Honestly, I can’t imagine that commercial real estate or cafes and restaurants and similar are doing so great in Austin right now, either. For the moment, commercial real estate and businesses dependent on office workers will be suffering pretty much everywhere.
Lots of messed up things with Austin real estate, but office spaces are not this empty. In fact I have heard that it is one of the less empty metro areas right now, in terms of office space. There also seems to be a lot of traffic downtown, which is annoying but means someone must be working/living there.
But again, lots of messed up things in the real estate market of Austin generally; the residential market has essentially frozen up, with sellers unwilling to admit how much things have dropped, and the buyers unwilling to pay for houses they know aren't going to be worth that much in a year's time or less.
Austin's already out of play for being "cool". The downtown area is stupidly expensive now (it was higher than the Bay Area before Covid--I suspect that is worse now).
One of the problems going on everywhere in the US right now is that places won't drop rent. Apparently, you can tack missing rent onto the end of your financing, but if you offer lower rent the bank holding your financing can call you up and demand cash.
This is going to totally screw up recovery as everybody will leave places empty until they're about to go bankrupt. And then everybody will go bankrupt simultaneously rather than piecemeal.
It could be runway, it could also just be timing - there's lots of talk about how the economy is slowing, so investment in anything that doesn't currently produce profits, with strong indications of increased profits in the future, is probably going to be difficult to get.
Austin definitely does it's own thing. And gets derided as "the home of the lifestyle business". But if you're profitable and have happy customers, absurd valuations and the drama that goes along with them aren't really needed.
As a note to Joah - I was surprised I couldn't enter a zipcode.
The density of downtown Austin has increased _substantially_ since 2015, but it's still not straightforward to live there without a car. Most of the shops downtown sell tourist tat, not useful items, and most of the everyday commercial districts are inaccessible by public transit.
Almost all new high rise construction just has a couple of floors of parking garage, and handles it well. I can't see buildings without that being commercially successful, especially since much of the work that attracts people who like downtown is out in the burbs (sometimes not even in the same county).
Austin has managed growth poorly, which has resulted in traffic nightmares. But the cost of housing has also been going up to a degree that may push people away. (Closing in on retirement in my current job and although I will likely continue programming, I am thinking about moving somewhere else.)
Austin has been through this before. If you've been around for a while, you know about the building frame that used to sit downtown for years that was supposed to be occupied by Dell.
I think you're right, though, that there's been a tipping point. Austin used to be the "Slacker" city, where you could afford to live there while waiting tables and playing in your middling indie band. But the last few times I've been there since moving away, that roughness seems to have disappeared, with a certain branded sameness everywhere. The Alamo Drafthouse is great for the city when it's unique, but when every business is trying to artificially mimic that kind of ironic detachment, it gets boring.
There's no guarantee housing will appreciate, in fact it's a pretty good bet that it won't. Housing is already unaffordable in many places relative to local wages, so it looks like another bubble that may burst.
Also, Austin, while not as bad as other parts of Texas, is still in Texas.
Only a small number of very narrow segments of business benefit from SXSW - but they benefit a lot. The rest of Austin businesses, and Austinites, suffer degradation and losses. Ask any downtown business that's not in the lodging/entertainment industry.
Frankly, I'm surprised that the Austin region's notable decline in quality of life hasn't already begun to act as a feedback mechanism limiting investment and population growth.
Austin was plagued by decades of nimbyism and poor urban planning that prevented sufficient infrastructure development before it was a tech hotspot. ~10 years ago, things like traffic and public transport had already become borderline unbearable relative to comparable cities. It has only become much, much worse in recent years. I imagine that it might still seem livable to tech folks arriving from west/east coast megacities, but to us locals...not so much.
Nearby San Antonio has done a much, much better job in terms of infrastructure development, but of course nobody wants to set up shop there because it doesn't have the (fading, imo) cultural cachet that Austin has.
Not in Austin, TX. It's sellers market, with bids over asking, tons of construction, etc. never had much of a bubble or weak economy. People be moving here in droves. Where they came from might have surplus, but not here.
I live in Austin as well. I'm optimistic but not nearly as much as you. Traffic is strangling the city and slowing growth, especially of the downtown core. And the city is wasting time and money expanding highways (something proven to be useless in the long run) instead of investing in public transport like most successful cities have.
I'm looking into buying a house but anything that is affordable is out in the suburbs or neighboring cities. And I say that as someone who makes $100k.
Austin rent has gone through the roof, and they’ve got a strong nimby and zoning problem just like SF so it’s just going to get worse. It’s on the exact same track, just ten or so years behind.
Soon we'll hear about how Austin is offering tax incentives to soda companies to make up for the lack of lemonade stands.
As someone who lives in Austin, many people here are absolutely delusional about Austin's attractiveness and future. Austin's once-interesting college/hippie culture is rapidly dying and being replaced by a suburban megalopolis culture (San Austonio, here we come). Historically low cost of living is going up (in no small part due to Californification of Austin politics (and I used to live in CA, so I know what this looks like)). Austin's already crumbling infrastructure cannot handle more people. Commutes are already atrocious and are getting worse.
Everything that made Austin attractive to tech workers is going away. Unless the Austin government gets out of the way, Austin's budding tech industry will die.
It's really a basic supply and demand issue. Austin TX had skyrocketing housing prices and rents during the pandemic. It also built a shit ton of new apartments that have come online during the past year (and are continuing to come on line), and rent prices fell considerably:
I've lived in Austin for 42 years. I've seen alot of change, but the traffic has stayed the same. They wait until the traffic becomes unbearable, and then add a solution, and it's back to just plain bad. The drivers are very rude.
As for the weather, you can have it. I'm done with 3/4 year being overly hot. I hate having to run AC all the time. I hate having to water the lawn.
The look and feel of Austin has been lost. In the old days buildings couldn't be higher than the capital, and they had to allow for views to the capital. Now buildings overwhelm the capital in size, and block the view. It's all about money.
The downtown is becoming vastly overbuilt, with 50+ story condo's. I used to work for the city. I know the infrastructure is just not there for that. There is exactly 1 grocery store downtown: Wholefoods. There is exactly 1 fire department station downtown. It simply can't handle the high rise condos.
The burbs are ok, if you don't mind a hour each way to work, which is what I do daily. Forget mass transit in Austin, its a joke.
We put our house up on the market TODAY (really!), and plan on retiring to Portland and living a livable lifestyle walking, biking and using mass transit. No more AC, just have to use the heater once and a while. Oh, and it's much prettier. I like the last sentence: “The cool people are going off to live somewhere else.”
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