Granbury

Granbury is the Hood County seat, about 40 miles southwest of downtown Fort Worth on US-377, built around Lake Granbury. It's the only market on this site where the water isn't a footnote: one sale in eight is on the lake or a canal, and what that frontage is worth is the most important number on this page.

Over the three years ending September 2026, Granbury produced 3,968 closed sales at a median of $345,000. I'm a Texas broker and a Certified Residential Appraiser. Here is what those sales show.

The lake: what the frontage is worth

In Grapevine, eleven waterfront sales were too few to show anything. On the Fort Worth side of Eagle Mountain Lake, 87 waterfront sales showed frontage roughly doubling the price. Granbury has 474 site-built waterfront sales, by far the most of any market I cover, which means the premium can be broken down by type of frontage.

Controlling for house size, lot size, build year and date of sale:

All waterfront together comes out at about +60%, and it holds on like-sized houses (+63% on 1,500–3,000 square feet). The medians show it without any modelling: waterfront houses sold at $305 a foot against $187 for everything else. Main-body lakefront ran $349 a foot, at an $825,000 median on 2,409 square feet.

Three things follow for anyone buying or selling on the water.

"Waterfront" isn't one thing. A house on the main body of the lake and a house on a canal are 30 or more points apart. A house with lake access through a neighbourhood park is priced like a house with no water at all. A comparable set that pools them is wrong by a lot.

Per-foot figures mislead badly here. A small lakefront cottage can sell for more per foot than anything else in the county. The value is in the frontage, and it has to be compared with other frontage of the same type.

The details of the frontage matter. Bulkhead or retaining-wall condition, dock and lift, water depth at the dock, the view down the lake, and any rules on what can be built at the shoreline all move price within the lakefront group. Those aren't in the MLS data, which is why a lakefront valuation has to be built by hand.

The water also changes who's buying: 43% of waterfront buyers paid cash, and 2% used FHA.

Most of the lake premium is in the land

Granbury also has 994 closed land sales over the same three years, and they show where the water's value actually sits.

Controlling for acreage, a main-body lakefront lot sold for about five times an off-water lot, and a canal lot about three times. Those are small samples, but the gap is too large to be noise.

Put that next to the houses. A main-body lakefront house has a median price of $825,000. If the lot alone is worth something like $500,000, then well over half of a typical lakefront price is the ground and the frontage, not the house. That's why a lakefront house can sell for $349 a foot, and why a teardown on the main body of the lake can still be worth a great deal.

Land here is also moving the opposite way from houses. Controlling for acreage, Granbury land prices have risen about 6–11% a year (about 6% comparing lots within the same subdivision, p = 0.01), while house prices fell 2.3% a year. An acre off the water sold for about $110,000 in 2023 and 2024. Land buyers are overwhelmingly cash buyers (79%), and 44% of land parcels that came to market didn't sell.

I can't tell you from this data why land and houses are moving apart. But when the ground under a house is rising and the whole property is falling, the house itself is losing value faster than the headline number suggests.

Values are falling, on and off the water

With waterfront properly controlled for, Granbury values are down 2.34% a year, at p < 0.0001. It holds in every cut:

The raw medians understate it. Resale price per foot off the water slipped from $191 to $186, while the houses selling got younger: the median build year of those resales rose from 1999 to 2006. Newer houses usually sell for more, so a flat-looking median on newer stock means like-for-like values are falling.

Pecan Plantation is the exception. The gated community is the largest single subdivision in the data, with 438 sales at a $440,000 median. On its own, its trend is flat (+0.39% a year). That's also why the east-side ZIP, 76049, where it sits, is falling more slowly than 76048.

I sold 8915 Woodlawn in Pecan Plantation in 2024.

New construction is cheaper than resale here

Granbury is one of two south-side markets where brand-new houses sell below the resale median, the other being Godley:

• New: $308,000 median on 1,780 square feet, $182 a foot
• Resale: $390,000 median on 2,035 square feet, $197 a foot

And like Godley, builders are adding square footage rather than cutting the sticker. The median new house grew from 1,601 to 1,899 square feet between 2023 and 2026 while the price rose only from $290,000 to $320,945. Per foot, that's $189 down to $176. Every year a buyer gets more new house for about the same money, and that's the competition every resale seller off the water is facing.

Manufactured homes: a lake-community market

Manufactured homes are 393 of Granbury's sales, about 10%, and they're a different market from the one in Johnson County.

