Texas Hill Country Land Is Sitting: What 281,000 Parcels and 27 Months of Inventory Tell Sellers

Haystack Land Company analyzed 281,560 county appraisal district parcels and 7,634 land transactions across three Texas Hill Country counties to answer the question every landowner is asking: why isn’t my land selling?

Research and analysis by Andy Rouse, founder of Haystack Land Company

We pulled appraisal records from Blanco, Comal, and Guadalupe counties, then matched them against five years of land listing data and Federal Reserve economic indicators. The answer isn’t complicated. There are too many sellers, not enough buyers, and the gap is getting wider at higher price points.

Here’s what 281,560 parcels and 27 months of inventory tell us about where the Hill Country land market stands in 2026.

Volume Crashed, but Prices Didn’t

The clearest signal in the Hill Country land market isn’t price movement. It’s the number of people actually buying land.

In 2021, our dataset recorded 1,276 land transactions (5–15 acre parcels) across the three-county area. By 2024, that number had dropped to 844. That’s a 34% decline in transaction volume.

Here’s the thing: asking prices barely moved. The average last-listed price per acre actually went up from $32,231 in 2021 to $40,074 in 2024. Sellers didn’t cut their prices. They just stopped getting offers. We detail the full volume crash and city-by-city breakdown in Part 1.

One important caveat: Texas is a non-disclosure state. Actual sale prices don’t have to be reported publicly. Every price figure in this analysis represents the last listed price at the time of sale, not the closing price. In a buyer’s market, actual closing prices are likely lower than what you see here.

Now, if you’ve seen the Texas A&M TRERC Q4 2025 report, you might be thinking: wait, they said Region 7 volume was up 5.72% and prices hit a new high of $7,911 per acre. How does that square with a 34% volume decline?

It comes down to what TRERC measures versus what we measure. TRERC excludes all sales above $50,000 per acre and their typical tract size is 1,578 acres. They’re tracking large ranch transactions, not 5 to 15 acre ranchettes. Our dataset’s average active listing sits around $60,000 per acre, which is above TRERC’s reporting ceiling entirely. The under-$20,000-per-acre segment of our data actually does look healthy, with about nine months of supply. That’s the market TRERC is capturing.

Even TRERC’s own report notes a “continued standoff between buyers and sellers” with “unrealistic expectations” driving longer marketing times. We’re seeing the same standoff. We’re just measuring the part of the market where it’s most severe.

27 Months of Inventory, and It Gets Worse at Higher Prices

Right now there are 1,926 active land listings (5–15 acres) across the three-county area. At 2024’s selling pace of 844 transactions per year, that works out to 27.4 months of inventory.

For context, a balanced housing market has four to six months of supply. Land markets move slower, so 12–18 months is generally considered balanced for rural and recreational land. At 27 months, the Hill Country is sitting in a deep buyer’s market.

But the headline number understates what’s happening at higher price points. When we break inventory down by asking price per acre, the picture gets much worse above $20,000 per acre.

Under $20,000 per acre, the market is roughly balanced at nine months. Those are mostly rural, unimproved parcels in Guadalupe County and parts of southern Blanco. They’re still moving.

Above that threshold? Months of supply rockets past two years. If you’re listed above $100,000 per acre, you’re staring down nearly four years of inventory at the current selling pace.

The Market Split in Two

Not every city fell the same way. When we compare transaction volumes from the 2021–2022 boom period to 2024–2025, a clear pattern emerges: affordable markets recovered, premium markets froze.

Look at Seguin, Lockhart, and Smithville. Average asking prices between $30,000 and $40,000 per acre. These cities are seeing more transactions now than during the boom. Buyers still exist. They moved down the price ladder.

Wimberley lost 69% of its transaction volume. Dripping Springs lost 52%. Marble Falls, 75%. Sellers are holding firm on prices, and buyers are waiting them out.

One number sums it up: in 2021, 39% of all land deals were under $150,000 total price. By 2025, that share had dropped to 22%. The buyer pool compressed toward lower price points, and everything above that line got left behind. This per-acre price split is even sharper when you break it down by tract size. Our ranchette analysis shows small-acreage parcels carry a 2.3x premium that’s concentrating all the demand in the cheapest per-unit brackets.

Developers Stopped Creating Supply

Nobody’s talking about this one, but it might be the most important signal in the data.

