Texas Monthly x Absolute Charm Real Estate Group
Fredericksburg Is the New Aspen
By John Davidson
The jewel of the Hill Country, my hometown, is lovelier than ever. I just wish more of the natives could afford to stick around and enjoy it. Scenes from a town transformed.
It’s hot in Fredericksburg. The afternoon sun is intense, but the evenings cool off, just as I recall from my childhood here in the fifties and sixties. I’m visiting because I keep hearing how much Fredericksburg has changed and how much money is sloshing through town these days. An old friend who sells real estate called recently to say I had to come out from Austin, that I wouldn’t believe what was happening. Another friend thinks Fredericksburg is on the brink of a crisis, at least from the perspective of many longtime residents. Property prices are soaring. “If my taxes go up, I might not survive,” he says. “I tell you, I’m scared.”
I’m here to try to reconcile that Fredericksburg with the one I remember—a small Hill Country town with deep German roots, where everyone knew their neighbors and felt like they belonged. We looked forward to bluebonnets in the spring and peaches in the summer. We heard roosters in the morning and church bells throughout the day. Everyone went to the parades and the county fair. It felt like a happy place.
The town was solidly middle-class, and those who did have more were generally frugal and discreet. Today the middle class is being displaced. At the same time, the town is experiencing an unprecedented boom. The proliferation of wineries in the surrounding region is changing both the physical and cultural landscape. Members of Boot Ranch, a residential golf community just outside town, come and go in private jets. Heirs to a California-based media fortune are buying up properties.
One moment I’m standing on the front porch of an old Fredericksburg rock house, the next I’m stepping into what feels like an office in Austin or Dallas. Everything looks glamorous, sleek, new. The receptionist speaks with a clipped British accent. Vaguely disoriented, I feel a gravitational force pulling me past desks, through a long conference room, and into the office of Tammy Pack, the owner of Absolute Charm, the town’s dominant real estate and B&B rental agency.
She’s wearing Valentino Rockstud heels and a navy Lilly Pulitzer dress. A big white Persian cat lies curled up in a bowl on her desk. “That’s our princess,” she says with a drawl as the cat begins to stretch and Tammy’s husband, Wes, strolls in, looking natty in a blue plaid jacket.
Tammy settles in behind her expansive white desk. Around town she is considered a mastermind of marketing, the person who more than anyone is shaping and selling the dream of Fredericksburg as the idyllic Hill Country village. She pulls up her website, fredericksburgtexas-online.com, on a big monitor, and I see an aerial view of downtown that pans slowly around, the buildings at just the right distance to look like a Disney set. “I bought the site because it comes up [in Google searches] right after the official Fredericksburg website,” she says. “I had to redo it completely, but I’m the first thing people see.”
The site has the feel of a wedding magazine—white, gauzy, wholesome—and its dining, drinking, and shopping recommendations come with custom photography of plates of food styled just so and couples holding hands in vineyards. (Pack employs a staff photographer.) This is Fredericksburg the lifestyle brand. The site’s real purpose, though, is to drive traffic to her primary business, Absolute Charm.
The first house that pops up on Absolute Charm’s website one day recently looks like a chalet and lists for $13.9 million. It boasts twelve fireplaces and an infinity pool. It’s one of dozens of million-dollar-plus homes listed on the site. “It’s an expensive town, no doubt, and I get a lot of blame locally,” she says.
Pack grew up in Marshall, in East Texas, and earned a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin. She moved to Fredericksburg in 1996 because she spotted an opportunity for her entrepreneurial ambitions. First up was a quilt shop. She launched Absolute Charm in 2001 as a single B&B and then in 2007 expanded as a booking service for other vacation rentals and B&B’s. She expanded into real estate sales in 2015. Most of her customers are looking for investment properties or second homes. They come from Austin, Houston, and Dallas, and compared to what they see in their neighborhoods at home, the prices in Fredericksburg aren’t all that shocking.
I ask how she imagines the future of Fredericksburg.
“I tell people it’s the Aspen of Texas,” she says.
“And what do you think of Boot Ranch? That’s a new direction for Fredericksburg.”
“We just joined, and we love it.” Nonresidential memberships cost $100,000 up front, she notes, and, as a rule, only one becomes available each year. “The members are shockingly nice, mostly self-made people. Wes plays golf, and I’ll try to learn.”
Leigh Lacy, the former director of member services at Boot Ranch and part of the original team that started the club, has offered to show me around. The entrance is more discreet than deluxe, a white stucco guardhouse without even a gate. We pass through and onto a narrow road that winds through the low, stony hills. We come to a spring-fed lake and a waterfall that tumbles into a stream, and then we approach the golf course.
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