Living in Manor, TX in 2026: The Commute, the Houses, and Where Prices Are Going
I have already written about the trap in Manor new construction, which is that the advertised base price is the least useful number in the sales office. That post is still true and you should read it if you are shopping a model home out here.
This one is about Manor as a place to live, using numbers the city and the MLS actually publish rather than the ones on a builder sign. Some of it is good news for a buyer. Some of it is not.
Manor Is a Much Newer Town Than the Name Suggests
Manor sounds like an old farm town, and historically it is one. Its housing is not.
The City of Manor publishes a community demographic profile, prepared for the city by The Retail Coach in March 2025. Buried in it is the single most useful fact about the housing here:
The median year a home in Manor was built is 2015.
The rest of that table fills in the picture:
- 21.77 percent of Manor's housing units were built in 2020 or later
- 47.34 percent were built between 2010 and 2019
- 21.36 percent were built between 2000 and 2009
- Everything built before 1990 adds up to under 7 percent of the housing stock
So roughly seven in ten homes in Manor went up in 2010 or later. When someone tells me they are "looking at resale in Manor to avoid new construction," what they are usually looking at is a house between five and fifteen years old.
That matters practically. A 2015 build has its original roof, its original HVAC, and its original water heater right about now. Those are the three line items I watch on inspection reports out here, and they are the ones that turn into a credit when the seller has not touched them.
Two more numbers from the same profile: 91.53 percent of Manor's housing units are single family detached, and 86.03 percent of occupied units are owner occupied. This is a house-and-a-yard town, not a condo town.
The Price Direction, Said Plainly
Here is the part a lot of agents skip.
The metro overall is roughly flat. In the July 2026 Central Texas Housing Report from Unlock MLS and the Austin Board of Realtors, the median price across the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro was $435,000, up 1.0 percent from July 2025, with Travis County at $520,000.
Manor has not held flat. Redfin has Manor's median sale price at roughly $325,000 for the three months ending July 2026, down about 4.5 percent from the same stretch a year earlier, with homes sitting around 67 days.
That does not mean Manor is falling apart. It means a submarket absorbing a lot of new supply behaves like a submarket absorbing a lot of new supply. It is also not one number to build your life around. The public sites do not agree with each other on Manor's median right now, sometimes by fifty thousand dollars, so I use MLS data for anything that actually matters. But the direction is consistent across the sources I trust.
If you are buying in Manor, you have real negotiating room and you should use it. Ask for closing cost help, ask for a rate buy down, and do not feel rushed by a builder's month-end deadline.
If you are selling in Manor, price to today and not to what your neighbor got in 2024. A home priced to last year's comps in a softening submarket does not sit for a week, it sits for a season, and then it sells for less than it would have.
The Commute Number the City Published on Itself
Every buyer asks me about the commute out here, and I usually give the honest version rather than the drive-time-at-2pm version. This time I do not have to, because the city's own profile publishes it.
Average travel time to work for a Manor worker: 36 minutes.
The distribution underneath that is the useful part:
- Under 15 minutes: 12.72 percent
- 15 to 29 minutes: 34.98 percent
- 30 to 44 minutes: 26.16 percent
- 45 to 59 minutes: 10.09 percent
- 60 minutes or more: 16.05 percent
About one in six people commuting out of Manor is spending an hour or more each way. That is the number to sit with before you sign.
Two other lines from the same table matter. 17.57 percent work from home, which is a big part of why Manor works for the people it works for. And 0.01 percent take public transportation. That is one worker. CapMetro's Route 990 does run a few weekday express trips between the Manor Park and Ride and downtown, but essentially nobody uses it, so do not plan on it as a backup.
The Toll Road Stops Before It Gets Here
This one surprises people, and it is the most concrete commute fact I can give you.
The 290 Toll, the one everybody calls the Manor Expressway, is described by the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority as "a 6-mile toll road along US 290 from US 183 to SH 130 in east Austin." It ends at SH 130. It does not reach Manor. The Mobility Authority's own page says it is "exploring the feasibility of an eastern extension of the toll road into Manor." That is a study, not a funded project, and I would not price a house around it.
So your drive out of Manor is on the free lanes of 290 until SH 130, and then you can pay to skip the rest. For a two axle car the Mobility Authority's posted 290 Toll rates run from $0.75 to $1.53 with an electronic tag and $1.13 to $2.30 by mail depending on the gantry, at the rates effective January 1, 2026. Run that twice a day, five days a week, and price it out before you decide the commute is fine. It never shows up in a mortgage calculator.
What Is Actually Coming
The biggest recent piece of Manor news is a development called Eastwood. As reported by The Real Deal and Realty News Report in early September 2026, Eastwood Ventures, a partnership of Foxgate Capital and Cole Klein Builders, acquired 458 acres in Manor for a mixed use community planned at 1,335 homes plus 97 acres of commercial and retail, with Taylor Morrison as the builder. Reported lot widths are 45 to 70 feet, prices are projected at $400,000 to $600,000, and first homes are expected in early 2027 on a buildout described as roughly a decade.
I flag it for two reasons, and neither one is hype. First, 1,335 more homes is 1,335 more homes, so if you are buying in Manor to sell in three years you will be competing with new inventory the whole time. Second, 97 acres of commercial is the thing Manor has been short on. Manor got its first H-E-B in October 2025, a 101,000 square foot store at FM 973 and Highway 290, and that store changed what a Tuesday looks like out here more than any home feature did.
There Is a $400 Million School Bond on the November Ballot
This is a tax question, not a schools question, and I am raising it strictly as the former.
Manor ISD has called a bond election for November 3, 2026. Proposition A is $391.5 million for facility work, safety and security, and buses. Proposition B is $8.5 million for technology.
The district's own materials state the tax rate would increase by .0385 cents if both pass, and project that the average Manor ISD property owner would not see an overall increase because of falling property values, describing a decrease of $9.56 per month on an average home valued around $331,764. That is the district's projection, in the district's words, and it depends on assessed values doing what they expect.
I am not telling you how to vote. I am telling you it is on the ballot in your new district, it follows a previous bond that did not pass, and it belongs in the conversation when you stress test your payment. Ask your lender to run your escrow both ways.
Where I Come In
I am not going to tell you Manor is the right call. That depends on your commute, your budget, and how much house you want for the money.
What I will do is get the total tax rate for that exact address in writing, check the age of the roof and the HVAC on a build that is now a decade old, pull the real comps for the streets you are actually looking at, and read the builder contract before you sign it. In a softening submarket the difference between a good buy and an expensive one is almost entirely in the negotiation, and that is the part you cannot do from a listing site.
Our Manor area guide covers the location and what is nearby, and the Manor new construction post covers the base price and MUD questions in detail. Wondering what your Manor home would bring right now? Request a home evaluation and I will pull the comps for your block.
If you would rather just meet me first, come to The Great Easton Park Chili Cook Off on Saturday, September 26. Free, outdoors, and I am not competing because I sell houses, not chili.
Otherwise, reach out. English or Spanish, no pressure, straight answers.
Market figures above are from the July 2026 Central Texas Housing Report published by Unlock MLS and the Austin Board of Realtors on August 11, 2026, and from Redfin's Manor market page for the three months ending July 2026. Housing stock and commute figures are from the Community Demographic Profile prepared for the City of Manor by The Retail Coach, dated March 2025. Toll rates are the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority's posted 290 Toll rates effective January 1, 2026. Bond figures and tax projections are Manor ISD's own published materials. This is general market commentary, not a forecast, a tax opinion, or financial advice. Your lender and your tax professional are the only ones who can give you your actual numbers.
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