We're in SW WA - home of 9 months of rain, and creeping liberalism. Wife and I've been looking to escape to Idaho for over a year, and have found nothing worth buying on a lake (CDA or Hayden).  My wife finally said, "Maybe we should look at Texas"!

I've only been around Amarillo, Tyler and Lake Fork, so I have no idea where to begin to look. Where do I begin?

Kids are grown, both of us are retired in our 50's. We can afford up to 2 million for a home on the water. The cheaper the better though!  What BASS lakes have low crime, Red politics, and easy access to mid sized towns with decent services?

We're planning a scouting trip right now!

Lake LBJ (constant level lake)
Possum Kingdom Lake
Lake Conroe

San Angelo
Canyon Lake
Medina Lake

Lake Buchanan
Lake LBJ


Thats if you want hill country living away from the inner cities.

If you want lakes and inner city living, look around Dallas, Fort Worth, and the Denton County area.

I’ve recently driven out by Lakes Buchanan and LBJ and saw some very nice homes by/on the lake. Marble Falls also seems like a really nice town!

I grew up northern Bexar County (San Antonio) and frequented Canyon and LBJ as a kid... Its nice but....

Stay away from Bexar (SA) or Travis (Austin) counties if you want to stay red... I'll never move back to South Texas 100 miles near those counties. "Keep it weird Austin" has become a saying around those parts for a reason...

Possum Kingdom is awesome but Graford and Graham are the closest things to civilization and they're very small towns.

Lake Conroe if you don't mind transplants coming over from LA and everyone pushing up north or evacuating north from a hurricane.

Me personally, if I didn't want to get too close to a blue metroplex, I'd look at Lake Texoma (just north of DFW, closer to Denison and Sherman) or Towakani (just east of DFW).. Lake Palestine is nice also.

Many others will chime in here, just please do your homework before you drop some coin on lake front in Texas... I'm about 10-15 years from where you're at myself if I play my cards right

keep it red brother! For God and family.

How's the area around lake fork these days??? My wife like the idea of Possum Kingdom.

One thing you need to know up front, a lot of the lakes in Texas were built with flood control and irrigation in mind and what might be lakefront in December damn sure won't be in July.

Lake Travis levels vary 40' to 60' thruout the year. It would suck to suddenly find your boat dock is now a boat barn for the next two years.

Alphabetical List of East Texas Lakes and Their Size

Lake Name   Size (Acres)

Athens                         1,799
Bellwood                                   170
Bois d'Arc (new)                               16,641
Bob Sandlin                        9,004
Caddo                                                     25,400
Cedar Creek                                             32,623
Conroe                                                    20,118
East Lake Tyler                                          2,276
Fork                                                       27,264
Gilmer                                                      1,010
Gladewater                                                  481
Hawkins                                                      633
Jacksonville                                              1,320
Livingston                                              90,000
Martin Creek                                            4,981
Murvau                                                  13,397
Nacogdoches                                      2,212
O'The Pines                                    16,919
Palestine                                               25,560
Sam Rayburn                                  114,500
Striker                                                    1,863  
Tawakoni                                           37,879
Toledo Bend                                       181,600
Tyler                                                     2,224
Wright Patman                                  18,994


This is not a complete list.  There are many others.

Hideaway Lake is not on this list.

Neither is Lake Cherokee by Longview.

You may also want to look at Lake Kiowa by Gainesville.

You should also know that on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers lakes you cannot own land to the water’s edge.  

The Corps owns a “ring” of land around the lake.  It is based the land elevation, not distance from normal pool levels.  There are restrictions on Corps land, which usually means no private boat houses.

This website has tons of properties, both lake front and lake view.  I used the site about 12 years ago when I sold my three acre property on Sabine Lake.  Sold within 30 days of listing.

LakeHouse.com

Use the map feature to narrow down which lake/area you want to search.

Good luck with your search, there's plenty to choose from.

Nice, I forgot about that site! Thanks

Good luck.  Bear in mind with your search, you'll save $$$ in the long run by buying outside of incorporated city limits due to property taxes.  You'll only pay county and school taxes in unincorporated communities with no established city governments or city services.

I pay about 45-50% less in property taxes by living in the county.

Depends if you want acreage, depends if you want to be close to a neighbor, depends if you want to be within a certain time or distance to a major airport. Scattershooting off the top of my head places like Tool, Texas are still inexpensive, it's on Cedar Creek Lake which has decent fishing.

$760k buys you something like this:

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/353-Winding-Shore-Dr_Tool_TX_75143_M74744-29386

Lake Travis is beautiful but probably too close to Austin.  Shame.  Austin was a great town back in the 70s and 80s.  Lake Livingston was nice but I haven’t been that way in a decade or more so not sure if it still is some place you’d want to be. I pretty much suck at this so I’m going to shut up and sit in the corner now.  Carry on.

One thing you need to know about Texas lakes is that from a technical point there is only one natural lake in Texas and that is Caddo Lake. People will argue this point also as there are natural lakes in Texas but they really are not that large and the ones that are large can be argued they really are man made.  All other lakes in Texas are man made.  So when you look around you need to determine what type of lake you want to be on.  A wide lake that most people are used to looking at in other states or a lake that mostly resembles a swollen river.  The first option is less common if your looking for a constant level lake.  


https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/the-texanist-only-one-natural-lake-texas/

https://texasalmanac.com/topics/environment/natural-lakes

I was too thinking Texoma but new lake in Fannin County being built would be an option too.

The one good thing about Lake Travis in living on the north shore.  The leftists cannot cross that water barrier and they have not figured how to drive around it yet.

Isn't a new resivoir / lake getting built up that way now?

Lake Kiowa has a gated / HOA, at least for the southern half, and that isn't very big.

ETA, Bois D'arc (bodark) Lake

some of the lakes in Texas have limited or no private shorefront properlty.

Richland Chambers Reservoir - 41,356 surface acres

Normal variation is 3' during the year.  During the worst of the  drought that ended in 2015, it was down 11 ft...there were a lot of dry boat docks then.

Surprised nobody mentioned Lake Granbury.  You can own lakefront property with boat docks, and it's less than an hour from Fort Worth, maybe an hour to DFW airport.  Granbury is around 10,000 population and has most of the goods and services you need.  Your $2M budget will get a spectacular property, but you can get something very, very nice for quite a lot less than that.

Texas is the second biggest state in the union.  It spans swamps to deserts and everything between.  What it doesn’t span is WA coastal weather. If that is important to you, you won’t be happy here.

The weather is the secondary reason we're looking to move... been here all our lives and are sick of the grey days and rain for 9 months straight.

I've got a boat on Conroe, and can't really stand it most weekends... too choppy and no shortage of wake throwing assholes.

I grew up on Livingston, and much prefer it over Conroe, but then again I'm comfortable with stumps and gators

I'd recommend Lake LBJ, Possum Kingdom lake, Canyon Lake, Sam Rayburn... all in the scenery you want around you.

Just don't build / buy too close to the cliff at Possum Kingdom.

Father in law is buying a place in that price range on Texoma.

Pretty sure that was Lake Whitney since it says so in the first 5 seconds of the video.  Plus we went down to take a look before it was burned.