Is there much in the way of housing downtown/midtown/uptown/etc. for folks looking for houses with yards? I hear a lot about Mesta Park, Heritage Hills, and Nichols Hills... what else is out there (especially in gentrified areas)?

There are tons of houses in the interstate-loop that have plenty of yard. Look in Crown/Edgemere Heights, Jefferson Park, Gatewood. All of those are North/West of 23rd/Classen, but some of them are still super close to downtown.

If you've got the money, you can always buy a lot and build something to suit…for all the hell the owner caught from OKC talk, the guy with the brownstone that bought the lot next-door and is building only a small addition and turning the rest into a yard is an example of what can be done. There was the Firehouse development (that seems to be dead) that also would have had a yard.

SOSA is full of reasonable sized lots that have yards, some homes already built, some that need work, etc. etc.

This all rests on you having reasonable expectations of the definition of a yard in the core.

Linwood, Shepherd, Crestwood, Cleveland and Miller are also good options and still affordable.

Not to sound like a broken record, but as mentioned above, Crown and Edgemere Heights, Jefferson Park, Paseo, Central Park (between Paseo and Crown Heights) all have homes with property lots of a great size. Homes that are listed in those areas usually sell fast. Especially with the inventory being low in general in terms of houses being on the market. Lincoln Terrace (Capitol area) also has some great homes with big yards. SoSA values are starting to sky rocket because of the homes that were bought and leveled with new modern homes being built in place of them...still plenty of options there though.