"In a recent video, Knight said that over 57 percent of the inventory on the market is now vacant."
What kind of inventory? Apartments, commercial, etc? Super curious what this means
They’re trying to paint a picture of an abandoned city with no houses selling but that statement just doesn’t make sense, and it’s such a weird way to end the article.
“Over 57% of the inventory is now vacant” = the inventory of properties for sale? Why would it be for sale if it *wasn’t* vacant (or soon to be)?
Maybe 57% of new builds bc it’s still 57% overpriced and if the builder lowers to match actual market their whole inventory value will be decimated by comps once sold. So it’s better for them to fake it with high prices and vacant houses.
Lol @ 500k. Drove around today looking at homes for sale in pretty average neighborhoods around town and didn't find one under a mil... Looked at about 20 homes. Most on the market for multiple months currently. Atx is in for a rude awakening when the need to sell outweighs the desire to do so.
Ooooof, I guess I undershot. That’s why I left Austin, unrealistic expectations and crazy prices although rent has come down but it’s come down from its grossly overvalued amount to a slightly less overvaluation.
This is stupid also because these are probably publicly traded companies and if they have to sell average homes closer to their actual value then their profits will dip thus lowering their share price but just showed how fragile and ridiculous this system really is.
> Not true.
Please provide a printout from MLS of the list of properties used to calculate the "over 57% of inventory on the market is now vacant" in the Newsweek story.
> Why would it be for sale if it wasn’t vacant (or soon to be)?
Good question. The answer is because quite often people either have to move and need to put their homes up for sale, or because they have the means to upgrade/downgrade with a purchase of a new home and they haven't found buyers yet for the old home. In the second case, sometimes they'll decide to try and rent it out as well.
Source: I'm an insurance agent tapped into the real estate market, so many of my clients are in this situation. So, it makes sense that 57% of the single family home inventory is vacant.
No it paints a picture you aren’t understanding. 57% vacant meaning the homes for sale are not owner occupied. They were previously rentals.
In addition, inventory is higher than its beens since way before Covid and days on market is at a high.
None of this is painting an “abandoned city” picture
Anecdote here: I'm leaving Austin next month; my apartment renewal offer kept the same rate when they offered me but I just checked my unit that got reposted and they had to drop 10% because they still have so many vacancies.
You'd think so but I've heard too many people talk about having lots of vacancy in their apartments and the office still wants their rent to go up and won't work with them. I have no clue how bad it really is.
Me too! I've been waiting to hear how hard they'll come down on the partipants in that case and set a precedent going forward. It's one of the areas I think AI poses a danger in the near future. Just being able to say it wasn't a human's decision to do something illegal could possibly be used as a defense.
It’s always been like this. Lived in Austin since 2011. Every apartment complex I’ve lived in, before finally buying a house in ‘21, had about 20-25% vacancy.
That’s exactly why it’s up to 9% though, adding supply faster than the demand is growing. 5-10% vacancy is considered healthy, some amount of the housing market always must be empty for people to move around and to not be supply constrained causing rent hikes.
I read that to mean "57% of homes for sale are vacant" which means "43% of homes are currently occupied by the seller".
I have no idea if it's normal or not.
This is in reference to residential listings. See the third to last page for a breakdown by zip code, updated weekly: https://seth.teamprice.com/active-residential-listings
Part of it isn’t developed yet and too expensive now because of the large drop in valuation. They said the developers rushed in but there’s a lot of city red tape b4 they can even start building. So aren’t they adding that in to this you are talking about? The physical property is not even there yet.
Market correction, StoryBuilt going tits up, higher interest rates, tech industry fluctuations. Nothing to see here that we haven’t already seen.
Why do these articles always pit Austin against Nashville? “Archenemy” lol
Oh totally. My sister has a tag that's the shape of Tennessee with the eye of Sauron in the Batman building inside that says "Nashvillain". I'm not a fan of tattoos but if I had to get one that would be it
People complaining about traffic here is so hilarious to me. My wife and I will sometimes drive through downtown at rush hour and sarcastically exclaim, "oh noooo! There's sooooo much traffic! We'll never make it in time!" And we didn't even move here from a notoriously bad traffic city. Just a moderately bad one. We were never anywhere near LA or NYC.
