Austin Business Journal shares, "Construction is underway at the expansive Thomas Ranch luxury housing development on Lake Travis, but there’s still room for custom homebuilders to get involved with the project.
Thomas Ranch developers Areté Collective and the Wasatch Group secured a $106 million loan to finance infrastructure and initial home construction in the master-planned community late last year and have been making headway on the development’s first phase, called Loraloma, said Joe Rentfro, the project's managing director.
Homes should start rising soon in that section, Rentfro said, and its golf course, designed by David McLay-Kidd, should be playable later this year.
At full build-out, the 2,200-acre Thomas Ranch, which is situated near Spicewood and straddles Burnet and Travis counties, will have 3,500 housing units; 465,000 square feet of commercial space for retail, restaurants and offices; a golf course; school; health care options; a boutique resort hotel; 1,200 acres of preserved space and two miles of river frontage.
Site work on 17 of the first 60 home lots in the Loraloma section, and Thomas Ranch as a whole, will break ground in May, with work on one new foundation starting on average every two weeks, developers said.
Homes will be built in Loraloma concurrently with the infrastructure. The first move-ins are expected around the fourth quarter of 2025.
For the homesites, a buyer may either build a custom home using an approved homebuilder or choose one of 12 home designs that have been optimized for the land, which Areté Collective would build.
Preferred homebuilders already involved with the development include Cedar & Oak and Matt Sitra Homes. Rentfro said there is still room for three to four more preferred homebuilders to get involved with the project “to make sure that we’re giving enough diversity to our lot buyers, but also making sure that each of those preferred homebuilders stay active and busy within the community, rather than over-subscribing the number of builders.”
Meanwhile, infrastructure construction is ongoing. A water treatment plant and a wastewater treatment plant are being built now and are expected to be complete by the end of the year, Rentfro said. The water treatment plant will serve the entire 2,200-acre Thomas Ranch, and the wastewater treatment plant is the first of two that will be built.
Alongside those plants, utility line and road work also is underway for the first phase of the project, which is the 60 lots in Loraloma.
“By the end of March 2026, not only do we envision having commissioned water and wastewater treatment plants, but roads and all the wet and dry utility stuff to each site,” Rentfro said.
Aside from homes and infrastructure, developers have been hard at work on one of Thomas Ranch’s most enviable amenities: its McLay-Kidd-designed golf course. McLay-Kidd is the designer of the Castle Course at Scotland’s famed St. Andrews Links, home of the world’s oldest golf course.
The private, members-only course recently finished construction, Rentfro said, meaning all 18 holes are planted. The course is expected to be playable by October."
Source: Austin Business Journal
Written by: Cody Baird
Published: April 9, 2025
Posted by Grossman & Jones Group on
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