Editor's note: This is the final part of an ongoing series on Austin neighborhoods with large student populations.
Across the street from modest apartment complexes on Enfield Road and Exposition Boulevard are gated palatial houses flanked with marble columns and surrounded by immaculately groomed landscaping.
This is a common sight in West Austin, an area where Austin real estate Web sites list home prices above $400,000 and where many students come to live on the shores of Town Lake, or in the shadow of Mount Bonnell.
Yet despite the expensive real estate found in West Austin, the University apartments in this area have some of the cheapest rents in the city. One bedroom apartment costs range from $461 to $487 a month, with two- and three-bedroom apartments costing $530 to $681 a month.
"It's hard to beat the price," said Daniel Olson, a Spanish-Portuguese graduate student. "With my grad-student salary, I would not be able to afford a place like this otherwise."
The University-owned apartments, Brackenridge and Colorado, located off of Lake Austin Boulevard, and Gateway Apartments, located off of West Sixth Street, are available for married students, families, graduate students and some upper-classmen enrolled at UT.
"Our apartments are basic. They are very nice and structurally sound, but they don't have the amenities of a lot of those nicer apartments, but that keeps the rent down," said Sheril Smith, manager of the Division of Housing and Food Service.
The University Apartments are much sought after, with students on a waiting list for six months to two years before they get an apartment, Smith said.
West Austin is also home to many other apartment complexes, which are often on the same block as majestic brick and stucco homes. This is something many in the neighborhood feel is not good for the community.
"Where you run into problems is in the areas where you have what are called 'stealth dorms,' where single-family housing is converted to a student housing complex with multiple people living there," said August Harris III, the president-elect of the West Austin Neighborhood Group.
Harris said the "stealth dorms" cause litter, noise and overflow parking issues, which occur because of the increased density the residences bring.
West Austin, like many parts of the city, is becoming an increasingly popular place for people to live, resulting in increased housing prices for those unable to rent a University apartment.
"Probably a lot of people from the East and West Coasts want to live here, and that drives up housing costs," said natural sciences senior Teresa Boenig, who said she pays $950 per month for her one-bedroom apartment in the area.
Many students who live in the neighborhood said it is an almost ideal place to live.
"I lived a lot of different places in Austin, and this is the best place I've found yet," Olson said.
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