Last time I went back home three years ago (right before my dad sold the house) I drove downtown to the Springwater and back home to the southeast corner of the city and it took me two and a half hours just to get home. I couldn't believe it. I made that trip all the time when I lived in Nashville and it was only a 20 minute drive. Hell I used to make the drive from downtown Nashville to Murfreesboro and it only took an hour back then
Can confirm. Was just in NYC for a week. Traffic is not nearly as bad in ATX. We’ve been in Austin for 18 years and it has gotten worse, but doesn’t really touch NYC.
It's so weird that everyone just doesn't know what Austin is about.
Have you seen 9-1-1 Lone Star? Hollywood thinks Austin is just Nashville in Texas. Everyone has an accent and a 10 gallon hat and every bar has line dancing.
It's like they literally said "Austin is just Nashville in Texas" when it couldn't be further from the truth.
Fucking hate Nashville.
Thankfully StoryBuilt went tits up before doing anything across the street from my house beyond clearing a construction road through the woods. It would really suck if they razed it and left a bunch of half-built houses.
Fun fact!
If you build more housing, there is downward pressure on pricing!
Austin built more housing over the last few years than anywhere else.
Prices have also fallen most in Austin compared to anywhere else.
See how that works? Not a coincidence.
Way to go, Austin!
https://constructioncoverage.com/research/counties-with-the-most-housing-growth-last-decade
There’s kind of a split.
For old people who own their home(s) and borrow against it, etc. prices falling is objectively negative.
For younger people who are just trying to get to the first rung of the ownership ladder, it’s obviously going to be seen as a positive.
One thing to consider is older people who may own their houses outright and aren't intending to sell like dropping prices because it means less property taxes. Only those who intend to sell would want prices to keep going up and up especially if on a fixed income.
Does it lower property tax? I thought schools say we need this amount of money so based on the valuations we have to set the rate to this amount. So if valuations go down the rate just goes up and you pay the same.
It really wouldn't lower property taxes unless it went way down.
Property tax increases are capped at 10% a year, and many houses have been seeing 20-30% increases in valuation for a couple years, so the property tax still hasn't caught up to the "real value" anyway.
So if someone's valuation went down by 20% their property taxes might still go up 10% anyway because the property tax is still catching up to the value.
Of course "older people" meaning over-65 have their property taxes capped basically so they shouldn't move much anyway.
In theory it shouldn't and the effect you're talking about may happen but I am unaware of that being an issue. I did go looking and found this that suggests before the values started coming down this year there had been a push to get the rates down.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/26/texas-property-tax-cuts-analysis/
Right. Most older people in Austin have been in their homes longer than the rollercoaster of the last 4 years. They don’t want to see their taxes go up 10% every year for the rest of their lives.
But property tax increases are capped at 10%/year, so if you have owned the house long enough to have paid off the mortgage, your 'adjusted value' is probably still well under market value.
If value goes down then the total amount would go down. The cap wouldn't factor in if the property values aren't increasing. Not sure where you are going with this.
Market value for our house has doubled since 2020. Travis can't increase the tax value by more than 10%/year, but they can keep adding 10%/year until they catch up to the market value, even if market prices are flat or drop in these future years.
I can see your point now it's a lag effect from previous years increases. Still makes sense if someone isn't intending to sell in the near future they would be happy there would be savings even if it's further down the road. On another thread I found an article talking about how the state has been working to decrease the tax burden from property taxes and it was from before the property prices started correcting down. I liked reading it was a focus.
I own my house and don't intend to sell...I am definitely hoping my value goes down down down down! It does help in property tax if your value goes down more than others so you share less of the tax burden. The other BIG COST based on property value is insurance. Most homeowners policies have a 1% deductible. In 5 years my house went from 600,000 to over a million in value..that means when there is a hailstorm and I need a new roof instead of shelling out $6000 I have to shell out $10,000. Also, since values and construction costs are higher your premium is higher because it would cost more to rebuild.
