A small Texas town is preparing for a Hollywood boom with an Elon Musk Tech Hub and movie studio plans
There’s a Texas-sized boom happening just outside the capital of the Lone Star State. A rural area full of farms, 40 minutes from Austin, will see mega growth as the location for a new film studio, a Elon Musk technology center and a new luxury residential community.
Bastrop, Texas – with only about 13,000 residents – is preparing to welcome thousands more in the coming years.
“These recent developments will likely attract more residents to the greater Bastrop County area,” says Hannah Jonessenior economic research analyst at Realtor.com®. “In the short term, a rapid influx of residents could put pressure on local infrastructure and resources, but in the long term continued investment should support new development and economic growth.”
Hollywood 2.0
Two Los Angeles film production companies, Line 204 and Zio Studios, are building a new film studio in the city, to be called Texas Line 204. Alton Butler told MySA that at least four soundstages should be ready by the end of 2025.
The production company supplies stage and production equipment for media giants such as Netflix, Warner Bros., Paramount, Hulu and Disney.
In 2021, Butler bought 546 acres in Bastrop County, which had plenty of cheap land for sale, better tax breaks than he could get elsewhere, and had a stunning topography that the director said was perfect for making movie magic.
With the nearby Colorado River, McKinney Roughs Nature Park, an abundance of green meadows and a “beach on site,” he says the Bastrop studio will offer the kind of scenery that makes Hollywood salivate.
“I think Texas really has a chance to become Hollywood 2.0,” he told the outlet. According to a provincial analysis, the studio will bring $1.9 billion to the area over the next decade.
Realtor.com reached out to Butler for comment.
Elon Musk and Bastrop
It’s that wide-open land, combined with the Lone Star State’s pro-business environment, that attracted Tesla’s founder Elon Musk in 2021.
The billionaire is expanding a tech campus that will become the headquarters for his social media platform X; its infrastructure company, Boring company; a Tesla gigafactory (to produce lithium-ion batteries); and a SpaceX/Starlink facility.
The locals of Bastrop have mixed feelings about Musk’s arrival.
“Residents are happy that their children and grandchildren get a job in the area,” Sylvia Carrillocity manager of Bastrop, against the BBC.
“On the other hand, it can feel like we are being overwhelmed by a third party and that development will rapidly urbanize our area.”
The median sales price in Bastrop County increased from $298,000 in October 2019 to $411,000 in October 2025, an increase of 37.9%.
Large parcels of vacant land near the expanding campus are being snapped up.
A $12.4 million, 146-acre parcel without zoning restrictions on Walker-Watson Road, near FM (Farm-to-Market Road) 1209, touts its proximity to Musk Central.
“Thanks to its prime location, this location is very suitable for the development of single-family homes,” promised the stock exchange listing, which has gone under contract.
The colony and lost pines
The mainly rural area still has far more than 100 hectares of farmland for sale, with hefty price tags in the millions of dollars.
But if you prefer a luxury project with resort-style amenities, look no further than The Colony, an under-construction 2,300-acre master-planned community that will eventually have approximately 4,000 homes.
Builders include household names like Lennar and Drees, with homes starting around $300,000 and going up to more than $1 million.
“There’s a lot of new growth here,” general manager of The Colony Tobin Hurley tells Realtor.com. “It’s a great place to live.”
He notes that the Bastrop location means better value for money. A $1 million, five-bedroom home within the amenity-rich development — it has an Olympic-size pool, tennis and pickleball courts, and miles of walking trails — has a shockingly low HOA fee of $110.
It is in the development where builder Del Webb (part of PulteGroup) is building a new 55+ active community.
The senior living community, called Lost Pines, will have more than 500 homes with 12 different floor plans from three different home ranges, starting in the low $300,000s.
“We were initially drawn to Bastrop as a charming city with a small-town atmosphere, surrounded by the natural beauty of the Texas Hill Country, yet offering easy access to everyday conveniences such as shopping, medical services and a vibrant, growing downtown,” he says. Pablo Rivaspresident of PulteGroup’s Central Texas division, Realtor.com tells us.
Proximity to Austin was also critical. The city has been number 1 since 2020 Zonda’s baby hunter Index three times. “Baby chasers” (older people who move to be near adult children and grandchildren) are a crucial target group for the senior housing industry.
If there is a downside to this construction boom, it is the effect it has had on the resale market. Many older homes have been on the market for more than a year.
Brad Alexander of the Alexander Home team with Keller Williams Realty notes that the city, like many others in the South, saw an influx of city residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, causing prices to rise.
But he says those prices are now coming back down to earth.
“Prices have come down severely,” he tells Realtor.com. “Maybe not delayed, but corrected.”
For example, he represents a three-bedroom home built in 1993 and completely renovated with an in-ground kidney pool on a 2-acre lot that “feels like 10.”
The home has been on the market since March 2024 and the price has been reduced by $120,500 to $769,500.
The broker says new construction in The Colony has dampened the resale market because builders can offer many more buying incentives, such as free upgrades and lower mortgage rates.
And then there’s the lack of deep-pocketed luxury buyers in the small, rural town — something that could change if Musk’s tech campus were to attract enough higher-paid workers.
“He chose Bastrop,” the agent says of Musk. ‘That cannot be negative. It’s just… how big of a positive will it be?’
Susan Noguesa local real estate agent who also lives in the city says demand for higher-end housing has been “stable” – thanks in part to those employed by Musk – but acknowledges that prices have stagnated recently.
Still, she says a unique property that’s move-in ready and priced right will be snapped up, like the six-bedroom house with a guest house on 5 acres that she closed on near the $870,000 questions.
The buyer was a foreigner who paid everything in cash.
“There’s a group of sharks circling every market,” she says. “Sometimes there are fewer sharks, and sometimes more, but there are always sharks.”
