Temple

A railroad town that became a hospital town

Temple was founded in 1880 as a construction camp for the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad and named after the railroad’s chief civil engineer. It was muddy enough in its early years to earn the nickname Tanglefoot. It is still an active rail town — Union Pacific and BNSF mainlines run through it, and Amtrak’s Texas Eagle stops here.

What it became, though, is the medical centre for this part of Texas. Baylor Scott & White has been in Temple for more than 125 years and is the dominant employer; the Central Texas Veterans Healthcare System employs around 3,500 more. On top of that, Temple has genuine employment diversity that most towns this size do not: McLane Company and Wilsonart are headquartered here, and there is a substantial distribution and manufacturing cluster including H-E-B, BNSF, Walmart and Niagara.

That matters to buyers in a practical way. A hospital-and-distribution economy runs on shifts, which means Temple is a job destination rather than a bedroom community, and a great many people commute into it rather than out.

Downtown has had roughly $40 million put into it around the historic Santa Fe Depot — Santa Fe Plaza, the Santa Fe Market Trail, a food truck court, the Railroad and Heritage Museum and the working Amtrak station, a project that won a statewide Texas downtown improvement award.

Four school districts, one city

This is the single most important thing to understand about buying in Temple, and it catches almost everybody.

The city of Temple is served by four separate school districts: Temple ISD, Belton ISD, Academy ISD and Troy ISD. Students are zoned by address, not by city. A Temple mailing address tells you nothing at all about which district a house is in.

It is not a technicality either. Hills of Westwood, one of the larger new-construction communities in west Temple, is zoned to Belton ISD. If the district matters to you — and for most families it does — the address has to be checked against the district’s own boundary map before you get attached to a house. The City of Temple publishes the overview, and each district publishes its own boundaries. As always, I name districts and point you at the source; I do not rate schools.

Housing in Temple

Temple covers about 76 square miles, by far the largest footprint in the county, and the housing varies as much as that suggests — from the older fabric of the historic district near the original railroad core out to near-rural edges where utilities are a question rather than an assumption.

It is also the deepest new-construction market in Bell County, with more than thirty active communities and nearly every production builder working here. Growth is concentrated in west and southwest Temple and along the Pepper Creek, Westfield and Hartrick corridors — names like Hills of Westwood, The Parks at Westfield, Hartrick Ranch, Pepper Creek Crossing, Blackland Ranch, Pecan Creek, County View, Northgate, Preserve at Lions Park, Atascosa Estates, The Ridge at Knob Creek and Wildflower Estates.

For a first-time buyer that competition is the point. Several builders working the same corridors means incentives, and Temple also has genuine duplex product, which is often the most realistic entry into ownership.

Parks and everyday life

Temple has more than 65 parks. Pepper Creek Trail, with its bridges and small waterfalls, is the signature one. There are splash pads at Jaycee, Miller and West Temple parks, Lions Junction Family Water Park for the summer, Temple Lake Park out on Belton Lake with a boat ramp and kayak launch, Miller Springs Nature Center, Sammons Golf Course and two recreation centres. For a young family that is a genuinely deep bench of things to do that cost nothing.

Worth checking before you buy in Temple

• The school district, by address. Four districts serve one city. This is not optional due diligence here.
• Rail proximity. Two active mainlines plus Amtrak run through town. Worth standing on the lot at a few different times of day.
• Creek drainage. Pepper Creek and Knob Creek are named drainages with subdivisions built along them. Pull the flood map for the parcel.
• City sewer or septic. Across 76 square miles this genuinely varies. Do not assume.
• New-build contracts. Builder contracts are not the standard promulgated forms, incentives are usually tied to using the builder’s lender, and the warranty terms are worth reading properly. Have representation from the first visit — walking into a model home alone is how buyers lose their negotiating position.
• USDA does not apply here. Temple sits outside the USDA eligible area, so a zero-down USDA loan is not an option inside the city. VA still is, for anyone who qualifies.