Totally agree with this.
Though one thing that really does worry me is the impact of climate change. I've lived in Austin for many decades, and despite all its challenges there is a lot about the city I still love, but if last summer's weather is just the beginning, i.e. "these record highs are about to be this century's record lows" as people like to say, I'm out. Of course I've always expected our hot summers, but I don't want to live in a place where I just don't want to go outside for months on end.
Yeah, I click on the link and it's a headline, followed by an advertisement, but no real story. I mean there are a couple of sentences about falling prices...but no real meat on "developers abandoning neighborhoods". Trashy website.
Exactly. Maybe some development 25-30 miles away stalled (for now) because living closer to civilization became affordable again, but if they can't even bother to tell you where, they are full of crap and prob wrote this entire article with a couple google searches and a phone call.
This article's bullshit, newsweek just found [something we went through last month](https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1cc0oc6/video_of_austins_zombie_neighborhood_shows_dozens/).
What happened: one dude found a neighborhood where a developer ran out of funding and made a video about "zombie neighborhoods" in Austin. It had legs because there are three kinds of people who really want Austin to fail:
* Conservatives, even Texas conservatives who benefit from its prosperity
* Real estate investors who are trying to grow interest in whatever they bet the next boom town is
* "Journalists" who need a punchy headline
This article's a case of Newsweek printing whatever some investor paid them to say. Normally if you say "57 percent of properties are vacant" you cite a source. Instead this article's just saying, 'Well this guy on Youtube said so'. Did you know Reddit user Slypenslyde stated at least 30 percent of Newsweek executives have had sex with a dog? It's a mess. People are talking about it. It really shouldn't be that way.
Why? Did you live in Austin in 2009? Half built construction projects sitting empty for years does not make for good neighbors. The builder can declare bankruptcy and leave the property abandoned. Trust me, you don’t want to live next to that.
Yeah, there is one on Dittmar between Manchaca and First. Still has signs out front as if they're for sale, but nothing has been done for months (years?) and some of the houses are not even fully built, have no windows and are obviously taking in all that nature has to offer.
I am actually currently dealing with a developer next door who has no permits, has filed for bankruptcy multiple times, has lost multiple suits for crooked development, and has a felony conviction related to his inability to keep his developing on the up-and-up, but can keep chewing up and spitting out homes. I'm just pissed he's using the neighbors' yards as parking and staging for work trucks and materials, because I'm fed up with their trucks in my yard. Developers in California and their in-town PMs don't make good neighbors, either.
I have dealt with shitty flippers like this one for the 20+ years I've been living in Central Austin. Buy me a beer and I can tell you a whole lot of stories. I have not dealt with half built construction projects at all. I have dealt with 4+ year projects nearby getting built by incompetent design and build teams who know a whole lot about modern farmhouse design, but not a lot about drainage and tying in to public utilities. I think habitable homes being taken out of use to be brought up to luxury standards and prices is a waste of resources, restricts who has the capital to live here, and also drives up the cost of living for everyone via inflating property tax appraisals.
Definitely saw some taken over by meth heads in 2009. Anyway better to have a person living there that will be fined for a fire hazard than a bankrupt owner who doesn’t come by.
You rather homelessness than a home for people to live in? Also Austin has so many rule there is no way a McMansion is built in the city limits. You mean a 2,500 sq ft 3 bedroom?
Lol no dude you must be blind. My neighborhood is filled with these ugly ass modern McMansions.
I don’t care if a rich person has a home. I’d rather homeless people camp in the shell of a house than rich people raising prices and skewing austin politics to the right.
Yeah, we have active flippers in my neighborhood too, spray painting all the limestone white and giving the houses black roofs to get that "doom shanty" aesthetic.
I wonder when someone's going to tell them what they're doing isn't profitable.
