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Neighborhood Report

Cherrywood, Austin, Texas

The central Austin neighborhood where a first home is still a house: post-war cottages, bungalows and 1948 duplexes under big trees, Maplewood Elementary and Patterson Park inside the neighborhood, Manor Road restaurants along the south edge, and downtown about three miles away.

Best for a Specific Need Angle: Best for first-time buyers in central Austin Price band: Mid Data checked October 28, 2026
A 1948 Delwood duplex at 1302 Kirkwood Road in Cherrywood, Austin, with a two story stucco facade and trees
A 1948 Delwood duplex at 1302 Kirkwood Road, in the Delwood Duplex Historic District. Photo by Larry D. Moore, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

At a Glance

Affordability 6/10 Median sale price, Cherrywood$625,000Homes.com Home Trends, last 12 months, October 2026 1 year price change, Cherrywood, on 42 salesDown 5% year over yearHomes.com Home Trends, last 12 months, October 2026 Average apartment rent, one bedroom, Upper Boggy Creek / Cherrywood$1,339 per monthApartments.com local guide, February 2026 Median sale price, single family, Cherrywood$637,000Homes.com Home Trends, last 12 months, October 2026 Central Austin at a working discount, with prices drifting down and small houses doing the entry work. The tax bill is the second price, and it arrives every year.
Walkability 8/10 Walk Score, Upper Boggy Creek / Cherrywood79 out of 100Apartments.com local guide, February 2026 Transit Score, Upper Boggy Creek / Cherrywood55 out of 100Apartments.com local guide, February 2026 Bike Score, Upper Boggy Creek / Cherrywood88 out of 100Apartments.com local guide, February 2026 The interior streets walk and ride well, with the school, the park and the coffeehouse inside the neighborhood. Manor Road and the highway edge are louder work.
Housing Variety 8/10 Housing stock, Cherrywood1,328 homes, median year built 1949; post-war bungalows, ranch houses and cottages, the 1948 Delwood duplexes, accessory dwelling units behind original houses, small apartment buildings and postmodern infill; 58% of residents rentHomes.com public records and neighborhood page, October 2026 Small is the variety here: cottages, duplex halves, garage apartments and condos at the edges. A buyer who can live under 1,200 square feet has real choice.
Daily Life 8.5/10 A school, a park with a pool, an art fair in the school gym each December, and a coffeehouse that doubles as the meeting room. Daily life runs local, and neighbors tend the green pieces themselves.
Commute 8/10 Distance to Downtown AustinAbout 3.1 milesAustinRealEstateHomesBlog, October 2026 CapMetro bus to Downtown AustinAbout 30 minutesNeighborhoods.com Cherrywood guide, October 2026 Distance to the University of Texas at Austin, from the neighborhood west sideAbout 0.9 milesAustinRealEstateHomesBlog, October 2026 Downtown and the university are both short hops, by bus, bike or car. The drive is quick outside the peak and the bike ride is the reliable version.

Texas cost notes. Texas levies no state income tax, and property tax carries the load instead. The five adopted tax year 2026 rates for the entities taxing a Cherrywood home add up to about $2.12 per $100 of taxable value, with Austin ISD the largest share (Austin Current, October 5, 2026; adopted rate tables, October 2026). A buyer at the median should budget about $13,300 a year before exemptions. The school homestead exemption now stands at $140,000, the City of Austin and Travis County each offer a 20 percent homestead exemption on their own portions, and appraisals on a homestead are capped at 10 percent growth a year. Sales tax in Austin totals 8.25 percent.

Map of Cherrywood, Austin in context, with a pin on the neighborhood, downtown Austin southwest and the Mueller development east
Cherrywood in context, pin on the neighborhood, with downtown Austin to the southwest, the University of Texas west across Interstate 35, and Mueller east across Airport Boulevard. Map: Esri, HERE, Garmin, © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS user community.

The Story

Before Cherrywood had a name, it had farms, an orchard, and a creek. The land east of what is now Interstate 35 was Tonkawa homeland, then, by the end of the nineteenth century, a patchwork claimed by about a dozen owners. Lucy Dancy subdivided her lot in 1887 into the Dancy Addition, nine square blocks that the Cherrywood Neighborhood Association calls the first modern development of the neighborhood, and she named streets for her family's New Orleans roots. Most of the rest waited. French Place, as locals call the northern blocks, was platted before World War II in small pieces with names like Forest Hills, Nowlin Heights, Lafayette Place, University Park, and Avalon, on land that had been cotton fields, pasture, and dairy ground. On Hollywood Avenue, Billie Crawford still lives in the house her father built with hand tools in 1933, on a lot her mother won with a $1 lottery ticket bought on Congress Avenue.

