Explore Highland Lakes Real Estate

I work all of the Highland Lakes towns, and “which one should I actually look at” is one of the first questions almost every out-of-town buyer asks me. This page is my answer to that — one short paragraph per town, with the one thing that actually sets it apart from the others. If you want the fuller regional picture first, with the lakes, the geography, and how the whole area fits together, that’s here. This page skips the background and goes straight to what’s different, town by town. I’m Robbie English, REALTOR and Broker at Uncommon Highland Lakes Realty, and this is the region I work full time.

Comparing the Ten Highland Lakes Towns

Marble Falls

Marble Falls is the commercial center of the region. It sits on Lake Marble Falls itself, but it’s also where most of the area’s restaurants, shops, and everyday services are concentrated, so it’s the town other Highland Lakes residents drive into for groceries, dinner, and a Saturday afternoon out. If you want lake living without leaving town for basics, this is usually the starting point.

Horseshoe Bay

Horseshoe Bay is built around Lake LBJ and three golf courses, and it’s the resort end of the market — country club amenities, a marina, and prices that run higher than anywhere else in the region. It draws buyers who want a full-time resort lifestyle, not just a place near the water.

Kingsland

Kingsland sits at the point where the Llano and Colorado rivers come together to form the north end of Lake LBJ, so it has both river frontage and lake frontage inside one small town. It’s also kept more of a rural, unincorporated feel than Marble Falls or Horseshoe Bay.

Burnet

Burnet is the Burnet County seat, and it isn’t a lake town at all — it sits between Lake Buchanan and Inks Lake rather than directly on either one. That, combined with its role as a working county-seat town instead of a resort destination, makes it the most affordable entry point into the Highland Lakes area.

The next five towns all sit directly on Lake LBJ, and each one has its own character within that.

Granite Shoals

Granite Shoals runs along the east shore of Lake LBJ and calls itself the “City of Parks.” It has more public parks and lake-access points than the other towns on this list, which matters if you want water access without needing waterfront footage of your own.

Cottonwood Shores

Cottonwood Shores sits on the Colorado River just below the Lake LBJ dam outlet, so it’s technically river frontage rather than lake frontage, with boat ramps onto both bodies of water. Prices here tend to run below the bigger lake towns, which is worth knowing if budget matters more than a waterfront address.

Highland Haven

Highland Haven is the smallest and quietest of the Lake LBJ towns. There’s no commercial strip and no resort development, just a small residential community on the water. It’s worth knowing about if what you actually want is quiet over amenities.

Sunrise Beach Village

Sunrise Beach Village dates to 1958, which makes it one of the oldest lakefront communities on Lake LBJ. That history shows up in the housing stock — a mix of long-established homes alongside newer builds, rather than one subdivision built out all at once.

Sherwood Shores

Sherwood Shores is one of Granite Shoals’ original subdivisions, platted in 1962. It’s a smaller, established pocket within that stretch of the lake rather than a town center of its own.

Meadowlakes

Meadowlakes breaks the pattern of this list. It’s a gated golf community built on Lake Marble Falls, not Lake LBJ, so if a gated, golf-course setting is what you’re after, this is the one town here built specifically around that.

That’s the short version of all ten. Click through to any town’s page for current listings, and if you’re still sorting out which one actually fits what you’re trying to do, that’s exactly the kind of conversation I have with buyers every week.

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