Moody Family Heir Buys Lake Austin Compound in Private Deal

In a hush-hush deal, Austin philanthropist Ross Moody, scion of the influential Moody family, purchased a waterfront compound that includes a mid-century modern home that has never been sold before.

Through an LLC which he manages, and which has its address at another of his properties, Moody bought the neighboring houses on the 3000 block of Westlake Drive on Lake Austin and a vacant lot across the street, according to county records. Altogether, the property includes 550 feet of waterfront and 3 acres of land.

Although each property has its own address and identification, all were owned by one seller, and the survey on the listing website for one of the properties yokes them under one border. Amy Deane with Moreland Properties had the listing. The listing and sales prices are unavailable.

Deane likens the marquee home to a “yacht wrapped around the hills.” Built in 1963 for the seller, physician Donald Counts, the three-bedroom, three-bathroom, 3,200-square-foot house blends into the wooded cliffside with stone, redwood and patinate copper as its primary materials. It shares a 2-acre lot with a boat house, a garden nursery and two other family dwellings, according to county information and the listing survey. The property made headlines in January as Austin’s most expensive active listing, asking $19.9 million, or about $988 per square foot over the 20,100 square feet of gross living space on the lot. The seller reduced the price to $17.5 million in September, according to Zillow.

The rest of the property is just as luxurious, though not quite as flashy.

Neither Redfin, Zillow nor Realtor.com record any listing history for the other home. Deane created a listing website which invites visitors to inquire about pricing. The 1-acre property includes a 6,000-square-foot house built in 1971 with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, overlooking the water from a cliff. Counts acquired it in 2006.

Information on the unimproved half-acre lot across the street is similarly scant.

As a result, one can only estimate the total asking price of the 3-acre property, much less the final sale price. However, the $17.5 million asking price for the primary home is more than double its net appraised value of $7.4 million, and the three parcels have a combined appraised value of $12.6 million, property records show.

Private listings and sales are common in Austin, most practically as a way to evade higher property tax appraisals.

Moody is a trustee of the Moody Foundation, the Galveston-based charitable organization founded in 1942 by financier William Lewis Moody. The Moodys endowed the Moody Gardens and the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas, and they are the namesake of UT’s Moody Center and SMU’s Moody Coliseum.