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The orchard story is the one Cherrywood still tells about itself. In the late 1930s the city, expanding Robert Mueller Municipal Airport, threatened eminent domain against Nye Patterson's fruit orchard. On February 28, 1941, J.M. and Nye Patterson conveyed about 100 acres to the city for $35,000. Patterson, it is said, wept as his plum and peach trees were ripped out. A park of roughly twenty acres, dedicated that year, was set aside in his honor, and Patterson Park still anchors the neighborhood's east side.

After the war the farms filled in fast. Bascom Giles, Texas Land Commissioner from 1939, turned his holdings into housing for returning GIs. His Delwood III duplexes, built in 1948 and known locally as Duplex Nation, are two-story concrete-block and stucco buildings, each with upstairs and downstairs two-bedroom units, steel casement windows, and almost no ornament. The National Register nomination calls the district the only concentration of duplex tract housing in Austin, and it was listed on March 21, 2011, with almost no teardowns. A block away, the Walter Schieffer family gave a grazing pasture from their dairy operation for the Maplewood Elementary campus in 1951, and Giles opened the Delwood Shopping Center the same year, billed as the first auto-centric shopping center of its kind in Texas, with parking for 1,000 cars.

Proximity to the airport kept the duplexes and bungalows affordable for decades, home to graduate students, bohemians, and first-time buyers. When Mueller closed in 1999, one Duplex Nation resident reported hearing birdsong the next morning, May 23, for the first time in her years there. Values rose after that, and Cherrywood, a relatively recent name for these older subdivisions, taken from Cherrywood Road, became central Austin. What has not changed is the habit of defending the green pieces: neighbors stopped the city mowing Boggy Creek's channel at Willowbrook Reach, blocked a concrete erosion project there in 2010 in favor of riparian restoration, built a park plan for Patterson Park in 2017 and 2018, and now argue, in detailed letters to TxDOT, for caps and crossings over an expanded I-35 rather than a wider barrier at their western edge.

The former control tower of Robert Mueller Municipal Airport in Austin, east of Cherrywood
The former control tower of Robert Mueller Municipal Airport, east of Cherrywood across Airport Boulevard. The airport's expansion took Nye Patterson's orchard in 1941, and its closure in 1999 changed the neighborhood's prices. Photo by WhisperToMe, Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Timeline

  • 1887: Lucy Dancy subdivides her lot as the Dancy Addition, about nine square blocks, the first modern development of the neighborhood (Cherrywood Neighborhood Association).
  • 1930: Robert Mueller Municipal Airport begins operations on land purchased from the Giles family.
  • 1933: Billie Crawford's father builds their Hollywood Avenue house by hand, on a lot her mother won with a $1 lottery ticket.
  • February 28, 1941: J.M. and Nye Patterson convey about 100 acres to the City of Austin for $35,000 for the Mueller airport expansion; a park of nearly 20 acres is dedicated in Nye Patterson's honor that year.
  • 1948: The Delwood III duplexes, Duplex Nation, are built for returning GIs on Bascom Giles's holdings.
  • 1951: Maplewood Elementary opens on a former Schieffer family dairy pasture; the Delwood Shopping Center opens the same year, billed as the first auto-centric shopping center of its kind in Texas.
  • 1990: The Delwood Center is demolished to become a large Fiesta market; the original sign is retained and moved to the south side fronting 38th 1/2 Street.
  • May 22 to 23, 1999: Mueller airport closes and commercial service moves to Bergstrom; a Duplex Nation resident hears birdsong on the morning of May 23 for the first time in her years there.
  • 2002: The Cherrywood Art Fair begins, and Friends of Patterson Park is established; the Upper Boggy Creek Neighborhood Plan is adopted on August 1, 2002.
  • 2010: Neighbors at Willowbrook Reach block the city's concrete erosion project on Boggy Creek; a riparian restoration plan is established by October 2010.
  • March 21, 2011: The Delwood Duplex Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
  • 2017 to 2018: Friends of Patterson Park creates the Patterson Park Neighborhood Park Plan, led by Jennifer Potter-Miller.
  • December 12 to 13, 2026: The Cherrywood Art Fair returns to Maplewood Elementary, produced by Chula League, with proceeds benefiting Maplewood and arts programming including Little Artist BIG ARTIST.