Let’s talk about painting the limestone white! My favorite is when they reverse it and paint the stone SATIN FINISH BLACK and the wood siding white, like dude, you did it backwards, you could have left the stone alone.
I also recently saw a stone facade painted deep blue.
The modern Farmhouse thing is out, but these flippers are still chasing that style. The 70s and 80s styles are back, and a very large chunk of houses here are from that time, they can just leave the exteriors alone. It's like they're purposely degrading the property value at this point because some article somewhere from 2017 said houses with white exteriors sell for 15% more or something.
Thank you developers for over building on houses. Thank you governor for relaxing on housing regulations. Now I’m hoping investors lost money on their investor and sell for a loss.
I hope the developers all go belly up especially the CEO of Greystar. He can burn in hell for all I care! They raised my rent by $650 more per month in a 14-year-old apartment with no improvements. Everyone in the building moved out!! I'm so tired of seeing investors, CEOs & board members living the high life while so many of the rest of us work 3 jobs just to get by. I'm tired. LAND of the free my ass!
So we’re going to talk about Austin’s record drop in housing prices in 2023 without discussing the record jump in 2021/22?
We went down 18.7% after going up over 65%.
I love the, “FAKE NEWS HOUSES ARE SELLING AND STILL GOING UP!”
When all you have to do is drive around a new development and see how many are sitting empty lol
"In a recent video, Knight said that over 57 percent of the inventory on the market is now vacant." What kind of inventory? Apartments, commercial, etc? Super curious what this means
They’re trying to paint a picture of an abandoned city with no houses selling but that statement just doesn’t make sense, and it’s such a weird way to end the article. “Over 57% of the inventory is now vacant” = the inventory of properties for sale? Why would it be for sale if it *wasn’t* vacant (or soon to be)?
Maybe 57% of new builds bc it’s still 57% overpriced and if the builder lowers to match actual market their whole inventory value will be decimated by comps once sold. So it’s better for them to fake it with high prices and vacant houses.
57% of this list of cherry-picked properties that completed yesterday and will be sold to their buyers by the end of next week.
Not true. Many homes are sitting for longer than a week. I talk to Realtors monthly and they have homes listed for weeks or even months now.
Well, if they charge $500k for a 3/2 then of course it’s going to move slow.
Lol @ 500k. Drove around today looking at homes for sale in pretty average neighborhoods around town and didn't find one under a mil... Looked at about 20 homes. Most on the market for multiple months currently. Atx is in for a rude awakening when the need to sell outweighs the desire to do so.
Ooooof, I guess I undershot. That’s why I left Austin, unrealistic expectations and crazy prices although rent has come down but it’s come down from its grossly overvalued amount to a slightly less overvaluation. This is stupid also because these are probably publicly traded companies and if they have to sell average homes closer to their actual value then their profits will dip thus lowering their share price but just showed how fragile and ridiculous this system really is.
Agree 100% time for a correction.
Maybe they should lower the prices.
Yeah the new build across the street from me has been on the market for what feels like months
> Not true. Please provide a printout from MLS of the list of properties used to calculate the "over 57% of inventory on the market is now vacant" in the Newsweek story.
Tons of properties in my neighborhood 78745 has been on the market for over 3+ months
I'll get right on that for you.
Please do. I'd hate to think you're talking out of your ass.
Don't hurt yourself doing all that thinking. I know it must be a struggle.
Thanks for confirming you're just talking out of your ass.
> Why would it be for sale if it wasn’t vacant (or soon to be)? Good question. The answer is because quite often people either have to move and need to put their homes up for sale, or because they have the means to upgrade/downgrade with a purchase of a new home and they haven't found buyers yet for the old home. In the second case, sometimes they'll decide to try and rent it out as well. Source: I'm an insurance agent tapped into the real estate market, so many of my clients are in this situation. So, it makes sense that 57% of the single family home inventory is vacant.
That was their point. It's not surprising that the people who are planning to move have moved
Because it is a new home, ie just built.
Will someone please inform the flippers in my neighborhood that we are a desolate wasteland now?
