[WSJ$$$] Austin Is Capital of Homes Selling at Super Premiums

You rich elitist you

 

Bubble wont pop, yada, yada. Not disagreeing on a WHOLE. But... are prices not already coming down slightly? They are in H-Tine. Foreclosures have been delayed. New construction has been delayed. Lumber has been expensive. Rates have been low.

No crash.

But something should give (at least a little)... soon.

 

Housing prices have gone down on a yearly level once ever- during the subprime mortgage crisis (for multiple years 2008-2012).

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS

In other words, the pricing will vacillate somewhat but with housing demand, inventory shortages and the inflation caused by the US government printing trillions during the pandemic, we aren't going to see a massive price decrease.

In terms of a 'bubble' it will be demand lessening, not prices going down. People will be able to haggle a few grand off their prices and get concessions but the days of $100-200k housing in high demand areas in Texas are over.

 

https://www.axios.com/home-construction-levels-dc2bd3ac-3b36-43e2-b24e-bd686c09f3d3.html

 

They just finished a giant new water tower in our subdivision because it's growing so fast -- there has been non stop construction for years and the houses sell immediately.

It's really wild - people are fleeing the city limits of Austin, but staying as close as possible.

 

The last time a housing bubble popped in Austin, if memory serves, was sometime during the ‘80’s. We had moved to Austin from Houston in June of 1980 (I’d wanted to for over 10 years, but kept meeting girls that distracted me). Austin, as always, was growing fast, the builders moved in and literally overbuilt the market. Saturated it with more houses, townhomes, and condos than there were buyers for.

We were renting a house so we weren’t affected, but some home builders here went under, I believe, and housing prices dropped considerably. Some flippers lost money, although it was a good time to buy and hold. We partied instead, went to Europe for months. Stuff like that. Should have invested, but don’t regret the fun we had.

 

Very nice timing, I bet you're probably double or more on the value at this point.

 

I have a friend in Frisco who bought her house around 1998. She's still in it... no need to tell you she's sitting pretty. I was going to buy in 1998/1999, but waited because Frisco was too far out in the sticks. lol. I ended up buying a new build (2900 sq. ft) in 2004. Where? Duh. Frisco. Now everybody and their mother is moving here. When I moved up here, there were only around 60,000 people. Now there's over 200,000. It's the fastest growing large city over the last decade (grew 71% in population). McKinney, right next to it, is the 4th fastest growing. Insane.

https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2...ton-austin-frisco-fastest-growing-cities-2020
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020/south-west-fastest-growing.html

 

nice! I’m on the west side of DNT in Little Elm. Just moved here in 2017 and it’s changed a ton in such a short amount of time.

 

Sold the house I purchased in 99 in June 2020 and purchased a house in Leander, finally closed in Feb this year. Broker told me we could make 180K if we didn’t move in, but where would we go? It’s now almost doubled in value and that’s not even taking into consideration the green belt lot and upgrades we have in it. It’s absolutely crazy.

current google trends have been dropping for homebuyer sentiment and fatigue we are almost at the same point the market was before the pandemic began. Per google analytics.

Builders in the area have little inventory or are just building specs as fast as possible without disclosing price until they know what they have in on the build. I don’t foresee much slow down in Austin with Oracle,Apple, Tesla and the list goes on moving here and building campuses combined with support companies and more.

I still kick myself at not purchasing a condo on riverside next to Landry’s back in 92 for 35K opting instead to travel around and party. The experience was worth it but when I returned to Austin in 97 the same condo was going for 400k can’t imagine what it’s worth now but damn the taxes.

seriously consider selling and moving to the ozarks as I’m full remote as well as my wife. Looking at properties there even with a mark up on a river or lake with a little acreage is enticing as is being closer to family. I could straight up buy for cash and do some upgrades while pocketing the rest.

 

What could possibly go wrong?

 

Big Tech strikes again

 

Fun read:

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/austinites-you-have-permission-to-move-to-houston/

 

that was the savings and loan scandal, correct?

there was a major crash because they went buttnuts on homebuilding leading up to the crash...so austin was saturated with affordable rentals for years. and allowed musicians and artists to live here super cheap! if you think about it, in a not-so-indirect way the S&L scandal helped facilitate the live music scene here and the eventual take-over by hipsters and tech douches.

there was a builder here called nash-phillips-copus. at one point in the 70's they were building 60% of the houses in austin. they went under in the mid 80's. i live in one of theirs.

bill milburn was the other big player. i think he built a lot of the houses in barton hills and zilker. milburn got bought by dr horton about 20 years ago.

 

You got it! I was blanking out on the names of the major builders and didn't have the energy to look them up (the news has me in a funk), but those were the major players. I think there were a couple of other smaller builders that also went under. Great point about cheap housing for musicians and artists. It happened at a good time for them, because housing costs were starting go up. We bought a cheap house in south central Austin in the late '80's, finally taking advantage of the bust.

 

Where in the Ozarks? I've thought about moving up to NW Arkansas for years, but the prices there have already popped with all the Walmart activity. They're still a bargain compared to parts of Texas, though, since you can actually get a plot of land bigger than a postage stamp with the house as well as be closer to nice views and nature than in most major cities in Texas. A lot of the people moving out of major cities actually went into burbs and rural areas because of remote work, so that drove up prices in otherwise cheap areas. That pissed me off. lol.

 

Only places that are affordable are shitty, and even those are becoming increasingly unaffordable.