What It Actually Feels Like

Cherrywood feels like a small town that happens to sit three miles from a state capitol. The interior streets are all porches, pecan and oak shade, and houses small enough to see whole from the sidewalk: plum-colored cottages, stucco duplexes with steel windows, bungalows with a garage apartment out back. Kids walk to Maplewood in the morning, the coffeehouse patio fills with laptops and strollers, and Patterson Park carries the evenings, with its pool in summer, its tennis courts, and a community garden neighbors built plot by plot. The edges tell the other half of the story: Manor Road runs loud and tasty along the south, with Dai Due's butcher counter at Cherrywood Road, and Interstate 35 walls off the west behind its frontage roads. On one December weekend the whole place funnels into the Maplewood gym for the art fair, and the rest of the year the loudest local argument is about a creek bank or a highway cap, carried on in letters the neighborhood association actually writes.

Cherrywood's west edge on the Interstate 35 frontage road in Austin, by the Star Seeds Cafe sign
Cherrywood's west edge on the I-35 frontage road, by the Star Seeds Cafe sign, with the Manor Road exit ahead. Photo by Arnab Majumdar, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • A first home here can still be a house: the verified cottage on October 28, 2026 listed at $480,000, and the wider sale range ran from $310,000 over the 12 months from October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026 (Unlock MLS data, October 2026).
  • Prices are drifting down: the median sale price fell 5 percent year over year on the Homes.com last-12-months series, and Realtor.com calls Cherrywood a buyer's market in October 2026.
  • Renting in is genuinely cheap for central Austin: a one bedroom apartment averages $1,339 a month (Apartments.com, February 2026), against a city where the wider rental mix runs far higher.
  • The anchors are inside the neighborhood: Maplewood Elementary, Patterson Park and its free pool, the Cherrywood Coffeehouse, and the December art fair at the school.
  • Bike Score 88 on a flat grid (Apartments.com guide, February 2026), with the university about a mile from the west side and downtown about three miles away.

Cons

  • Property tax is the second price: about $2.12 per $100 of taxable value across the five taxing entities for tax year 2026, roughly $13,300 a year at the median before exemptions, and Texas reassesses near market value around a sale.
  • The stock is old and small: median year built 1949 (Homes.com public records), most original houses under 1,200 square feet, so budgets need room for foundations, plumbing and roofs under heavy tree cover.
  • Active listings run slow at the top of the market: Realtor.com put the median listing at $525,000 with a median 103 days on market in October 2026, a list series that sits well below the sale medians and swings on thin counts.
  • Interstate 35 is the west wall, and its expansion is the neighborhood's live fight: the association is pressing TxDOT for caps and crossings rather than a wider barrier.
  • Airport-era affordability is gone: values rose after Mueller closed in 1999, and postmodern rebuilds on the same small lots now sell between $900,000 and just over $1 million (Homes.com local guide, October 2026).

Housing in Detail

Entry: the condo tier at the south edge, where a two bedroom at 2401 Manor Road Unit 222 in the East University Place condominiums, 770 square feet and built in 1963, listed at $175,000 on October 28, 2026, just across Manor Road from Cherrywood in the Rogers-Washington-Holy Cross neighborhood. Cottages: the working center, where a two bedroom 1947 cottage at 1717 East 38th 1/2 Street, 905 square feet, listed at $480,000, against a single-family median of $637,000 (Homes.com, last 12 months). Remodels: the top of the verified market on October 28, 2026, where a fully rebuilt 1947 three bedroom at 1704 Giles Street, 1,389 square feet, listed at $795,000. Duplexes: the Delwood stock rarely turns over as whole buildings, and its halves rent and sell as the neighborhood's built-in starter tier. The shape underneath: 1,328 homes at a median year built of 1949 (Homes.com public records), most original houses under 1,200 square feet on lots of 0.1 to 0.2 acres, with accessory dwelling units behind many of them, and 58 percent of residents renting (Homes.com, October 2026).

Daily Life

Maplewood Elementary starts the day: a dual-language Austin ISD campus dating to 1951 at 3808 Maplewood Avenue, host to the Cherrywood Art Fair each December and the neighborhood's polling place. Patterson Park carries the rest of it, about 20 acres on the east side with a free city pool, the Pharr Tennis Center, a skate ramp, sports courts and a community garden completed in 2016. The Cherrywood Coffeehouse at 1400 East 38th 1/2 Street is the living room, open early to late, with the neighborhood association meeting there. Manor Road along the south edge does the eating: Dai Due's butcher shop and restaurant at 2406 Manor Road pours the Texas-only sourcing, and the Fiesta Mart on the I-35 frontage, on the old Delwood Center site, is the full-service grocery. Willowbrook Reach, a 3.45-acre greenbelt on Boggy Creek, gives the interior a wild quarter mile that neighbors tend themselves.