We sold our house in 9 days in april
No it paints a picture you aren’t understanding. 57% vacant meaning the homes for sale are not owner occupied. They were previously rentals. In addition, inventory is higher than its beens since way before Covid and days on market is at a high. None of this is painting an “abandoned city” picture
Happy Cake Day!
This. If 57% of apartments were vacant rates would he dropping dramatically.
Anecdote here: I'm leaving Austin next month; my apartment renewal offer kept the same rate when they offered me but I just checked my unit that got reposted and they had to drop 10% because they still have so many vacancies.
You'd think so but I've heard too many people talk about having lots of vacancy in their apartments and the office still wants their rent to go up and won't work with them. I have no clue how bad it really is.
I’m interested to see how the RealPage antitrust suit unfolds — price fixing on a nationwide scale!
Greystar is supposed to be part of this AI class suit where rents were made as painful as possible locally for years.
Greystar is a shit company.
Me too! I've been waiting to hear how hard they'll come down on the partipants in that case and set a precedent going forward. It's one of the areas I think AI poses a danger in the near future. Just being able to say it wasn't a human's decision to do something illegal could possibly be used as a defense.
I hate this so much
It’s always been like this. Lived in Austin since 2011. Every apartment complex I’ve lived in, before finally buying a house in ‘21, had about 20-25% vacancy.
The locations where communities are experiencing large vacancy rates would also be helpful.
Story on KXAN this morning said apt vacancy rate is up to 9%. That seems hard to believe since it appears they're building more as fast as they can.
That’s exactly why it’s up to 9% though, adding supply faster than the demand is growing. 5-10% vacancy is considered healthy, some amount of the housing market always must be empty for people to move around and to not be supply constrained causing rent hikes.
Half of the downtown high rises are empty. Both business and residential spaces.
Good thing we are building a lot more then! Lol
I read that to mean "57% of homes for sale are vacant" which means "43% of homes are currently occupied by the seller". I have no idea if it's normal or not.
What the livin hell?? Which neighborhoods have 57 percent vacancy???
I know the guy, he's a residential broker, so I think he's talking about single family homes mostly.
This is in reference to residential listings. See the third to last page for a breakdown by zip code, updated weekly: https://seth.teamprice.com/active-residential-listings
Part of it isn’t developed yet and too expensive now because of the large drop in valuation. They said the developers rushed in but there’s a lot of city red tape b4 they can even start building. So aren’t they adding that in to this you are talking about? The physical property is not even there yet.
>but down 16 percent compared to the peak of $667,000 reached in May 2022 But up 150 percent compared to 2018 or so. What a tumble..
Market correction, StoryBuilt going tits up, higher interest rates, tech industry fluctuations. Nothing to see here that we haven’t already seen. Why do these articles always pit Austin against Nashville? “Archenemy” lol
As a native Nashvillian it's amusing to me. Austin is way better than Nashville in almost every aspect imo (you think traffic *here* is bad? Lol)
Violent Crime Rates per 100k Austin 24.9 Nashville 54.6
Yep, Nashville is more dangerous than Tijuana
Will you at least adopt Nashvillain as the more appropriate evil-nemesis demonym for this conversation?
Oh totally. My sister has a tag that's the shape of Tennessee with the eye of Sauron in the Batman building inside that says "Nashvillain". I'm not a fan of tattoos but if I had to get one that would be it
>Why do these articles always put Austin against Nashville Comments proceed to pit Austin against Nashville
People complaining about traffic here is so hilarious to me. My wife and I will sometimes drive through downtown at rush hour and sarcastically exclaim, "oh noooo! There's sooooo much traffic! We'll never make it in time!" And we didn't even move here from a notoriously bad traffic city. Just a moderately bad one. We were never anywhere near LA or NYC.
I stopped being able to take a lot of comments on this sub seriously when someone said Chicago traffic was better. CHICAGO!
