Williamson County Land and Development Sites, Q3 2026

Land is the category where the gap between asking price and closing price is widest, where deals take longest, and where seller preparation changes the outcome more than anything a broker does afterward.

It’s also the category where owners are most often surprised. A building tells a buyer what it is. Land only tells them what it might be, and finding out costs money they don’t get back if the answer is no. Every week of uncertainty you leave in a listing is a discount a buyer takes.

A note on figures. What follows describes my own active inventory and the deals I work, not market aggregates. Where a market-wide number would help, I’ve said what to ask a data provider for rather than estimate it.

What my own book shows

Across my active sale listings this quarter, time on market ranges from 4 days to well over four years, with a median around five months. The longest-held listings are almost all land.

That spread is the most useful thing I can tell you about this market, because it isn’t random. Short-tenure listings tend to be improved property with a clear use. The multi-year listings are land where a buyer’s basic questions — utilities, access, buildable area — were never answered before going to market, so every interested party had to discover the answers themselves, on their own dime, and most walked.

Current land and development inventory I’m handling:

• Triad Business Park, Florence — 10 acres, $2,000,000. Industrial-oriented site.
• 7415 Burleson Manor Rd, Manor — 15.06 unrestricted acres on the Tesla corridor, $1,500,000.
• 106 West Parsons Street, Manor — 0.86 acres, land/retail/vehicle-related, $4,000,000. A demonstration of how much frontage and use flexibility matter relative to acreage.

Those three prices per acre differ by more than an order of magnitude. Nothing about that is irrational. It’s utilities, access, frontage, and permitted use.

The four variables that set land value here

Nearly every price in this county is explained by where a tract sits on these.

Utility capacity, confirmed in writing. Not “the line runs past.” Line size at your frontage, remaining capacity, and the impact fee schedule, from whoever holds the CCN. In fast-growing corridors a line can exist and have nothing left to allocate. This is the single largest value driver and the one most often left unanswered.

Access. State highway or frontage road frontage means TxDOT controls your driveway — spacing standards, turn lanes, deceleration. An access point that gets denied, or approved with a six-figure turn lane attached, changes the entire deal. County roads have their own standards.

Jurisdiction and entitlement path. City limits, ETJ, or unincorporated county each carry different platting and subdivision obligations. A buyer underwriting two years of process discounts for those two years.

Buildable area after floodplain and detention. Gross acres and usable acres diverge, sometimes severely. On small tracts, detention at the impervious cover a commercial user needs can consume enough of the site to eliminate the use.

Where demand is coming from

Four buyer types, and they pay very differently for the same dirt:

Pad-site retail and restaurant pays the most per square foot and needs the least land. Buying visibility, traffic, and a workable driveway. Access permit decides everything.

Small industrial and contractor users pay moderately, care about truck access, yard, and power. Being pushed out of Round Rock and Cedar Park by cost, moving north and east.

Residential and multifamily developers price per unit backed out of achievable density, which means utilities and zoning determine the whole number.

Land bankers pay the least, close fastest and cleanest. They’re buying time and pricing the risk you’d otherwise carry.

If you’re a seller getting wildly different numbers from different callers, that’s usually four buyer types, not four opinions about the same thing. The Hutto owner’s guide works through how to tell them apart on a phone call.

If you own land

This is the list, in order. Every item you resolve is a discount a buyer no longer gets to take.

1. Current survey. If yours predates recent construction nearby, get a new one.
2. Will-serve letter from your utility provider, naming your property and stating available capacity.
3. Access read from TxDOT or the county on whether your driveway works and what it costs.
4. Civil engineer’s one-page feasibility summary covering detention and floodplain.
5. Title commitment, with Schedule B actually read — severed minerals with surface rights, easements crossing the buildable area, deed restrictions from prior owners.
6. A feasibility period long enough for a buyer to complete real diligence, with earnest money going hard in stages so you still get certainty.

That last one is where sellers most often hurt themselves. Insisting on a 30-day feasibility period feels like strength. It guarantees either a buyer who can’t finish diligence and walks, or one who comes back mid-period asking for a price reduction based on what they found.

If you’re buying

Budget for real feasibility work — ALTA survey, Phase I environmental, geotechnical borings, civil feasibility review, and title review by a real estate attorney. Negotiate the timeline as hard as you negotiate the price, because the timeline is what lets you spend that money before your earnest money is at risk.

The full buyer’s checklist, including what to push for in the contract, is in Buying Commercial Land in Williamson County.

Submarket notes

Jarrell carries more competing land inventory than any comparable town in the county, with asking prices spanning two orders of magnitude. That spread is information, not chaos — it’s the four variables above. Read the Jarrell land guide before you price or bid there.

Hutto and the FM 1660 corridor generate steady owner inquiries and steady cold-calling. Owners here benefit most from the preparation list above, because the buyer pool is real but impatient.

Taylor and east county price on proximity to the semiconductor investment, which raised the ceiling on the corridor without putting a floor under any individual tract. Land without utilities does not become premium land because a fab was built six miles away. More in the Taylor guide.

Manor and the Tesla corridor draw development and unrestricted-acreage interest, with the same utility and access questions governing.

What would sharpen this next quarter

Figures worth requesting from a data provider directly:

• Price per acre for Williamson County commercial land, segmented by utility status rather than averaged across all listings.
• Median days on market for land, separated from improved property.
• Closed-sale price per acre versus asking, which is the number that tells you how much the uncertainty discount actually costs sellers.

Own land in Williamson County and want a straight read on what it supports before you list? Send me the parcel ID. Current land listings are here.