Best For / Think Twice If

Best for: first-time buyers who want a small central house instead of a suburban new build; buyers who can trade square feet for a three-mile commute; renters paying $1,339 for a one bedroom while they save a down payment; households that will use Patterson Park, the bike grid and Maplewood Elementary daily.

Think twice if: the property tax bill at the full combined rate strains the plan, because exemptions soften it but never make it small; you need three-plus bedrooms under one roof, because the original stock runs small and the rebuilds that solve it start near $900,000; you want quiet at the edges, because Manor Road and the I-35 frontage carry real traffic; you are counting on a quick resale, because listings at the top of this market sat a median 103 days in October 2026 (Realtor.com).

Top Properties Right Now

$175,000

2401 Manor Rd Unit 222, Austin

2 bed | 1 bath | 770 square feet | Condominium, East University Place, built 1963

The entry card, just across Manor Road at Cherrywood's south edge in Rogers-Washington-Holy Cross: a second-floor lock-and-leave condo with in-unit laundry, cut from $199,000, 27 days on Redfin. HOA dues are $250 a month.

Listing verified on Redfin, October 28, 2026. View on Redfin

$480,000

1717 E 38th 1/2 St, Austin

2 bed | 1 bath | 905 square feet | Single-family cottage, built 1947

The cottage card on Cherrywood's north edge: the purple little plum with a red door, clawfoot tub, arched openings, a roof new in September 2026 and a big fenced yard, 11 days on Redfin.

Listing verified on Redfin, October 28, 2026. View on Redfin

$795,000

1704 Giles St, Austin

3 bed | 1 bath | 1,389 square feet | Single-family house, built 1947

The remodel card: the former home of KUT and KUTX host John Aielli, fully rebuilt under three mature oaks with new systems throughout, blonde hardwoods and a metal roof, 2 days on Redfin.

Listing verified on Redfin, October 28, 2026. View on Redfin

Nearby Alternatives

  • Hyde Park: west across I-35, the grander streetcar suburb, at a Redfin median sale price of $624,698 (three months ending August 2026), similar money with Victorians instead of cottages.
  • North Loop: north, the scruffier sibling with vintage shops on North Loop Boulevard, at a Realtor median listing price of $539,475 (October 2026).
  • Windsor Park: northeast, post-war ranches at a step down, at a Realtor median listing price of $494,000 (October 2026).
  • Brentwood: northwest, mid-century ranches and Brentwood Park, at a Realtor median listing price of $731,250 (October 2026).
  • Mueller: east across Airport Boulevard, the new urbanist rebuild of the old airport, at a Homes.com median home price of $824,900 (October 2026), new construction at a premium over Cherrywood's cottages.

Sources

Data as of the dates shown above. Refresh due within 90 days for listings and 6 months for market data.

