Sam Chapman

My Keller Williams office is hosting a Halloween carnival at our office in Lakeway. We will have booths with Halloween activities in the parking garage blow the building. There will also be trick or treating in halls of the building. Most agents with offices have done a great job decorating doors and the office looks great.

This will be a great alternative or addition to traditional Lakeway area trick or treating. The event will be on Thursday, October 29th from 5:00 to 8:00 PM. The address is 1921 Lohman's Crossing, Lakeway, TX 78734. We're right next to The Summit.

As I sat in the Keller Williams Lake Travis office this afternoon, I heard a noise like something had just slammed into the building. It turned out to be an extraordinary wind gust followed by tremendous rain and wind. A tree snapped in half in front of the building and water was blown in under all the doors. We desperately need rain as we have had about half our normal rainfall over the last two years. Check out the radar image below from the storm.

If you have an interest in Lakeway real estate or Austin homes, give me a call at 512-293-2422.

No, not George...

In the photo is a purple sage bush in full bloom. When they bloom, rain may be on the way. The bushes in the Lakeway area were blooming like mad a few weeks ago and central Texas got rain for several days a week later. Austin got just a drop, but the sage did seem to predict the rain.

Well they're at it again. In looking at the weather it looks like the huge area of high pressure that has been parked over Texas much of the summer is moving east. With that happening, more gulf moisture should be pulled up into Texas. As hot as it has been, we may have the right combination of daytime heating and moisture to fire up some spotty thunderstorms.

With Lake Travis now having dropped to its third lowest level in history, any rain would be welcome.

Whether you are relocating to Austin for a job, to retire, to be closer to family or just because you love the city, there are some things you should know. This is especially true if you are moving from outside of Texas. The first might just be a good Austin online home search. The second is probably a site with a lot of really good and detailed information about Austin. The Austin Relocation guide is a great resource for that.

You might want to know about Austin schools, learn about Austin recreation and just things like registering to vote, getting an automobile inspected and registered, getting a Texas Driver's License and you really need to know about automobile insurance requirements in Texas. I have a lot of that information on my moving to Austin page.

As you are looking online for Austin homes you may find subdivisions that look attractive. If you go to Google Maps and type in an address, you should get map showing the location of the property. You may see a box pop up that says Street View. Of you might see a little orange figure at the top of the zoom tool.

If you click on Street View, you will be taken to a street level view of the property. It may not be entirely accurate, but you will see arrows you can click to literally drive you down the street. You can soom in and out, you can click, hold and drag your mouse to the side to see the other side of the street.

If you see the little orange figure, Click and hold and hover him over the map. Any street lit up in blue will have Street View available. So thanks to Google sending cars with cameras all over the place, you can get an idea of what homes in different subdivisions look like without ever visiting in person. Street View isn't available everywhere, but it should cover most major cities and many smaller ones as well.

If you are relocating to Austin and have not talked sith an Austin REALTOR yet, please give me a call at 512-293-2422.

The Pedernales River is one of the major contributers to the water supply for Lake Travis. Just as other rivers are low, so is the Pedernales. I took the photo below crossing over the river looking north from the bridge on Hwy 71. Sorry the contraxt isn't better. It was very overcast yesterday.

See what looks like a valley with grass in it? That is the dry Pedernales River with boat docks sitting on the ground all along it. My guess is that what you are looking at is around 8 river miles to Lake Travis.

The fact that the Pedernales will be dry or too low for boating at times is the one of the reasons that waterfront homes on the Pedernales River are less expensive than Lake Travis waterfront homes. The other is that the river isn't as clear as the lake. When the lake and river are full, this is some of the best wakeboarding in Texas.