Living in Marble Falls, TX
Burnet County
Marble Falls is the real economic and civic hub of the Texas Hill Country's Highland Lakes region -- a working small city with a walkable Main Street district (galleries, restaurants, breweries, and the longstanding Blue Bonnet Café), sitting on Lake Marble Falls, a Highland Lakes reservoir on the Colorado River formed by the Max Starcke Dam. Its role is explicitly commercial and civic rather than resort-only: the city serves as a trade hub for a regional population estimated at over 121,000 people, generating roughly $3.6 million per day in area sales, and its local employment base -- Marble Falls ISD, Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Marble Falls (a 46-bed hospital with a 24-hour ER), and, notably, Horseshoe Bay Resort itself -- means the city functions as a genuine residential and job base for the wider Highland Lakes area, including for workers at neighboring Horseshoe Bay's resort. That distinction matters: Marble Falls is a meaningfully more affordable, younger, and more economically mixed community than Horseshoe Bay (median age 35.5 versus Horseshoe Bay's 64.6; median household income $57,925 with a 15.5% poverty rate), explicitly positioned by regional coverage as a Hill Country lake-living option "without the higher costs of Austin suburbs or resort towns like Horseshoe Bay." Housing runs genuinely affordable -- a $298,000 median sale price, well below the $408,776 US national median for June 2026 -- with a cost-of-living index cited around 10% below the national average. Property taxes run modestly above the national median (1.14% effective rate) but below the Texas state median. Population sourcing for the current period was too inconsistent to responsibly report (a single aggregator's own figures spread by roughly 57%), though every source agrees on real, substantial growth since the 2020 Census count of 7,037. Texas's no state income tax applies fully here.
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Learn moreHousing
Redfin cites a $298,000 median sale price over the trailing 3 months, down 16.0% year over year -- well below the $408,776 US national median sale price for June 2026 (Redfin national data) and meaningfully below Horseshoe Bay's and Wimberley's figures elsewhere in this dataset, consistent with Marble Falls' identity as the more affordable, working-city alternative to nearby resort/luxury Hill Country markets.
Taxes
Not independently sourced at the Burnet County level this session. Texas carries no income tax statewide. See the Texas hub page for the statewide property tax context -- do not treat that figure as Marble Falls-specific.
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Get local guidanceThe tradeoffs
Pros
A genuine regional economic and commercial hub (serving an estimated 121,000-person trade area) rather than a resort-dependent or purely residential community; a real in-city hospital (Baylor Scott & White Medical Center - Marble Falls, 46 beds, 24-hour ER); a walkable, historic Main Street district with real local institutions; housing that runs genuinely affordable relative to the US national median and to neighboring Hill Country lake markets; no state income tax; a meaningfully younger, more economically mixed population than the retiree/resort-skewed communities elsewhere in this Hill Country batch.
Cons
Current population figures were too inconsistent across sources to responsibly report a number this research pass -- a real, disclosed data gap rather than a picked estimate; a 15.5% poverty rate signals real economic variation within the city, not uniform affluence; property taxes run modestly above the national median; as with the rest of the Texas Hill Country, the region carries genuine flash-flood risk (the Lower Colorado River Authority manages floodgates at the Highland Lakes' Wirtz and Starcke dams during storm runoff), which any specific low-lying or lakefront property should be checked against directly.
Who this fits
Best for: Affordability-focused buyers who want genuine Hill Country lake-town character and a real regional job/commercial base, without the resort-level cost structure of neighboring Horseshoe Bay.
Maybe not for you if: Buyers specifically seeking a gated, resort-style, golf-and-country-club community should look to neighboring Horseshoe Bay instead -- Marble Falls is a working small city, not a resort community. Anyone needing a precise, current population figure for planning purposes should note that this page's population field is intentionally left null given genuinely conflicting source data.
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