  • Homes.com, Cherrywood, Austin neighborhood page, Home Trends, October 28, 2026: median sale price $625,000 over the last 12 months, down 5% year over year, on 42 sales; single-family median $637,000; median list price $654,500; 58% of residents renting: homes.com
  • Homes.com, Cherrywood, Austin local guide, October 28, 2026: public records block, 1,328 homes, median year built 1949; housing stock and rebuild price bands: homes.com
  • Redfin neighborhood pages for Cherrywood, checked October 28, 2026: no Redfin Cherrywood neighborhood median sale price could be read on a Redfin page that day, so the labeled Homes.com last-12-months figure above headlines this report and the Unlock MLS series below is disclosed.
  • Eleven Oaks Realty, Cherrywood Neighborhood Guide 2026, Unlock MLS (ACTRIS) data: median sale price $599,450 for the 12 months from October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026, on 32 sales, and $599,000 for 2026 year to date through October 13, 2026, down 8.5%, on 27 sales; sale range from $310,000: austinrealestatehomesblog.com
  • Realtor.com, Cherrywood, Austin market page, October 2026: median listing price $525,000 on 13 active listings, median 103 days on market, median rent $1,274 a month across 44 rentals, buyer's market note: realtor.com
  • Apartments.com, Upper Boggy Creek, Austin local guide, February 2026: the guide states Upper Boggy Creek is also known as Cherrywood; average apartment rent $969 studio, $1,339 one bedroom, $1,837 two bedrooms, CoStar data; Walk Score 79, Transit Score 55, Bike Score 88: apartments.com
  • Redfin, Austin, TX city page, September 2026: median sale price, all home types, $537,244, down 0.51% year over year: redfin.com
  • Neighborhoods.com, What It's Like Living in Cherrywood, Austin, October 2026: about 10 minutes by car and about 30 minutes by CapMetro bus to Downtown Austin, CapMetro line 20: neighborhoods.com
  • AustinRealEstateHomesBlog, homes near Downtown Austin and neighborhoods near UT Austin roundups, October 2026: Cherrywood distance to Downtown Austin 3.1 miles; distance to UT Austin 0.9 miles: austinrealestatehomesblog.com
  • Austin Current, Austin and Travis County property taxes and affordability, October 5, 2026: taxing entity shares, $140,000 school homestead exemption, 10% appraisal cap: austincurrent.org
  • Spyglass Realty, Austin Property Tax Rate 2026, adopted tax year 2026 rates, October 2026: Austin ISD $0.9184, City of Austin $0.579948, Travis County $0.386210, Central Health $0.132863, Austin Community College $0.103643, combined $2.121064 per $100: spyglassrealty.com
  • AARP, Texas State Taxes guide, March 18, 2026: Texas has no state income tax; state sales tax 6.25% with local additions up to 2%: aarp.org
  • Cherrywood Neighborhood Association, Land History, October 28, 2026: Lucy Dancy's 1887 Dancy Addition as the first modern development of the neighborhood, and the association's boundary letter: cherrywood.org
  • Cherrywood Neighborhood Association, I-35 Capital Express Central Project page, October 28, 2026: the association's cap and crossing letters to TxDOT, 2020 to 2023: cherrywood.org
  • Sightlines, Preservation Austin, A Midcentury, Midtown History Worth Preserving, April 20, 2018, updated February 5, 2024: the Patterson orchard and 1941 conveyance, Bascom Giles and Delwood, Billie Crawford's Hollywood Avenue house, the 1999 birdsong account, the Fiesta sign: sightlinesmag.org
  • Texas Historical Commission, National Register nomination, Delwood Duplex Historic District, 2011: the 1948 Delwood III duplexes, the only concentration of duplex tract housing in Austin, Maplewood Elementary: atlas.thc.state.tx.us
  • Cherrywood Flea, Cherrywood Neighborhood Association newsletter, Patterson Park 80th Anniversary, November 2021: the 1941 park dedication in Nye Patterson's honor, Friends of Patterson Park and the 2017 to 2018 park plan led by Jennifer Potter-Miller: squarespace.com
  • EASTside Magazine, Wide Open Spaces: East Austin's Patterson Park, April 26, 2022, and Cherrywood Art Fair 2019 Artist Lineup, December 2019: Patterson Park amenities, Friends of Patterson Park established 2002, the art fair at Maplewood Elementary, 3808 Maplewood Avenue: eastsideatx.com
  • Chula League, Cherrywood Art Fair pages, 2026: the fair dates to 2002, the December 12 to 13, 2026 fair at Maplewood Elementary, proceeds benefiting Maplewood and Little Artist BIG ARTIST: chulaleague.org
  • City of Austin, Patterson Pool page and Upper Boggy Creek Neighborhood Plan implementation chart, October 28, 2026: Patterson Pool free admission; the neighborhood plan adopted August 1, 2002: austintexas.gov
  • Austin Parks Foundation, Patterson Neighborhood Park preview and Project Playback, October 28, 2026: park amenities, Pharr Tennis Center, community garden completed 2016: austinparks.org
  • Austin ISD, Maplewood Elementary ESA and FCA Summary, February 11, 2022: Maplewood Elementary, 3808 Maplewood Avenue, date of first construction 1951, dual-language campus: austinisd.org
  • Realtor.com, North Loop, Brentwood and Windsor Park, Austin market pages, October 2026: median listing prices $539,475, $731,250 and $494,000: realtor.com
  • Homes.com, Mueller, Austin neighborhood page, October 28, 2026: median home price $824,900: homes.com
  • Listings verified October 28, 2026: 2401 Manor Rd Unit 222, 1717 E 38th 1/2 St and 1704 Giles St, all on Redfin.
  • Larry D. Moore, Delwood duplex 1302 (hero photograph), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0: commons.wikimedia.org
  • WhisperToMe, RMMA Control Tower Austin (story photograph), Wikimedia Commons, public domain: commons.wikimedia.org
  • Arnab Majumdar, Cherrywood, Austin, TX 78722, USA (photograph), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0: commons.wikimedia.org
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