A two-story residence at dusk, limestone and dark timber under a low roofline, its windows lit and live oaks overhead.

Clarksville, and what the small number means

A freedman’s town founded in 1871 on two acres bought from a Confederate general, a third of it demolished for a highway, and a market where the cheapest listing is the dearest per foot.

8 homes for sale in Clarksvilleas of October 16, 2026 at 5:53 AM CDT

See active listings

On the market

Clarksville right now

Every residential listing whose location falls inside the Old West Austin planning area, west of West Lynn Street and north of West 10th, in 78703. That is the boundary the City of Austin publishes, cut along the street centerlines the Census records, which is how one planning area serves several neighborhoods without any page guessing. From Unlock MLS through MLS Grid as of October 16, 2026 at 5:53 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: 8
Median asking: $1,449,450
Median per sq ft: $667
Median days listed: 54

All 8 of them, newest first. Sort by price either way below. Everything across 78703, filters and all, is on its market page.

SortNewestPrice, low to highPrice, high to low

Listed by All City Real Estate Ltd. Co; AustinRealEstate.com; Bramlett Partners; Compass RE Texas, LLC; Gottesman Residential R.E.; Moreland Properties.

1871

Two acres, bought from a Confederate general

Charles Clark was a freedman from Mississippi. In 1871 he bought two acres west of the city from Nathan G. Shelley, a Confederate general, built a house on what is now West 10th Street, and sold the rest off in pieces to other people who had been enslaved. They wanted somewhere they could find their families, run their own lives and hold their own church services.

It is described as the oldest surviving freedman’s town west of the Mississippi, and surviving is the operative word. Dozens of similar settlements ringed Austin and most of them are gone. This one is still here, still has its church, and still has descendants of the original families in it.

It is also very small, and that is not an accident of platting. The next section is why.

A third of itwas demolishedfor a highwayin 1971.

What happened

Services withheld, then a highway

Before the highway there was the slower method. The City declined to pave the streets, lay sidewalks, put in street lighting, build sewers or do anything about the flooding. That was not neglect. Withholding those services was understood as pressure on residents to sell and move somewhere the City would serve.

In 1968 residents organized against a plan to run a highway along the Missouri Pacific line, found lawyers, and sued both the Texas Highway Department and the City of Austin. They lost. Construction of MoPac in 1971 took houses on both sides of the tracks. Clarksville lost close to a third of its homes. More than sixty Black families were displaced, and some were paid as little as four thousand five hundred dollars, the appraised value, for houses that in many cases had neither running water nor electricity, because the City had never put any in.

The National Register listed the district on 1 December 1976, five years after the demolition. The Clarksville Community Development Corporation was formed in the same decade to hold housing in the neighborhood that people who lived there could still afford. Gentrification began in earnest in the 1980s and accelerated through the 1990s, which is the process that produced the numbers further down this page.

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

Counted

The cheapest listing is not the cheap one

There are 8 residential listings inside the boundary as of October 16, 2026 at 5:53 AM CDT. Sorted by asking price, with the rate each one works out to. Read the last column rather than the third.

Every listing inside the Clarksville boundary, cheapest first, with size, year built and price per square foot
Asking	Sq ft	Per sq ft	Built	Type	Status
$249,950	373	$670	1972	Condo	Active
$379,000	1,048	$362	1982	Condo	Active
$899,000	1,840	$489	2008	Condo	Active
$1,399,900	2,192	$639	1980	House	Active
$1,499,000	2,256	$664	1932	House	Active
$2,495,000	2,875	$868	1940	House	Active
$2,995,000	2,866	$1,045	1936	House	Active
$3,199,000	3,090	$1,035	2026	House	Active

The entry price here is $249,950, and it buys 373 square feet at $670 a foot. That rate is higher than 4 other listings on this table that ask more money, one of them 6.0 times as much. So the cheap listing is not the cheap way to own here. It is the small way.