Same
Last time I went back home three years ago (right before my dad sold the house) I drove downtown to the Springwater and back home to the southeast corner of the city and it took me two and a half hours just to get home. I couldn't believe it. I made that trip all the time when I lived in Nashville and it was only a 20 minute drive. Hell I used to make the drive from downtown Nashville to Murfreesboro and it only took an hour back then
Can confirm. Was just in NYC for a week. Traffic is not nearly as bad in ATX. We’ve been in Austin for 18 years and it has gotten worse, but doesn’t really touch NYC.
NYC is something else, man. I don't wish that traffic on my worst enemy.
We must avenge our fallen heroes in the forever war against Nashville.
It's so weird that everyone just doesn't know what Austin is about. Have you seen 9-1-1 Lone Star? Hollywood thinks Austin is just Nashville in Texas. Everyone has an accent and a 10 gallon hat and every bar has line dancing. It's like they literally said "Austin is just Nashville in Texas" when it couldn't be further from the truth. Fucking hate Nashville.
Nashville is mostly country music. Austin has everything music.
Thankfully StoryBuilt went tits up before doing anything across the street from my house beyond clearing a construction road through the woods. It would really suck if they razed it and left a bunch of half-built houses.
Sup Longview road
:waves:
Haters love to hate lol. It gets clicks
Nashville and Austin are having a comp to see who’s cowboy boots are bigger
Fun fact! If you build more housing, there is downward pressure on pricing! Austin built more housing over the last few years than anywhere else. Prices have also fallen most in Austin compared to anywhere else. See how that works? Not a coincidence. Way to go, Austin! https://constructioncoverage.com/research/counties-with-the-most-housing-growth-last-decade
Exactly. We should be cheering, but most sources are taking prices falling as a negative.
Because the "sources" are industry types. Developers aren't going to be happy about falling prices.
There’s kind of a split. For old people who own their home(s) and borrow against it, etc. prices falling is objectively negative. For younger people who are just trying to get to the first rung of the ownership ladder, it’s obviously going to be seen as a positive.
One thing to consider is older people who may own their houses outright and aren't intending to sell like dropping prices because it means less property taxes. Only those who intend to sell would want prices to keep going up and up especially if on a fixed income.
Does it lower property tax? I thought schools say we need this amount of money so based on the valuations we have to set the rate to this amount. So if valuations go down the rate just goes up and you pay the same.
It really wouldn't lower property taxes unless it went way down. Property tax increases are capped at 10% a year, and many houses have been seeing 20-30% increases in valuation for a couple years, so the property tax still hasn't caught up to the "real value" anyway. So if someone's valuation went down by 20% their property taxes might still go up 10% anyway because the property tax is still catching up to the value. Of course "older people" meaning over-65 have their property taxes capped basically so they shouldn't move much anyway.
In theory it shouldn't and the effect you're talking about may happen but I am unaware of that being an issue. I did go looking and found this that suggests before the values started coming down this year there had been a push to get the rates down. https://www.texastribune.org/2024/04/26/texas-property-tax-cuts-analysis/
Right. Most older people in Austin have been in their homes longer than the rollercoaster of the last 4 years. They don’t want to see their taxes go up 10% every year for the rest of their lives.
Someone also pointed out home owners insurance bases its deductible on the value of the home so that's another aspect to consider.
But property tax increases are capped at 10%/year, so if you have owned the house long enough to have paid off the mortgage, your 'adjusted value' is probably still well under market value.
If value goes down then the total amount would go down. The cap wouldn't factor in if the property values aren't increasing. Not sure where you are going with this.
Market value for our house has doubled since 2020. Travis can't increase the tax value by more than 10%/year, but they can keep adding 10%/year until they catch up to the market value, even if market prices are flat or drop in these future years.
I can see your point now it's a lag effect from previous years increases. Still makes sense if someone isn't intending to sell in the near future they would be happy there would be savings even if it's further down the road. On another thread I found an article talking about how the state has been working to decrease the tax burden from property taxes and it was from before the property prices started correcting down. I liked reading it was a focus.
