Keeping Austin weird, we’re seeing a new trend in the real estate market in Texas’ Capital city. At the start of the year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, an article circled social media about a California man who moved to Austin, hated it, and moved back to the Golden State.
He is seemingly very alone in this opinion, though, as Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, James Van Der Beek and many more have recently relocated to the Live Music Capital of the World. These new arrivals have helped Austin homes to regularly sell for $100K or more above asking price, as headlines swirl about (more) B-List Hollywood stars making pacts to move to the Texas Capital and how even the local real estate agents are exhausted.
Austin may be having a real estate moment—but will it be permanent? Or is it just a COVID-19 bubble?
The city’s “housing market has become one of the most competitive markets in the U.S.,” 2021 Austin Board of Realtors (ABoR) President Susan Horton said in a May 2021 press release.
In May, ABoR found that in the city of Austin proper, the median home price jumped to $566,500, or a 34.9% year-over-year increase. This is an all-time high for any month on record. Homes in the city only stayed on the market for an average of 15 days.
Similarly, the greater Austin area also reached an all-time high in May, as the median home price reached $465,000. Homes in the greater area only stayed on the market for an average of 16 days.
While “the [Austin] market can seem difficult to navigate to the average consumer, because it is fast paced, and transactions are becoming increasingly complex,” Horton continued. “This is why it is so important to work with a [real estate agent] who understands the market and can help you find a home that fits your needs and your budget.”
For locals who aren’t used to this type of real estate market, these numbers may seem alarming, but Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather told Business Journal that “Austin isn't likely to become as expensive as San Francisco .... It's more likely to become almost as expensive as Seattle, where Amazon and Microsoft are headquartered."
“What Austin has going for it that a place like Seattle struggles with is that there’s just more land in Austin, more areas to expand to,” Fairweather continued. “You might see Austin kind of grow into this mega city like Los Angeles, where it’s sprawling.”
Finally, when we published our 2021 Days on Market Index, Austin was missing, overshadowed by Texas’ more traditional luxury markets in Houston and Dallas. Now a writer in one of those cities is giving distraught Austin homebuyers permission to move to the affordable, weird city of Houston.
“If you’re trying to buy a home, then you’re probably a grown-up,” the column taunts. “You deserve a grown-up city—the city of Houston.”
However, what we deserve is not always what we want, and the allure of Austin is what we want.
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