Across the whole table the rate runs from $362 to $1,045 a foot. That is a spread of 2.9 to one, against 12.8 to one on the asking prices beside it. The gap between those two numbers is the whole point. In Clarksville the figure on the sign is mostly telling you how much building you get, and only secondarily how good a deal it is.

Age tells the same story from the other side. 3 of the 8 were built before 1941 and the forSale on the table went up in 2026, on the same few blocks. The surviving houses and their replacements are for sale side by side, which is what the last forty years of this neighborhood look like in a table.

A handful of listings is an illustration rather than a trend, and in a district this small one sale moves every figure above. The Old Enfield page sets out why small samples mislead.

Honestly

Who Clarksville is wrong for

A buyer who reads the low number as a way in: It is not, and the table above is the proof. The least expensive thing for sale here is usually the most expensive per square foot, because what makes Clarksville costly is the ground and the location rather than the building. You are not paying less to be here. You are buying less of it, which is a reasonable thing to want, but it is a different decision and it should be made with the rate in front of you.
Anyone expecting a neighborhood the size of its reputation: Clarksville is a few blocks. The National Register district runs West Lynn to MoPac and West 10th to West 12th, and that is the whole of it. A third of the houses were demolished for the highway in 1971. People use the name loosely for a much larger area, including the whole of the City's Old West Austin planning area, and a listing that says Clarksville may well sit outside the district. The address settles it, not the name.
Someone who wants to add on, scrape or rebuild: Much of this is a National Register district and a local historic district, and the neighborhood has an active association and a community development corporation that has fought for its character for fifty years. None of that makes a project impossible and new construction does happen here. It does mean the review is real, the neighbors pay attention, and the timeline is not the one you would assume from the lot size. Price that in before the option period, not during it.
A buyer who wants the history to be comfortable: This is the oldest surviving freedman's town west of the Mississippi, and the reason it is small is that the City withheld basic services to push people out and then ran a highway through it. More than sixty Black families were displaced in 1971, some paid the appraised value of forty five hundred dollars. If you buy here you are buying into that, and the neighborhood has people in it who remember it. Worth knowing before you arrive, not after.

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.

The boundary

Three edges exact, one approximate

The National Register district runs from the west side of West Lynn Street to MoPac, and from West 10th Street up to West 12th, with that north edge stepping onto Waterston Avenue west of Charlotte Street. This page selects from the City’s Old West Austin planning area, west of the West Lynn centerline and north of the West 10th centerline, inside 78703. West Lynn, West 10th and MoPac therefore match the district exactly.

The north edge does not. The planning area continues roughly three hundred and seventy metres past Waterston, so addresses on Hartford Road, Palma Plaza and Enfield Road can appear in the table above while sitting outside the National Register district. If the distinction matters to you, because of a historic designation or what a listing claims, the address decides it and the City’s own historic maps are where to check.

Going deeper

A whole site about this neighborhood

This page is the market view: what is for sale inside the boundary, what the rate actually is, and how it fits the rest of 78703. For the neighborhood itself, street by street, with the history at length, the church, the community development corporation’s holdings and the historic designations parcel by parcel, I keep a separate site devoted to Clarksville at clarksvilleaustinhomes.com.

Nearby

The rest of 78703

Everything for sale across the ZIP, with filters, is on the 78703 market page.

Working here

Three designations and one parcel

More things are recorded against a Clarksville lot than almost anywhere else of its size in Austin: a National Register district, City historic designations that vary parcel by parcel, and in some cases holdings of the community development corporation. Which of them touch a specific house changes what a renovation costs, how long it takes and whether it is possible. None of that is visible from the street or from a listing, and all of it is a records question with a definite answer.

I get those answers during the option period rather than after closing, and I will say plainly when the answer makes a plan unworkable. The second thing worth knowing is the one this page is built around: the cheapest listing here is usually among the dearest per square foot, so a low asking price is a small property rather than a discount. Pricing to buy or to sell means working in the rate, not the headline.

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 16, 2026 at 5:53 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.