.11	1,348 vs 940
Dawson78704	$534	$468	1.14	1,431 vs 1,603
Chestnut78702	$476	$397	1.20	1,555 vs 708
Galindo78704	$455	$378	1.20	1,553 vs 1,344
South Lamar78704	$486	$385	1.26	1,683 vs 1,005
Bouldin Creek78704	$712	$556	1.28	1,886 vs 1,124
Zilker78704	$787	$570	1.38	2,317 vs 1,060
Deep Eddy78703	$662	$472	1.40	2,627 vs 1,044
North University78705	$587	$399	1.47	2,270 vs 685
East Cesar Chavez78702	$698	$467	1.49	1,501 vs 518
Travis Heights78704	$779	$425	1.83	2,700 vs 1,008
West Campus78705	$713	$375	1.90	1,349 vs 879
Tarrytown78703	$802	$411	1.95	2,942 vs 1,176
Barton Hills78704	$825	$388	2.13	3,070 vs 1,048

Central East Austin is at the top of that table because its gap has closed entirely. A house here runs $451 a square foot and a condominium $461, which is a ratio of 0.98 against 2.13 in Barton Hills. It is the only neighborhood measured here where the two are level.

What that means in practice is the whole point. The median condominium here is 942 square feet against 2,162 for the median house, so at the same rate the cheaper asking price is buying roughly half the floor area and none of the ground under it. That can be exactly the right trade if the point is to be in this neighborhood at a number you can reach. It is the wrong trade if you thought you were getting a discount, and no portal will tell you, because none of them publishes a rate by product type.

The stock behind those numbers is unusually split. 6 of the 46 listings that state a year were built before 1945 and 34 since 2001, which is most of the explanation: you are looking at two different products on the same blocks, and the newer one has been priced against the neighborhood rather than against its own form.

Only neighborhoods with at least four houses and four condominiums appear in the table, because a ratio between two medians of two or three listings is noise. Every figure is an asking price: Texas is a non-disclosure state.

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

Honestly

Who Central East Austin is wrong for

A buyer treating the condominiums as the budget option: They are cheaper to buy and they are not cheaper. At roughly the same rate per square foot as a house here, the lower asking price is buying you about half the floor area and none of the land, which is a reasonable trade if what you want is to be in this neighborhood at a number you can reach. It is a bad trade if you believed you were getting a discount, and the table below is the only place you are likely to see it put plainly.
Anyone who wants the history to be in the past: It is not. The reason there is a dense, central, historically Black neighborhood on this ground is a 1928 city plan that drew people here by putting their schools and parks here and nowhere else, after racial zoning had already been ruled illegal. The people who were moved here, and their descendants, are the people being priced out now, and plenty of them still live on these streets. Buying here is buying into that, and it is better known than discovered.
A buyer who expects speed: The median listing here sits longer than most of this ZIP, and the houses sit longer than the condominiums despite costing more. That is leverage if you are buying and a problem if you are selling, and in both cases it means the list price has to be right rather than hopeful. It also means the thing you want may still be available in three weeks, which is not true a mile west.
Someone who has not looked at what is actually across the street: This is a neighborhood of very mixed blocks: houses from before 1920 next to buildings finished this decade, and a good deal of ground in between that is mid-change. That is a real character and some people love it, but it is not uniform and a photograph of one house tells you nothing about the two beside it. Drive the specific block, at the specific hour you would be living there.

Working here

Pricing where the rate does not behave

The flat rate between houses and condominiums is not a curiosity, it is a pricing problem on both sides of a deal. A condominium here cannot be priced off condominium comparables from anywhere else in the city, because everywhere else they trade at a discount to houses and here they do not. An appraisal that reaches for the nearest condominium sales outside the neighborhood will come back low, and that is a contingency to anticipate in the contract rather than a surprise in week three. I build the comparable set inside the boundary and by form, and I would rather explain a number than defend one.

The second thing is slower and it is not about arithmetic. This neighborhood is where the city moved people on purpose and it is where they are being priced out now, and a good deal of what is for sale is being sold by families who have been here a long time. That does not make a purchase wrong. It does mean the transaction deserves to be conducted like one between people rather than one between a buyer and an address, and that the history is worth knowing before you arrive rather than after.

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

Nearby

The rest of 78702

Everything for sale across the ZIP, with filters, is on the 78702 market page.

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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.

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