Dripping Springs Neighborhoods: The 5 Master-Planned Communities Compared

Belterra is the veteran of the group — the largest and most established community on this list, built out across a decade-plus of phases with mature trees, a dozen-plus parks, a recreation center with a lap pool and fitness facility, and its own commercial anchor at Belterra Village, where residents walk to an HEB, restaurants, and retail. That maturity is the appeal: the landscaping is grown in, and the trees are actually trees.

It also sits closest to Austin of the five — many addresses even carry an Austin 78737 mailing address despite being Hays County and Dripping Springs ISD. Two things worth knowing: Belterra isn't monolithic, breaking into many sections (the newer Heights carries current national-builder product at higher prices, and the gated Cove holds Sitterle garden homes), and it carries a Hays County WCID #2 tax line — lighter than the Caliterra/Headwaters MUDs, but real. School zoning here has also shifted; sections such as the Views at Belterra have been rezoning subjects, so confirm your specific address.

If Belterra is the veteran, Headwaters is the polished newcomer — 1,335 acres at the upper reaches of Barton Creek on the east approach to town, planned around the watershed with more than a thousand acres of open space, about eight miles of trails, and a modern-farmhouse aesthetic anchored by the HW Central hub.

Its standout, and the reason families short-list it, is the school: Dripping Springs ISD acquired a 64-acre site inside the community in 2020, and Wildwood Springs Elementary opened on that site in August 2025 — an on-site campus that eliminates the morning car-line drive, feeding Dripping Springs Middle and then Dripping Springs High. The trade-off is cost: this is an active Headwaters MUD community, so a new build carries that ~0.9% overlay on top of the price, putting the effective rate near 2.3% (about 2.54% before homestead). You pay a premium for the amenities and walkability — the question is whether the lifestyle justifies it for you. As of 2026 the market here has cooled, with homes taking meaningfully longer to sell than at the 2021–22 peak.

Caliterra is the Onion Creek community — a master-planned development built around roughly 250 acres of open space and creek corridor just south of Ranch Road 12, about a mile from downtown Dripping Springs. It has leaned steadily more upscale, and the expansion phase, The Ranch at Caliterra, pushes further: a final build-out adding well over 200 homesites — including large custom lots — with builders such as David Weekley, Scott Felder, and Drees, plus a second entrance and a new amenity center (The Bunk House).

Because Caliterra spans older delivered sections and active custom phases, the price range is the widest-topping of the five, with list medians running near $900K in 2026 and custom product in The Ranch pushing past $1M. It carries the Hays County Development District #1 tax line — the same ~0.9% MUD-equivalent load as Headwaters — putting the effective rate around 2.2–2.3% (about 2.53% before homestead). Model the current-year rate on the specific phase rather than assuming last year's.

Highpointe is the gated, amenity-heavy option — a 740-acre community of roughly a thousand homes whose Resident Club is the calling card: a two-story gym, three pools, sport courts and fields, a playscape, and miles of hike-and-bike trails. The housing skews upscale, ranging from around 2,000 to over 4,000 square feet, and the gated setting gives it a more resort-club feel than the open-plan communities on this list.

It's more mature than Headwaters or the active Caliterra phases, so there's more resale than new construction — a plus if you want grown-in landscaping, a constraint if you specifically want to build. On taxes it lands with the low cluster: it carries a Hays County MUD No. 5 line, but a light one (~0.4% of value, likely a mature district that's paid down much of its debt), so the effective rate sits near 1.84% — alongside Belterra and Arrowhead, not the heavy-MUD communities. One verified nuance: Highpointe feeds Sycamore Springs Elementary (not Rooster Springs, as some older listings claim) → Sycamore Springs Middle → Dripping Springs High.

Arrowhead Ranch is the compact, fully built-out option on the western edge of Dripping Springs — a gated community of roughly 380 homesites across about 362 acres, on a plateau above Onion Creek with much of its acreage kept as natural open space and trails. Its practical selling point is location relative to schools: it's a short walk to Dripping Springs Middle School, with Walnut Springs Elementary as its assigned elementary, feeding Dripping Springs High.

Unlike the actively building communities, Arrowhead is essentially done — developed by M/I Homes and Taylor Morrison, with the newer builder sections sold out — so it's a resale market rather than a new-construction one. It's also the one community here with no special taxing district: instead, it sits inside Dripping Springs city limits, so it carries a city tax and lands at an effective ~1.86% — right alongside Belterra and Highpointe. It's the smallest footprint of the five, so inventory is thin and turns on what happens to come up.