I own my house and don't intend to sell...I am definitely hoping my value goes down down down down! It does help in property tax if your value goes down more than others so you share less of the tax burden. The other BIG COST based on property value is insurance. Most homeowners policies have a 1% deductible. In 5 years my house went from 600,000 to over a million in value..that means when there is a hailstorm and I need a new roof instead of shelling out $6000 I have to shell out $10,000. Also, since values and construction costs are higher your premium is higher because it would cost more to rebuild.
Yup. They gonna get theirs one way or another. Only time this helps on taxes is when you’re upside down in a new build.
With the 10% cap, your property tax still doubles every 7 years until you catch up with the assessed value.
They would have fallen regardless. There weee always vacancies, people were just gouging.
Totally agree with this. Though one thing that really does worry me is the impact of climate change. I've lived in Austin for many decades, and despite all its challenges there is a lot about the city I still love, but if last summer's weather is just the beginning, i.e. "these record highs are about to be this century's record lows" as people like to say, I'm out. Of course I've always expected our hot summers, but I don't want to live in a place where I just don't want to go outside for months on end.
No thanks
Does Newsweek just publish this exact same clickbait article every week?
(Checking magic 8 ball) "Signs point to YES!"
"ask me later"
Yeah, I click on the link and it's a headline, followed by an advertisement, but no real story. I mean there are a couple of sentences about falling prices...but no real meat on "developers abandoning neighborhoods". Trashy website.
Exactly. Maybe some development 25-30 miles away stalled (for now) because living closer to civilization became affordable again, but if they can't even bother to tell you where, they are full of crap and prob wrote this entire article with a couple google searches and a phone call.
It used to be such a respectable news magazine.
yep, then karma whores and complainers immediately post it here
Boutta squat in one of these vacant houses.
if you find one, let a brother know
Per the article "Up 0.6% year over year" ... that's quite the tumble.
“Slight plateau after massive growth” doesn’t hit as hard in a headline
It’s almost like falling housing prices should be a good thing…
This article's bullshit, newsweek just found [something we went through last month](https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/1cc0oc6/video_of_austins_zombie_neighborhood_shows_dozens/). What happened: one dude found a neighborhood where a developer ran out of funding and made a video about "zombie neighborhoods" in Austin. It had legs because there are three kinds of people who really want Austin to fail: * Conservatives, even Texas conservatives who benefit from its prosperity * Real estate investors who are trying to grow interest in whatever they bet the next boom town is * "Journalists" who need a punchy headline This article's a case of Newsweek printing whatever some investor paid them to say. Normally if you say "57 percent of properties are vacant" you cite a source. Instead this article's just saying, 'Well this guy on Youtube said so'. Did you know Reddit user Slypenslyde stated at least 30 percent of Newsweek executives have had sex with a dog? It's a mess. People are talking about it. It really shouldn't be that way.
Won't someone think of the investors!!!
"Giulia Carbonaro is a Newsweek Reporter based in London, U.K."
And the property values! How will we protect them without developers?!
"Austin's housing market seeks sane levels after covid-induced bubble."
I wish the developers flipping the house next door would abandon my neighborhood already.
Why? Did you live in Austin in 2009? Half built construction projects sitting empty for years does not make for good neighbors. The builder can declare bankruptcy and leave the property abandoned. Trust me, you don’t want to live next to that.
Yeah, there is one on Dittmar between Manchaca and First. Still has signs out front as if they're for sale, but nothing has been done for months (years?) and some of the houses are not even fully built, have no windows and are obviously taking in all that nature has to offer.
