Cliffside villa in Austin’s Stratford Hills asks $21M

A cliffside home in Austin is being shopped off market for $21 million.

Retired psychiatrist Deborah Peel seeks a buyer for her 8,200-square-foot Stratford Hills home, the Wall Street Journal reported. The home is located about four miles outside of downtown Austin. Robin Banister of Compass is marketing the home.

Peel and her late husband, real estate developer Larry Peel, bought the property in 1992 and demolished an old house. They built the five-bedroom Italian-style villa, as well as a 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom guest house, in the late ’90s.

A library with floor-to-ceiling walnut bookshelves, a wine storage room, multiple terraces and a primary suite with a two-story walk-in closet are among the selling points of the main house. Custom finishes include marble columns from Italy, limestone floors from Portugal and France and stone from a ranch Peel owns outside of Austin.

Views of the Austin skyline and Lady Bird Lake are maximized with rooms facing the rear of the property.

Luxury home sales in Texas’ four largest metro areas — Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio and Austin — have seen significant growth over the past few years, and Austin has shown “particularly strong momentum,” according to a report by the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University.

The number of homes priced $1 million or more that sold in Austin from January through May was almost double the number sold in all of 2018. Meanwhile, the number of luxury homes that sold in Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio, during this same period, was about the same compared to four years ago, said Joshua Roberson, lead data analyst with the Texas Real Estate Research Center.

“The latest luxury boom is a milestone,” Roberson said. “It signifies how
[Austin’s] profile among other major cities has elevated during COVID.”

Read more

Houston

Luxury gated community coming to ranch country north of Houston

— Victoria Pruitt