• Median $161,000 on 1,344 square feet, about $119 a foot
• Only 10% on an acre or more. Most sit on small lots in lake-area subdivisions like Blue Water Shores, Lake Granbury Estates, Lake Granbury Harbor and Comanche Cove
• 76% carry HOA dues, at a $110 median
• 14% are waterfront
• 39% of buyers paid cash
• Closed at 92.1% of original list, the deepest discount of any segment

65 of them were entered in the MLS as "single family" and identified as manufactured only in the description, by far the most of any market I've measured. Controlling for size, lot and age, a manufactured home here sells for about 40% less than a comparable site-built house.

Nearly 30% of manufactured-home properties that came to market never sold, against 22% site-built. Settle the financing questions before listing: foundation, HUD labels, whether the home has been moved, and its real-property status.

What it costs

• Median close $345,000 on 1,857 square feet, about $187 per foot
• Median lot 9,365 square feet; 13% of sales on an acre or more
• Closed prices ran $32,000 to $3,499,900
• Median 54 days on market at 95.9% of original list; 11.8% under contract within a week
• Only 39% of sales carried seller concessions, the lowest on the south side
• Effective property tax rate about 1.11%, the lowest of any market I've measured, below even Westlake's 1.17%
• 77% carry HOA dues, at a $200 median
• 30% of buyers paid cash; only 18% used FHA
• Parcel-level failure rate 22.3%, the highest on the south side

The tax rate deserves a line of its own. At 1.11%, a $345,000 Granbury house carries about $3,830 a year. The same house at Crowley's 2.08% would carry about $7,180, a difference of $280 a month. Granbury is in Hood County, with its own appraisal district, and on a brand-new house the listing's figure may reflect the unfinished lot. Confirm the rate for the specific property.

Nearly all of Granbury is Granbury ISD (3,941 of 3,968 sales), so there's no school boundary to measure.

How Granbury compares

Granbury looks different from the rest of the south side in almost every column: the lowest tax, the most cash buyers, the fewest concessions and the highest failure rate. That combination fits a market with a large share of buyers moving in from elsewhere, for the lake, with cash, and sellers who can afford to wait. In a falling market, waiting is expensive.

This isn't just a local quirk. I tested it across 19 markets and 40,703 closed sales: the size of the lot predicts which houses are losing value better than the town does, with subdivision lots down about 1% a year and acreage up about 1%.

What I look at in a Granbury house

• The frontage, precisely. Main body, canal, river, creek or common-area access are five different prices.
• On the water: bulkhead, dock and lift condition, depth at the dock, the view, and any shoreline rules.
• Site-built or manufactured, whatever the MLS property type says. Granbury has more miscoded listings than anywhere I've measured.
• What the builders are offering nearby, if the house isn't on the water.
• The date of the comparable sales. In a market falling 2.3% a year, an eighteen-month-old sale overstates value by more than 3%.
• The HOA, and in gated communities what it covers.

If you're selling in Granbury

More than one property in five that came to market here didn't sell, the highest rate on the south side. The ones that sell, sell at close to list and with few concessions. The difference is usually the price.

If you're on the water, the frontage type sets your comparable set, and the details of the shoreline set where you fall within it. If you're not, the builders are selling more house for the money every year, and your price needs to reflect what a buyer can get new.

On pre-listing work, the order matters more than the budget. What to fix before you list, and in what order tests fourteen improvements against 33,000 closings. If the work needs doing and the cash is tied up, Compass Concierge covers it up front and is repaid at closing.

Buying or selling in Granbury

Four thousand sales, a lake worth up to 80% on the right frontage, the lowest tax rate on the south side, values down about 2.3% a year, and one listing in five that never closes.

What I can tell you is what the closed sales on houses with your kind of frontage, or none actually support, and how far a recent sale needs adjusting in a market that's moving down.

Browse active listings in this price range, or call or text (682) 207-4310, or send me a note.

Figures are medians and model results from NTREIS listings and closed sales with a Granbury address for the three years ending September 2026, reported in aggregate. Waterfront categories follow the listing's waterfront features field. "New construction" means a house sold in or within a year after its build year. Manufactured-home figures include homes identified in the listing description as well as by property type. Tax rates, HOA dues, financing rules and market conditions change. Confirm current figures for a specific address before relying on them. Nothing here is an appraisal or a valuation of any particular property.