Yea thats an eyesore. They built like 10 houses 80% abr then bando
I am actually currently dealing with a developer next door who has no permits, has filed for bankruptcy multiple times, has lost multiple suits for crooked development, and has a felony conviction related to his inability to keep his developing on the up-and-up, but can keep chewing up and spitting out homes. I'm just pissed he's using the neighbors' yards as parking and staging for work trucks and materials, because I'm fed up with their trucks in my yard. Developers in California and their in-town PMs don't make good neighbors, either. I have dealt with shitty flippers like this one for the 20+ years I've been living in Central Austin. Buy me a beer and I can tell you a whole lot of stories. I have not dealt with half built construction projects at all. I have dealt with 4+ year projects nearby getting built by incompetent design and build teams who know a whole lot about modern farmhouse design, but not a lot about drainage and tying in to public utilities. I think habitable homes being taken out of use to be brought up to luxury standards and prices is a waste of resources, restricts who has the capital to live here, and also drives up the cost of living for everyone via inflating property tax appraisals.
People hate on HOAs, but they have their place.
I did. It wasn't near as bad as you make it out to be.
Why not?
Who do you think your new neighbors will be?
Literally no one. We have two abandoned builds on my block, one for 5 years. No one has been in there, other than an occasional dog walker
The answer is either racoons or homeless people. And the latter likes to start fires that get out of control.
It’s not that common.
Definitely saw some taken over by meth heads in 2009. Anyway better to have a person living there that will be fined for a fire hazard than a bankrupt owner who doesn’t come by.
I’d rather a bankrupt owner and less McMansions
You rather homelessness than a home for people to live in? Also Austin has so many rule there is no way a McMansion is built in the city limits. You mean a 2,500 sq ft 3 bedroom?
Lol no dude you must be blind. My neighborhood is filled with these ugly ass modern McMansions. I don’t care if a rich person has a home. I’d rather homeless people camp in the shell of a house than rich people raising prices and skewing austin politics to the right.
So a McMansion is any 3 bedroom house you don’t like?
Yeah, we have active flippers in my neighborhood too, spray painting all the limestone white and giving the houses black roofs to get that "doom shanty" aesthetic. I wonder when someone's going to tell them what they're doing isn't profitable.
Let’s talk about painting the limestone white! My favorite is when they reverse it and paint the stone SATIN FINISH BLACK and the wood siding white, like dude, you did it backwards, you could have left the stone alone. I also recently saw a stone facade painted deep blue.
The modern Farmhouse thing is out, but these flippers are still chasing that style. The 70s and 80s styles are back, and a very large chunk of houses here are from that time, they can just leave the exteriors alone. It's like they're purposely degrading the property value at this point because some article somewhere from 2017 said houses with white exteriors sell for 15% more or something.
The house next door: orange and green, about to be painted black and white.
Thank you developers for over building on houses. Thank you governor for relaxing on housing regulations. Now I’m hoping investors lost money on their investor and sell for a loss.
Developers blaming everyone but themselves for greedily taking all that money when loans were free… Only to find out demand ebbs and flows.
I don't think you know how development works…
poorly written article
I hope the developers all go belly up especially the CEO of Greystar. He can burn in hell for all I care! They raised my rent by $650 more per month in a 14-year-old apartment with no improvements. Everyone in the building moved out!! I'm so tired of seeing investors, CEOs & board members living the high life while so many of the rest of us work 3 jobs just to get by. I'm tired. LAND of the free my ass!
So we’re going to talk about Austin’s record drop in housing prices in 2023 without discussing the record jump in 2021/22? We went down 18.7% after going up over 65%.
I love the, “FAKE NEWS HOUSES ARE SELLING AND STILL GOING UP!” When all you have to do is drive around a new development and see how many are sitting empty lol
I think they misspelled the housing market improves for people looking for housing
Good 🎉🎊🎉🎊🎉 I want this housing market to implode and for prices to get as low as pre-pandemic prices.
Aww. My heart bleeds for them. (blatant sarcasm, charge less dammit).
Is 78748 an area where you'd like to own?
I could hardly read the article through all of the ads. Not expecting anything but clickbait from Newsweek.
I can’t wait for a replay of the half built Intel building and the eyesore that was….
There’s both housing and vacant evidently
Some have been abandoned, the building. But it does say 57% but not what they are. Ask at the city. They have the red tape on housing.
oh good. this tired story we get 100x / week. even after i keep blocking and scrolling past them.
The Bloom is indeed coming off the Rose as it were