We tracked new property IDs appearing in the county appraisal system each year. A new ID means a parcel that didn’t exist the year before, which usually means someone subdivided or split a lot.

Blanco County is the one to watch. In 2022, 403 new 5 to 91 acre parcels showed up on the roll. By 2024, that fell to 146, a 64% drop in new supply creation. Guadalupe dropped 43%. Comal has been flat. Developers and landowners stopped splitting property because the economics stopped working.

For current sellers, this cuts both ways. No wave of new inventory is coming to dilute your listing. But competition among existing listings is static, and the buyer pool keeps shrinking.

One more thing worth noting: about 43% of Blanco’s 5 to 91 acre parcels carry ag exemptions, with only 16% assessed at full market value as residential. Ag-exempt parcels attract a different buyer at a different price point than residential ranchettes, and that distinction matters when you’re trying to figure out where your property actually sits in this market.

The Assessor’s Office Is Telling You Something

In a non-disclosure state like Texas, county appraisal districts are among the few entities that see actual transaction data. They use it to set property values. The direction of those values tells you something.

We tracked year-over-year changes in land market values for non-agricultural parcels (5–91 acres) in Comal County:

In 2022, the assessor raised 85% of Comal’s non-ag land values. That tells you what they were seeing in actual sales: rapid appreciation. By 2025, only 18% were raised, and 62% were held flat. In 2024, a striking 40% were actually lowered.

The assessor’s office has access to deed data and closing prices that the rest of us can’t see in a non-disclosure state. And what they’re signaling is that the market peaked and has either stabilized or declined. They lag by roughly a year, so this stabilization reflects conditions from 2023 and 2024.

What This Means If You’re Trying to Sell Land in Texas

If you’re holding land in the Hill Country waiting for 2021 conditions to return, these numbers should change your thinking. That market isn’t coming back anytime soon.

The biggest mistake we see sellers make is pricing for the market they remember instead of the one that exists. If you’re not sure where your land sits, our land value estimator gives you a county-level starting point, and our guide to selling land fast lays out your options. Yes, the average last-listed price per acre rose from $32,231 to $40,074. But that happened because the cheap stuff sold and the expensive stuff didn’t. If you’re priced above $40,000 per acre, you’re sitting in a pool of 40+ months of inventory alongside hundreds of other listings.

And time isn’t helping. Every month you hold, your property ages on the market while fresh listings show up at more aggressive prices. The listing pool isn’t shrinking. At last count, there are 421 active parcels in the $40,000 to $60,000 range alone across just three counties. That’s your competition, and most sellers don’t even know they have that much of it.

Here’s what is still working: cash. In 2024, 844 parcels sold despite everything we’ve covered here. Buyers who don’t depend on financing can move quickly and aren’t scared off by 6.7% mortgage rates. Haystack Land Company purchases land for cash and can close in as few as 30 days.

If you own vacant land in Texas and want to know what it’s worth in today’s market, get a free, no-obligation cash offer from Haystack Land Company. We look at comparable sales, appraisal data, and current inventory to make fair offers, and we can close on your timeline.

Methodology

This analysis draws from three primary data sources:

• County appraisal district records: 281,560 parcels across Blanco County (82,254), Comal County (126,061), and Guadalupe County (73,245). Five years of certified appraisal rolls (2021–2025) including land market values, improvement values, agricultural use values, acreage, and state property type codes.
• Land listing data: 7,634 land transactions and active listings (5–15 acres) from 2021 through early 2026. Transaction prices represent the last listed price at time of sale, not verified closing prices, because Texas is a non-disclosure state.
• Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED): 2,003 data points including weekly 30-year fixed mortgage rates (MORTGAGE30US), M2 money supply, and Texas nonfarm employment.

Key methodological notes:

• All price figures are last-listed prices, not closing prices. In a buyer’s market, actual sale prices are likely lower.
• County appraisal values lag the market by approximately one year.
• Agricultural status in Blanco County was identified using the assessed-to-appraised value ratio (<10% = agricultural, validated against Comal County SPTC codes).
• Months of supply calculations use 2024 annual sold volume as the denominator, representing the most recent complete year.
• “New parcels” are property IDs that first appear in a given year’s appraisal roll and were not present in any prior year, indicating subdivision or lot-split activity.

Research and analysis by Andy Rouse, founder of Haystack Land Company.

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